Review of the Moral Art of War Geoff Dyer
He makes it look all too easy, Geoff Dyer. With his urbane tone, effortless erudition and deadpan asides, this roving essayist could be a terrible influence on aspiring writers persuaded by his regular protests (or are they boasts?) virtually his lousy work ethic, abiding procrastination and lazy lifestyle.
"I've adopted a policy of quitting, of getting by without persevering," he writes in Sacked, an essay that functions equally a dear letter to his three years on the dole in the early '80s. "As presently equally I get fed up, bored, tired or weary of anything I abandon it. Books, films, writing assignments, relationships — I simply give up on them."
Geoff Dyer's 2nd volume of occasional essays complements a wilfully eclectic body of work. Credit:David Mariuz
Hmmm. Many slackers talk a good game but produce sod-all. Dyer has been suspiciously prolific for a layabout. This is his 2nd volume of occasional essays, and complements a wilfully eclectic body of work, ranging from enjoyably dirty novels to accessibly learned critical studies of subjects as varied every bit photography, jazz, war, and D. H. Lawrence. And then there are his reviews, essays and travel stories, such as Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It, and his drove of unreliable reportage (or scarcely invented fiction) from extended holidays in Asia, Africa and the Americas.
This is not the work of a man who tin't exist bothered. And as Working the Room shows, this is non the quality of work created past bashing something out well by borderline. Many of the pieces read equally effortlessly as a pleasant conversation on a wine-soaked summer afternoon, but every judgement is carefully planned. I would become and so far every bit to charge Dyer of rereading and revising his work.
His decision to avoid what he calls our "cliches of form . . . cliches of expectation" is demonstrated by the organising principles of Working the Room. Rather than starting the book with "Personals", the immediately attainable pick of autobiographical stories, the drove begins with "Visuals", a subclass of difficult-edged essays on photography, only sparingly illustrated with images, such as Ruth Orkin'south VE Day rooftop shots. Here Dyer is sharp-focused, so to speak, with only occasional lyrical flights ("the text of American Pictures would non be reprintable today except equally a historical certificate or exhibit, similar ane of those mammals found preserved in a glacier").
While Dyer tin write about sex activity and fun with the louche charm of an Oxbridge smashing, it'south in the "Personals" that nosotros discover the alarmingly clever son of a manufactory worker and lunch lady, whose self-deprecation doesn't quite conceal his ferocious competitive streak (tennis, school marks, disquisitional stoushes), while his cruisy charm is belied past the rigour and density of his references. This is someone who always does his homework. Most of the essays are forensic works of criticism, equally Dyer lays out the machinery behind the fine art of creative people as varied as J. 1000. Due west. Turner, Ian McEwan and Australian post-jazz outfit the Necks. This is, as he flags in his essay on Susan Sontag, what critics do later on in life, when "their ain power to go toe-to-toe with greatness . . . comes under test".
If there is a thread, information technology's Dyer's fascination with the uncategorisable. He celebrates Sontag as a literary giant fifty-fifty "if she had never written a novel", prefers John Cheever's diaries over his fiction, and likes the unreliable reportage of Rebecca West and Ryszard Kapuscinski. The collection's best essay, The Moral Fine art of War, is a smack-down of Martin Amis's claims in The Moronic Inferno that not-fiction lacks "moral imagination". Dyer's example for the defence force rests with the "futility and mess" of memoirs from Iraq and Afghanistan, and their superiority to current war novels and films (he loathes The Hurt Locker's "ludicrous manipulations").
It's likewise what he likes about photography: " . . . some of the most artistically valuable contemporary photographs are content with being photographs, are non under the same compulsion to pass themselves off — or pimp themselves out — equally art."
If annihilation, Dyer is under a compulsion to disguise his art equally idle fun. In this, and only in this, does he fail to convince.
Source: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/working-the-room-20110218-1az4x.html
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