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indyreadrosa's review against another edition
5.0
Fantastic. I have read a couple of D.H. Lawrence's novels and knew a little bit about how he grew up but that is it. This book is not a biography but is a great way to get a feel of Lawrence . The sentences can if you are in the wrong mood feel long or too tangential but give it a second. Sink into Dyer's way of writing. He has an amazing ability to take you just to the edge of annoying and then with a word or two reframe what you just read into poignancy or humor or usually a lot of both.
If there was a higher level to give than 5 stars I would give. Highly recommended.
If there was a higher level to give than 5 stars I would give. Highly recommended.
cjt's review against another edition
slow-paced
3.75
I liked many parts of this writing, very ben lerner. I loved all the Italy
jeremyhornik's review against another edition
4.0
This is a very funny book about not writing a critical study of D.H. Lawrence. Instead, it's a massive litany of tiny complaints that block him from writing his study.
The only problem is that I have no interest whatsoever in Lawrence, and periodically the book does go for a few pages into a critical study of him. Oh well. I suppose it would be worse if I did have an interest in Lawrence, because then it would be a massive tease.
Thanks, Sara Stewart.
The only problem is that I have no interest whatsoever in Lawrence, and periodically the book does go for a few pages into a critical study of him. Oh well. I suppose it would be worse if I did have an interest in Lawrence, because then it would be a massive tease.
Thanks, Sara Stewart.
jimmylorunning's review against another edition
4.0
The hardcover copy that I borrowed from the library has a yellow cover and a see through jacket. On the yellow cover is a photo of Geoff Dyer and on the see-through jacket is an image of DH Lawrence so that, when put together, their faces are laid over each other. This seems to me a perfect illustration of the book, which is a very personal take on Lawrence... a mixture of memoir, travel-writing, literary study, and existential meditation. Oh yeah, and how could I forget? Comedy: Geoff Dyer is a hilarious writer.
I have a theory that maybe all great writers and readers (for that is essentially what Dyer is here, a reader and a fan) have fully developed senses of humor. It’s so hard to think of any great writers who weren’t funny, though that humor can vary widely in shade. Kafka was funny. Flaubert was funny. So was Bernhard, Beckett, Musil, Chekhov, Gogol, Cortazar, Proust, Joyce, Stein. Oddly enough, I listened to an interview with Dyer recently where he claimed that Sebald was funny, though I don’t personally see it (except in small moments).
It seems to me a pity that literature classes across America are not--right this second--laughing until milk comes out of their noses instead of talking about post-feminism or whatever post- / -ism it is they like to throw around. If I walked into a literature class where everybody was dying from laughter, I would know I was in good hands, that these people got it. Dyer, for example, got it, and that is why throughout this book he is laughing: at himself, at Lawrence, at us. And making us laugh.
Though officially about Lawrence, this book could just as well have been a book about Rilke, Camus, or Bernhard. He certainly talks about the first two enough. And the latter is mentioned only in passing, but seems to be a ghost in the prose throughout the first hundred pages or so, and dropping in again towards the end. This deliberate and loving imitation of Bernhard is charming and funny, but also appropriate in a book about the vacillating indecision that grips one in the condition of living. For indecisiveness is not only a characteristic of Dyer, Lawrence, Bernhard and modernism, but also of the essay form: first try to see something this way, then try to see it from a completely different angle.
Luckily, this undignified shameful approach to writing was very helpful for me, since I was also a lazy no-good son of a bitch in the middle of writing an ambitious book review on a Wittgenstein biography. I had collected so many ideas and notes. But every time I started in on it, I was overwhelmed with my inability to convey what was most important. Thankfully Dyer provided the clear-headed cop-out I was looking for: I could write about my inability to write and thus have my cake and eat it too!
Because the very thing that made it impossible to write my review was the very thing that was most important, namely the unutterable. The idea of saying something and not have any of it leak out. Likewise, in Dyer’s study of Lawrence, the very idea of gripping indecisiveness, placelessness, and constant discontent which he talks about going through are the very things that he brings out in his portrait of Lawrence. For this is not a sober study of Lawrence’s major works and themes, but rather a cherry-picked impressionistic portrait of the man himself, mostly salvaged from his letters and tossed off statements. This is the Lawrence that most interested the fanboy in Dyer, the unmediated Lawrence. This is also the Lawrence that most interests me. Literature has enough sober academic studies, what it needs is impassioned fanboys writing unprofessional failures of books, but failures that are bold enough to be human and revealing. We need to see the flesh and blood in literature! I love this sentiment:
I have a theory that maybe all great writers and readers (for that is essentially what Dyer is here, a reader and a fan) have fully developed senses of humor. It’s so hard to think of any great writers who weren’t funny, though that humor can vary widely in shade. Kafka was funny. Flaubert was funny. So was Bernhard, Beckett, Musil, Chekhov, Gogol, Cortazar, Proust, Joyce, Stein. Oddly enough, I listened to an interview with Dyer recently where he claimed that Sebald was funny, though I don’t personally see it (except in small moments).
It seems to me a pity that literature classes across America are not--right this second--laughing until milk comes out of their noses instead of talking about post-feminism or whatever post- / -ism it is they like to throw around. If I walked into a literature class where everybody was dying from laughter, I would know I was in good hands, that these people got it. Dyer, for example, got it, and that is why throughout this book he is laughing: at himself, at Lawrence, at us. And making us laugh.
Though officially about Lawrence, this book could just as well have been a book about Rilke, Camus, or Bernhard. He certainly talks about the first two enough. And the latter is mentioned only in passing, but seems to be a ghost in the prose throughout the first hundred pages or so, and dropping in again towards the end. This deliberate and loving imitation of Bernhard is charming and funny, but also appropriate in a book about the vacillating indecision that grips one in the condition of living. For indecisiveness is not only a characteristic of Dyer, Lawrence, Bernhard and modernism, but also of the essay form: first try to see something this way, then try to see it from a completely different angle.
The longer I stayed the more powerful it became, this feeling that I was just passing through. I had thought about subscribing to Canal Plus as a way of making myself feel more settled but what was the point in subscribing to Canal Plus when, in all probability, I would be moving on in a few months? Obviously the way to make myself more settled was to acquire some of the trappings of permanence but there never seemed any point acquiring the aptly named trappings of permanence when in a couple of months I might be moving on, might well be moving on, would almost certainly be moving on, because there was nothing to keep me where I was. Had I acquired some of the trappings of permanence I might have stayed put but I never acquired any of the trappings of permanence because I knew that the moment these trappings had been acquired I would be seized with a desire to leave, to move on, and I would then have to free myself from these trappings. And so, lacking any of the trappings of permanence, I was perpetually on the brink of potential departure. If I felt settled I would want to leave, but if I was on the brink of leaving then I could stay, indefinitely, even though staying would fill me with still further anxiety because, since I appeared to be staying, what was the point in living as though I were not staying but merely passing through?Most of this book is about Geoff Dyer’s inability to write a study on Lawrence, about his crippling writer’s block, and his weak-willed half-assed attempts at any kind of traditional goal-oriented pursuit. He travels around the world to see the places Lawrence stayed and wrote at, only to glean very little from these experiences but annoyance, illness, boredom, and injuries. It is extremely funny to read about, but also it is a perfect solution to not being able to write about Lawrence. Dyer seems to have taken Beckett’s oft-misunderstood maxim of "Try again. Fail again. Fail better" to heart. He sinks to the lowest of lows, and instead of fighting it, he sinks some more and revels in it. Or as D.H. Lawrence himself put it "Let a man fall to the bottom of himself, let him get to the bottom so that we can see who he really is."
Luckily, this undignified shameful approach to writing was very helpful for me, since I was also a lazy no-good son of a bitch in the middle of writing an ambitious book review on a Wittgenstein biography. I had collected so many ideas and notes. But every time I started in on it, I was overwhelmed with my inability to convey what was most important. Thankfully Dyer provided the clear-headed cop-out I was looking for: I could write about my inability to write and thus have my cake and eat it too!
Because the very thing that made it impossible to write my review was the very thing that was most important, namely the unutterable. The idea of saying something and not have any of it leak out. Likewise, in Dyer’s study of Lawrence, the very idea of gripping indecisiveness, placelessness, and constant discontent which he talks about going through are the very things that he brings out in his portrait of Lawrence. For this is not a sober study of Lawrence’s major works and themes, but rather a cherry-picked impressionistic portrait of the man himself, mostly salvaged from his letters and tossed off statements. This is the Lawrence that most interested the fanboy in Dyer, the unmediated Lawrence. This is also the Lawrence that most interests me. Literature has enough sober academic studies, what it needs is impassioned fanboys writing unprofessional failures of books, but failures that are bold enough to be human and revealing. We need to see the flesh and blood in literature! I love this sentiment:
As time goes by we drift away from the great texts, the finished works on which an author’s reputation is built, towards the journals, diaries, letters, manuscripts, jottings. This is not simply because, as an author’s stature grows posthumously, the fund of published texts becomes exhausted and we have to make do not only with previously unpublished or unfinished material but, increasingly, with matter that was never intended for publication. It is also because we want to get nearer to the man or woman who wrote these books, to his or her being. We crave an increasingly intimate relationship with the author, unmediated, in so far as possible, by the contrivances of art. A curious reversal takes place. The finished works serve as prologue to the jottings; the published book becomes a stage to be passed through -- a draft -- en route to the definitive pleasure of the notes, the fleeting impressions, the sketches, in which it had its origin.And later, he draws the same conclusion about his own book:
If this book aspires to the condition of notes that is because, for me, Lawrence’s prose is at its best when it comes closest to notes.I read another book recently, [b:How Should a Person Be?|9361377|How Should a Person Be?|Sheila Heti|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41TKKIkSDUL._SL75_.jpg|14244846], about not being able to write a book. The book was originally supposed to be a play. But was eventually turned into a personal meditation about trying to write the play (as well as many other things). But throughout she wrestled with the idea of whether it was OK to just let herself be herself, to embrace the failure, or change the definition of failure, rather than go through with something that was much more difficult. It is nice to see so many books wrestling with this idea. But I do tend to agree with Dyer that the wrestling and the failing and the owning up to it, making it your own, is the important part. “Anyone can have a breakdown, anyone.” he says on page 170, “The trick is to have a breakdown and take it in one’s stride.”
nighm's review against another edition
2.0
I read this book at the recommendation of someone in a book store, backed up by the Steve Martin’s review on the front, “The funniest book I have ever read.” He was joking, I’m sure.
It is a book about writing a book about D. H. Lawrence, but most of it is only ramblings about the author who does not come off as a very interesting or pleasant person. The actual Lawrence parts are fine, but only constitute maybe 50 pages of the book. Dyer says many times that he prefers Lawrence’s letters or personal notes to any of his novels or finished work, and so perhaps he wanted this book to reflect his own likes: notes on a book about Lawrence rather than a book about Lawrence. But no, I don’t think it worked. He repeats himself interminably whenever he talks about himself and his reiterates lack of desire to read Lawrence’s novels have successfully removed from me any intention of reading them myself.
It’s not as if there is nothing here. About 100 pages in, he levels a reasonable critique at the academic study of literature which cares more about secondary sources than actual literature, citing George Steiner along the way. There was also one line I enjoyed enough to make a note of, about westerns on Italian tv: “Given that there are a finite number of westerns and an infinite number of nights in which to watch them they figure that any gaps can be filled in later. To them each film is really no more than a segment of an epic ur-western spanning thousands if not millions of hours, offering a quantity of material so vast that it can never be edited into a finished form. The western thus takes the place of the great myths of antiquity.”
And it is just plain vulgar in places. I do not recommend it to anyone. There are finer and funnier things to read.
It is a book about writing a book about D. H. Lawrence, but most of it is only ramblings about the author who does not come off as a very interesting or pleasant person. The actual Lawrence parts are fine, but only constitute maybe 50 pages of the book. Dyer says many times that he prefers Lawrence’s letters or personal notes to any of his novels or finished work, and so perhaps he wanted this book to reflect his own likes: notes on a book about Lawrence rather than a book about Lawrence. But no, I don’t think it worked. He repeats himself interminably whenever he talks about himself and his reiterates lack of desire to read Lawrence’s novels have successfully removed from me any intention of reading them myself.
It’s not as if there is nothing here. About 100 pages in, he levels a reasonable critique at the academic study of literature which cares more about secondary sources than actual literature, citing George Steiner along the way. There was also one line I enjoyed enough to make a note of, about westerns on Italian tv: “Given that there are a finite number of westerns and an infinite number of nights in which to watch them they figure that any gaps can be filled in later. To them each film is really no more than a segment of an epic ur-western spanning thousands if not millions of hours, offering a quantity of material so vast that it can never be edited into a finished form. The western thus takes the place of the great myths of antiquity.”
And it is just plain vulgar in places. I do not recommend it to anyone. There are finer and funnier things to read.
nesetzengin's review against another edition
3.0
Hevesli olup söyleyecek bir şey bulamamak, düşünceleri toparlayıp bir sonuca bağlayıp yazamamak, ertelemek üzerine bu kimi zaman sevimli çoğu zaman huysuz metin. Geoff Dyer, D.H Lawrence üzerine en ince detayı biliyor, yazarı çözümlüyor ama çoğu şeyi dile getirmek istemiyor, sıkılıyor mesela kitabın bir yerinde Danimarka'ya konuşmak için gidiyor hiçbir şey anlatamadan geri dönüyor. Yazarına göre Anka Kuşu, İtalya'da Alacakaranlık, D.H. Lawrence'ın mektupları, şiirleri en sevdiği eserleri arasındaymış.
litsirk's review against another edition
4.0
Love. Towards the middle-end, started thinking maybe Geoff was just insufferable despite his charm, but came back around again by the end. After all, one way or another we all have to write our studies on D.H. Lawrence.
itsmandaaa's review against another edition
5.0
"As time goes by we drift away from the great texts, the finished works on which an author’s reputation is built, towards the journals, diaries, letters, manuscripts, jottings. This is not simply because, as an author’s stature grows posthumously, the fund of published texts become exhausted and we have to make do not only with previously unpublished or unfinished material but, increasingly, with matter that was never intended for publication. It is also because we want to get nearer to the man or woman who wrote these books, to his or her being. We crave an increasingly intimate relationship with the author, unmediated, in so far as possible, by the contrivances of art."
maedo's review against another edition
4.0
Geoff Dyer's neuroses make for one of the funniest books I've read in a while. Considering that his frequent subjects -- Lawrence, Camus, Nietzsche -- are not my favorite writers, and Nietzsche I would even say I dislike, it was impressive that he could still make their lives and thoughts interesting to me. I even started to enjoy Lawrence in the way Geoff did. I began to find his temper endearing.
The only parts of the book that dragged were the parts where it seemed like the "sober academic study" might actually be getting off the ground. No, Geoff Dyer! Tell me more about Italy and seatbelt shirts and how you almost masturbated on a beach and how no one will find meaning in this book ever (about which, let me tell you, you are wrong).
The only parts of the book that dragged were the parts where it seemed like the "sober academic study" might actually be getting off the ground. No, Geoff Dyer! Tell me more about Italy and seatbelt shirts and how you almost masturbated on a beach and how no one will find meaning in this book ever (about which, let me tell you, you are wrong).