The less promising his subject,the more brilliant Geoff Dyer gets in this collection of essays on travel and art“I loved my brain,” confesses Geoff Dyer at the halt of his latest book. As the oddly retrospective tense hints, and this is not a moment of outrageous conceit. Instead Dyer here expresses his relief that he recovered from an exploding blob of blood in his head that caused a slight ischemic stroke two years ago. A nervous shudder registers his alarm that the love might have been one-sided: could his brain betray him?With normal mental functions now restored,Dyer is entitled to be proud of his cerebral equipment, and I might add that I’m also pretty enamoured of his brain – of the way it makes unexpected connections, or which is what the firing synapses in our head are supposed to do; of its delight in asking bold metaphysical questions,like those in the first essay in this collection, which is entitled Where? What? Where?; and of its tricksy blurring of the borders between fact and fiction, or life and art,which makes Dyer dedicate this fresh book to his wife Rebecca while calling her Jessica whenever she appears in it.
Miles Davis could tease complication out of a couple of notes; Dyer too often works best when he has little to go on Related: ‘Based on a steady chronicle’: the fine line between fact and fiction Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com