Geoff Dyer, literary magician

I first caught his act in 1996 reading “But Beautiful”, his ode to jazz. He didn’t stick to the music but the musicians and he moved a long way from the plodding and pedantic “History of Jazz” done by Ken Burns. It wasn’t a conventional book on jazz which is usually all enthusiasm and record dates. This was mostly about the madness and sadness of the scene. This hit the right note with me since I cherish the damaged angels Lester Young and Billie Holiday. I once closed up Birdland at 4 am stuffing my head with Bud Powell, the mad pianist nobody could surpass.
Then I turned to other things and didn’t revisit Dyer until just now when I read “Jeff in Venice. Death in Varanesi’ (get it, not Death in Venice). Pretty soon I was laughing out loud, a rare event for me I moved on to his “Yoga for people who can’t be bothered to do it”. Does this give you some idea of his style?
Dyer is an intellectual protégé of John Berger, the art and cultural critic. I discovered Berger way back in the late 1960’s. He said that advertising didn’t meet our real needs in a caption underneath a picture of some poor people walking past a billboard promoting glamorous jet travel. Of course advertising meets everyone’s needs, especially mine. There is no discourse like this in America. This was a new and provocative thought environment for me and worth considering..
Time to revisit Mr. Dyer. I read through “Out of sheer rage” (Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence) one of my favorite authors in college. I had the misfortune of telling this to the doyenne of Manhattan writers, Joan Didion, one evening in Greenwich Village. She sneered and pushed an imaginary custard pie in my face. Actually nobody reads either one of them today. Literature has given way to “names” such as James Patterson and Nora Roberts, who are not really writers but grocers, I mean grossers.
Dyer’s writing is hard to describe: elusive, witty, astute, digressive. I used to go to Magic Castle in LA I liked the all the sleight-of-hand but I especially liked Vito Scotti, a character actor in the movies who did stand-up magic. He did a modern version of Commedia dell-arte, the comedy of types such as Arlechinno, the mischievous servant. His act was the clever magician but he never used props, cards or rabbits, it was all pantomime. “It’s in the act”. the juggler said if he dropped a ball on stage.
Do I digress? That’s Dyer’s great trick and one of his great pleasures, digression. When he takes off the Commedia mask he becomes the articulate, serious and erudite literary critic as in his essay and review collection: “Otherwise known as the human condition”. He quotes Phillip Larkin, one of my favorites and a master of skepticism. I confess that skepticism has become my refuge from the All American avalanche of good feelings and good news now that we’re in three endless wars and essentially broke. We need a new song: “Brother can you spare a Food Stamp?”
One quick Dyer quote: “Writers always envy artists, and would trade places with them in a moment if they could. The painter’s life seems less ascetic, less monkish, less hunched. For the writer, work is characterized as the absolute cessation of physical movement (all movement is an evasion and distraction from the job at hand).
In the age of the computer the writer’s office or study will increasingly resemble the customer service desk of an ailing small business.”

. On the cover of “Out of sheer rage” is a blurb from Steve Martin saying: ‘This is the funniest book I’ve ever read”. There you have it; two wild and crazy guys, both writers, both magicians, both brilliant.