It is not so rare that I read a book that I do not like, or only start a book but do not finish it for the same reason. It is rare, however, when I find myself distinctly disliking the author. Such is the case with White Sands, a collection of essays by Geoff Dyer. Who, I came off thinking, is this arrogant, misleading, trendy, precious little British flower?
From the start he claims that these essays are kinda fiction but kinda not, but what, after all, is the difference? Well, Geoff ( I say), a whole lot. Yes, I get his abstract point - life is not a story, and when we make it into one, we are already fictionalizing. Certainly I would have fun with such ideas at a drinking party, but the difference in intent of a book is real - either you try to give the best account of the truth that you can, given the limitations of story telling and memory, or you fudge it to make a fiction or to make a sale. There is a difference.
But in Dyer's post-modernistic world, there is no difference. In his essays, he takes us around the world to see artworks, or the remains of artists, or artifacts of old art or architecture. For him, there is a point to art, which speaks so profoundly,.but of what? Since he denies the reality of the sacred - or rather, places the sacred in the same realm as modern art, where then can he go? What, then, does his art give us?
It gives us, he points out, perspective or a sense of nodality, something that is not quite meaning but substitutes for meaning. For perspective, he tells us of the wonder of the photo of a soccer goal taken from another soccer goal - a frame withing a frame, that, I suppose, we can take as our endless reflection on ourselves, as if we were experiencing some kind of cannabis overdose. For nodality, he notes DH Lawrence's comment on Taos, New Mexico - that it had this 'nodality,' this sense of center, of being a navel of the world. But Dyer does not go deeper - he can't. He is held back by an urbane smugness that does not allow himself to extend into something that - gasp! - his fellow sophisticates could mock.
I am on the last pages, and maybe there he will redeem himself I will read it to the end. He is a good writer, and his tongue in cheek amusement at the world is entertaining. In fact, he is well aware of his shortcomings, as reflected in an essay titled "Northern Dark," where he makes it clear that he and his wife are whiny wimps. It is hilarious. I even look forward to the last essays, even though I can't stand the guy.
Normally I don't like to criticize so harshly and wouldn't have done so except it brings up a point in keeping with this blog: that in Dyer's world, there is a limit. He understands very well that art makes one feel, but what does it mean? He cannot admit to anything beyond amorphous feeling. But great art or any great work, to me, must be measured by how it brings one closer to the eternal, to the ALL, to an understanding deeper than our individuality or our cultural background. "Transcendence" is the word usually used. The trouble with the elite, with the smug, is that they cannot go there, will not go there, for there, they are out of control; there they are no longer the center; there they may fall on their knees or cry or recognize that everything they ever worked for, all the prestige and awards, are basically meaningless in the vastness.
In the older sacred art of the great religions, paintings and other art works were not signed. The genius or individuality or greatness of the artist was never the point, and they and everyone else knew it. People like Dyer - and, I'll admit, I am sometimes much like him (and thus the antipathy) - really do know this, and so, with all their smugness, will at times tie themselves onto the wrack of self-deprecation to say, "look at me! I, too, am only an infinite regression, a creature of my time and temperament and little more." But we are more. Not the heroic demi-gods of the Greeks, but beings involved no more nor less than anything else in the great mystery of the universe. Somewhere inside, we each have a grain, an inkling, of our affinity to this mystery, and it is there where we find great art - or so it is for me - with all sophistication and cleverness amounting only to cheap party favors. Which can, I admit, still be very entertaining. FK
From the start he claims that these essays are kinda fiction but kinda not, but what, after all, is the difference? Well, Geoff ( I say), a whole lot. Yes, I get his abstract point - life is not a story, and when we make it into one, we are already fictionalizing. Certainly I would have fun with such ideas at a drinking party, but the difference in intent of a book is real - either you try to give the best account of the truth that you can, given the limitations of story telling and memory, or you fudge it to make a fiction or to make a sale. There is a difference.
But in Dyer's post-modernistic world, there is no difference. In his essays, he takes us around the world to see artworks, or the remains of artists, or artifacts of old art or architecture. For him, there is a point to art, which speaks so profoundly,.but of what? Since he denies the reality of the sacred - or rather, places the sacred in the same realm as modern art, where then can he go? What, then, does his art give us?
It gives us, he points out, perspective or a sense of nodality, something that is not quite meaning but substitutes for meaning. For perspective, he tells us of the wonder of the photo of a soccer goal taken from another soccer goal - a frame withing a frame, that, I suppose, we can take as our endless reflection on ourselves, as if we were experiencing some kind of cannabis overdose. For nodality, he notes DH Lawrence's comment on Taos, New Mexico - that it had this 'nodality,' this sense of center, of being a navel of the world. But Dyer does not go deeper - he can't. He is held back by an urbane smugness that does not allow himself to extend into something that - gasp! - his fellow sophisticates could mock.
I am on the last pages, and maybe there he will redeem himself I will read it to the end. He is a good writer, and his tongue in cheek amusement at the world is entertaining. In fact, he is well aware of his shortcomings, as reflected in an essay titled "Northern Dark," where he makes it clear that he and his wife are whiny wimps. It is hilarious. I even look forward to the last essays, even though I can't stand the guy.
Normally I don't like to criticize so harshly and wouldn't have done so except it brings up a point in keeping with this blog: that in Dyer's world, there is a limit. He understands very well that art makes one feel, but what does it mean? He cannot admit to anything beyond amorphous feeling. But great art or any great work, to me, must be measured by how it brings one closer to the eternal, to the ALL, to an understanding deeper than our individuality or our cultural background. "Transcendence" is the word usually used. The trouble with the elite, with the smug, is that they cannot go there, will not go there, for there, they are out of control; there they are no longer the center; there they may fall on their knees or cry or recognize that everything they ever worked for, all the prestige and awards, are basically meaningless in the vastness.
In the older sacred art of the great religions, paintings and other art works were not signed. The genius or individuality or greatness of the artist was never the point, and they and everyone else knew it. People like Dyer - and, I'll admit, I am sometimes much like him (and thus the antipathy) - really do know this, and so, with all their smugness, will at times tie themselves onto the wrack of self-deprecation to say, "look at me! I, too, am only an infinite regression, a creature of my time and temperament and little more." But we are more. Not the heroic demi-gods of the Greeks, but beings involved no more nor less than anything else in the great mystery of the universe. Somewhere inside, we each have a grain, an inkling, of our affinity to this mystery, and it is there where we find great art - or so it is for me - with all sophistication and cleverness amounting only to cheap party favors. Which can, I admit, still be very entertaining. FK
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