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In his latest book, Geoff Dyer returns to his favourite subject - himself. In his very distinctive, neurotic, and quirkily humorous voice that has gained him a passionate fan base including Bryan Ferry and Steve Martin, Dyer writes about an accumulation of his experiences as a traveller, from the extraordinary Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert to getting drastically stoned in Paris; from contemplating the great Roman site Leptis Magna in Libya to the downright weirdness of decrepit Detroit. He is both confessional - entertainingly frank about trying to pick up women in Thailand - and very thoughtful - wondering how the power of a particular place such as the Buddha in Si Satchanlai, Thailand, can work on a non-believer. YOGA FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO DO IT confirms Geoff Dyer as 'among the most original and talented writers of his generation' (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY) ... Read more

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Leading intellectuals reimagine the city as a site of ceaseless change and motion.The metropolis is a site of endless making and unmaking. From the attempt to imagine a ‘city-symphony’ to the cinematic tradition that runs from Walter Ruttmann to Terence Davies, Restless Cities traces the idiosyncratic character of the metropolitan city from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first-century megalopolis. With explorations of phenomena including nightwalking, urbicide, property, commuting and recycling, this wide-ranging new book identifies and traces the patterns that have defined everyday life in the modern city and its effect on us as individuals. Bringing together some of the most significant cultural writers of our time, Restless Cities is an illuminating, revelatory journey to the heart of our metropolitan world. ... Read more

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An extraordinary and stirring collection of photographs and writings by an enigmatic photographer whose work is published here for the first time. William Gedney died in 1989 at the age of fifty-six. He left behind a lifetime of photographic work, most of it unknown outside of a few colleagues and curators, including John Szarkowski, Lee Friedlander, and Diane Arbus. These photographs--taken primarily in New York, San Francisco, Kentucky, and India--are remarkable in their sympathetic and quietly sensual view of the world. They illuminate the rare, lyrical vision of a photographer whom, while living a highly reclusive personal life, was able to record the lives of others with remarkable sensitivity and poignancy. From the commerce of the street outside his Brooklyn apartment window to the daily chores of unemployed coal miners, from the indolent lifestyle of hippies in Haight-Ashbury to the sacred rituals of Hindu worshippers, Gedney's unobtrusive view reveals the beauty and mystery of each individual life. Excerpts from Gedney's correspondence and notebooks help us discover this intensely private man who captured the people and places around him with such striking clarity and intimacy. A retrospective exhibition of William Gedney's works opens in December 1999 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. ... Read more

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No evocation of Parisian life in the second half of the nineteenth century can match that found in the journals of the brothers Goncourt

The journal of the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt is one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century French literature, a work that in its richness of color, variety, and seemingly casual perfection bears comparison with the great paintings of their friends and contemporaries the Impressionists.

Born nearly ten years apart into a French aristocratic family, the two brothers formed an extraordinarily productive and enduring literary partnership, collaborating on novels, criticism, and plays that pioneered the new aesthetic of naturalism. But the brothers’ talents found their most memorable outlet in their journal, which is at once a chronicle of an era, an intimate glimpse into their lives, and the purest expression of a nascent modern sensibility preoccupied with sex and art, celebrity and self-exposure. The Goncourts visit slums, brothels, balls, department stores, and imperial receptions; they argue over art and politics and trade merciless gossip with and about Hugo, Baudelaire, Degas, Flaubert, Zola, Rodin, and many others. And in 1871, Edmond maintains a vigil as his brother dies a slow and agonizing death from syphilis, recording every detail in the journal that he would continue to maintain alone for another two decades. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

"Entertainment Tonight" circa 1880s Paris
The Goncourt brothers were quite the pair: they pledged at an early age never to marry (don't worry, they had plenty of mistresses in the proper French form)and dedicated themselves to cultural pursuits of dubious quality and success. Their unquestionable victory, however, is this salacious, gossipy journal.

The Goncourts were anti-Semitic royalists who hung out with most of the cultural elite of the day: Zola, Maupassant, Flaubert, and Degas all peopled their vicious circle of decadence and artistic jealousy. Their snippy back-and-forths with Emile Zola over the "ownership" of the literary movement of Naturalism is particularly entertaining. Of course Zola went on to defend the maligned Capt. Dreyfus with his "J'accuse" letter in 1898, so it is certainly possible to read the Goncourt's racism as an underlying factor in that schism.

There are some curious holes in the narrative, though -- this version has absolutely no entry mentioning the funeral of Victor Hugo in 1885, which was one of the most amazing cultural events in all history and turned Paris into one large carnival of drunkenness and sex for almost an entire week.

If you want to get a glimpse of life in the fin-de-siecle' then this will give it to you, royalist warts and all.

Two nasty writers surrounded by genius: the fur flies
"Ever since the world began, the only memoirs of any interest have been written by 'indiscreet individuals,'" Edmond de Goncourt noted. "And my only crime is to be still alive twenty years after they were written."

He got that half-right. Indiscretion is the secret sauce of memoir. But de Goncourt's sin was not to be alive to hear the howls of protest from his victims and their allies --- it was that he and his brother Jules savaged their friends and enemies with equal glee. And that's the first great attraction of this edited edition of one of the greatest journals in all of literature: It's really bitchy.

It's really bitchy in large part because the Goncourt brothers had an extremely high opinion of themselves. In 1851, they published their first novel. Their self-review: "It contains in embryo every aspect of our talent and every colour on our palette." Alas, their timing was terrible; Bonaparte had just dissolved the National Assembly and declared himself Napoleon III, dictator of France. From their first diary entry: "What a time it [our novel] chose to appear! A symphony of words and ideas in the middle of that scramble for office."

For social beings, the Goncourts could be profoundly anti-social. They loathed half the world on principle --- "Woman is the animal that lives inside a silk dress" --- and periodically cut themselves off from the Paris literary scene: "We had given away our old evening clothes and had no new ones made, so as to be unable to go anywhere. No women, no pleasures, no amusements: just unceasing toil." By 1857, they report, "No friends, no connections, every door shut in our face, and all money spent on books."

Don't be fooled. They knew everyone: Flaubert, de Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Degas, Rodin, Baudelaire, George Sand, Turgenev. There are regular dinners, and, after, the Goncourts go home and scribble.

Flaubert tells them how he lives without a woman: "I just lie face down and during the night...it's infallible."

Hugo, they write, "had a notebook in which he writes down what he has just said."

One good thing about their deep skepticism about some of the greatest writers in French literature --- when they're at their cattiest, they offer unvarnished opinions that take us much closer to understanding the greats than a lot of more reasoned analysis. Here they are, on the subject of the "hidden sides" of their dear friend, Gustave Flaubert: "He quietly pushes himself forward, establishes relations with important people, creates a network of useful acquaintances, all the while pretending to be independent, lazy, and fond of solitude." And they are just as cutting when they take the long view. Voltaire, they observe, "spent his life taking an interest in something --- himself."

"Genius is the talent of a dead man," they said. Not quite. The Goncourts believed they possessed it --- and in abundance. But the unanimity of thought which made theirs such a successful collaboration didn't pay off. All told, they wrote about 30-odd plays, novels and books of criticism. None has survived them.

The literary immortality of the Goncourt brothers comes, instead, from the writing they threw off easily and without concern for style --- these journals. The extreme realism of their novels had won them no friends and few readers. But the extreme realism --- okay, subjective realism --- of their table talk gives us a picture of Paris in the middle of the 19th century that is fresh, original, acutely observed. Their masterpiece is, in essence, a gossip column.
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Product Description
This digital document is an article from International Fiction Review, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2006. The length of the article is 4602 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Ghosting the lost generation: Geoff Dyer's Paris Trance.
Author: Steven G. Kellman
Publication: International Fiction Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 33Issue: 1-2Page: 9(9)

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This digital document is an article from Artforum International, published by Artforum International Magazine, Inc. on April 1, 2009. The length of the article is 1626 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Genres, Ganges, and the Grand Canal.(Geoff Dyer)(Interview)
Author: Geoff Dyer
Publication: Artforum International (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2009
Publisher: Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
Volume: 47Issue: 8Page: S29(1)

Article Type: Interview

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This digital document, covering the life and work of Geoff Dyer, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1104 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

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From Here to There: Alec Soth's America is the first exhibition catalogue to feature the full spectrum of the work of Alec Soth, one of the most interesting voices in contemporary photography, whose compelling images of everyday America form powerful narrative vignettes. Featuring more than 100 of the artist's photographs made over the past 15 years, the book includes new critical essays by exhibition curator Siri Engberg, curator and art historian Britt Salvesen and critic Barry Schwabsky, which offer context on the artist's working process, the photo-historical tradition behind his practice and reflections on his latest series of works. Novelist Geoff Dyer's "Riverrun"--a meditation on Soth's series Sleeping by the Mississippi--and August Kleinzahler's poem "Sleeping It Off in Rapid City" contribute to the thoughtful exploration of this body of work. Also included in the publication is a 48-page artist's book by Soth titled The Loneliest Man in Missouri, a photographic essay with short, diaristic texts capturing the banality and ennui of middle America's suburban fringes, with their corporate office parks, strip clubs and chain restaurants. This full-color publication includes a complete exhibition history, bibliography and interview with the artist by Bartholomew Ryan.
Alec Soth was born in 1969 and raised in Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1999, 2004) and Jerome Foundation (2001), was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and was short-listed for the highly prestigious Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. His first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. Since then Soth has published Niagara (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), Dog Days, Bogota (2007) and The Last Days of W (2008). He is a member of Magnum Photos. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from American Scholar, published by Phi Beta Kappa Society on March 22, 2001. The length of the article is 4208 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Fitzgerald's Afterglow.
Author: Geoff Dyer
Publication: American Scholar (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2001
Publisher: Phi Beta Kappa Society
Volume: 70Issue: 2Page: 136

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This issue features the first-time publication of Edvard Munch's poems and journal entries, making this Open City an instant collector's item. ... Read more