The No1 Ethical retailer for Books, CD’s, DVD’s & Games
30 Day Refund Guarantee

Working the Room: Essays

Working the Room: Essays

by Geoff Dyer (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2010

    $5.37
Synopsis

Alive with insight, delight and Dyer's characteristic irreverence, this book offers a guide around the cultural maze, mapping a route through the worlds of literature, art, photography, music. Across ten years' worth of essays, Working the Room spans the photography of Martin Parr and the paintings of Turner, the writing of Scott Fitzgerald and the criticism of Susan Sontag, and includes extensive personal pieces - 'On Being an Only Child', 'Sacked' and 'Reader's Block' among many others. Dyer's breadth of vision and generosity of spirit combine to form a manual for ways of being in - and seeing - the world today.

$5.37

Save:$19.43 (78%)

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 358
 Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
Published: 04 Nov 2010
ISBN 10: 1847678629
ISBN 13: 9781847678621
Book Overview: A brilliant, wide-ranging collection of essays and journalism from the prize-winning author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

Media Reviews
A writer who resists categorization . . . His work is illusory yet real, funny but serious. * * GQ * *
Shrewd, funny, original . . . very good company on the page. -- Andrew Motion * * Guardian * *
Dyer is a witty and concise observer of landscapes: social, geographical and emotional . . . His eccentric charm and barbed perceptiveness will hook you to the end. * * The Times * *
One of my favourite of all contemporary writers. I love his sense of the absurd, his pessimism mixed with robust good cheer, his beautifully crafted sentences, his jokes and his intelligence. -- Alain de Botton
Geoff Dyer is a true original - one of those rare voices in contemporary literature that never ceases to surprise, disturb and delight. Risky, breathtakingly candid, intellectual, cool, outrageous, laconic and sometimes shocking, Geoff Dyer is a must-read for our confused and perplexing times. * * William Boyd * *
A national treasure -- Zadie Smith
If i imagine Dyer's authorial voice thrown into my inner ear, it sounds calm and supremely well-mannered. In part this is what makes him such a good comic writer - his deadpan is effortless, he never corpses . . . I had no difficulty in lapping up page after paragraph of this fare; Dyer writes engagingly on everything from his love of doughnuts to his sequested working class childhood in Swindon, and so i found myself sitting up later than intended, keeping up a mantra of agreement - um, yes, i suppose so - punctuated by the occasional bray of laughter. -- Will Self * * Financial Times Life and Arts * *
Covering everything from war movies and D H Lawrence to Richard Avedon's photography and Paris fashion week. Witty persuasive Dyer shines most when he is in the picture. -- Boyd Tonkin * * Independent * *
Is what Dyer does great? I could read his non-fiction all day. There's a danger that we underestimate him given the approachability of his prose. His language isn't matey but it hits a relaxed, intimate note, a directness that never lapses into the demotic. He appears casual, louche even - yet Dyer's thoughts never are. -- Colin Waters * * Sunday Herald * *
Dyer has long been the most productive of slackers. -- Tim Adams * * Observer * *
Though it's taken us an embarrassingly long time to get around to realising it, we now agree with the rest of the literary establishment in considering Geoff Dyer to be one of the cleverest and funniest British writers currently drawing breath . . . Dyer's new book (which you should also buy) is a supremely good collection of many vibrant, witty and dead brainy essays he's penned over the last decade on subects as varied as John Cheevers Journals, Paris couture shows and shagging in luxury hotels. * * Dazed & Confused * *
A veritable feast for the curious and creatively inclined. * * Good Book Guide * *
A superlative writer smudging the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, Dyer is a treasure -- Colin Waters * * Sunday Herald * *
delve into all aspects of culture and the arts. Dyer's musings provide an intensely personal view of the world * * The Times * *
very funny * * The Sunday Telegraph * *
burrowing into a subject like a worm in an apple -- Victoria Segal * * The Guardian * *
it's hard not to join him in his wonder -- Victoria Segal * * The Guardian * *
A superlative writer smudging the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, Dyer is a treasure * * Sunday Herald * *
Author Bio
Geoff Dyer is the author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi and three previous novels, as well as seven other non-fiction books. Dyer has won the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, a National Book Critic's Circle Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the International Circle of Photography's 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' E. M. Forster Award. In 2009 he was given GQ's 'Writer of the Year' Award. He lives in London.