Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It

From Barnes & Noble

This oddly titled travel memoir is the work of an equally offbeat world traveler. Seemingly most at home during the first few days in a new place, whether it's Southeast Asia or South Beach Miami, Geoff Dyer has no pretensions or expectations -- he's just a wanderer with a backpack, a pen, and a wicked sense of humor. His quirky yarns about exotic rave scenes, plenty of drugs, and good old-fashioned navel-gazing are a welcome respite from a typical sightseer's journal. Peppering his global crisscrossing with impressive literary allusions, Dyer is a writer for those who possess a working knowledge of the classics and at least one tattoo.

The New Yorker

If Dyer weren't so prolific, it would be tempting to crown him Slacker Laureate. A restless polymath and an irresistibly funny storyteller, he is adept at fiction, essay, and reportage, but happiest when twisting all three into something entirely his own. His latest autobiographical misadventures form an indolent anti-pilgrimage through "places where I stayed and things that have stayed with me." Intending to write a book on the concept of antiquity, he gets stoned and hangs out a lot, occasionally despairing as the ruins he wanders among -- in Rome, Libya, Cambodia, and Detroit -- seem to mirror the wreckage of his own life. While Dyer comically exaggerates his ineptitude by invoking the insights of Rilke, Auden, Nietzsche, Borges, and Frank O'Hara, the very extent to which their views have informed his suggests that this globetrotter's true home is in literature itself.

Publishers Weekly

Dyer's ninth book (Out of Sheer Rage; Paris Trance), a collection of 11 personal essays covering his travels around the globe, begins in New Orleans when Dyer is in his late 20s and concludes in the Nevada desert some 20 years later. In between he touches ground in destinations such as Bali and Amsterdam, usually seeking a "peak experience." More often than not, he is disappointed in his quest, but makes engaging stories of many aimless walks, such as wandering stoned through Amsterdam in search of a lost hotel, touring the ruined Roman city of Leptis Magna, or stumbling upon a suicide on South Beach. Even more intriguing than the far-flung locales he describes-such as Cambodia, Libya and Thailand-are the seemingly pedestrian ones he makes exotic. His essay "The Rain Inside," on experiencing a near emotional breakdown at a techno music festival in Detroit, is a masterpiece, equal parts introspection and cutting observation. Though the moments and perceptions he records are fleeting, Dyer deliberately provides touchstones-repeat references to Auden; the durability of his Teva sandals-that mark a path through the book. Fittingly, it's only when he finds himself in the metaphorical nowhere of the TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) at the Burning Man Festival, that this postmodern pilgrim finally finds his place in the world. This original book from a genuine writer-a modern Montaigne-should provide serious readers with a lasting high. (Jan.) Forecast: Though Dyer continues to gain critical accolades, his books are hard to classify and may confuse browsers. Prominent placement in stores and hand selling could help the book find its audience and boost sales. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Despite its title, this isn't a book about Indian religious practices but rather a collection of ten witty and perceptive travel essays spanning about 20 years of the author's life. A British novelist, essayist, and world traveler, Dyer (But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz) has had plenty of adventures-in Libya, Cambodia, Holland, New Orleans, France, and more. He describes places and situations very well, but he's at his best when depicting people in all their eccentric and whimsical individuality. He portrays himself just as candidly, talking about his sexual affairs, overindulgence in drugs and alcohol, and generally scruffy lifestyle and the feelings of worthlessness and helplessness that he experiences rather frequently as a result. Dyer deals with the usual greedy border guards, lazy bureaucrats, street hustlers, and pickpockets. But after all, these are people, too, and Dyer characterizes them just as humorously as others. Highly entertaining and full of interesting details, especially about the author himself, this collection will appeal to many readers and is recommended for all libraries.-James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In a neat bit of legerdemain, a British literary critic and novelist concocts an existential memoir from a fabric of sideways glances and moments out of time.

There are times, many times, when Dyer (Paris Trance, 1999, etc.) approaches "a kind of parable, one without any lesson or moral, a parable from which it would be impossible to learn anything or draw any conclusions," when you have to hold it obliquely and read it askance, finding its importance in the marginalia, all that glitters on the verge. And you have to be quick about it, because he keeps on the move: Detroit to Cambodia, New Orleans to Paris, Amsterdam, and Rome. He is adrift, distracted, agitated: "As soon as I had sat down, I would think, I'll stand up, and then, as soon as I had stood up, I would want to sit down." In counterpoint to Frank O’Hara, he would work along the lines of " ‘I did not do this and I did not do that,’ but predictably, I did not do this." He just wanted to get in the car and drive, but "the only place I really wanted to go was Rome, and I was there already." But for all the who’s-on-first rigmarole, the plaints of loss and decline, grousing about "the roller-coaster emotions of travel, its surges of exaltation, its troughs of despondency," Dyer is remarkably active and observant, his attentiveness aided more than once by helpings of mushrooms or marijuana. For all his professed loneliness, he spends plenty of time with women and friends, in amusement and openness, whether it be trying to calm a date who gets royally spooked by the power of his "skunk," or the clarity enjoyed in Amsterdam when he "unblocked all sorts of cafe chakras and was experiencing a sense of absolute calm"--or watchingBurning Man, engulfed in flames, buckle at the knee, as if "to step free of the fire that defined and claimed him."

While Dyer may feel he is swimming in custard, his descriptions of his days afloat in foreign landscapes are a compression of jolts that will stir his audience, elementally and disturbingly.