Book Review: Impact Free Living According to Geoff Dyer

At the end of each year, I scan all of the lists of the best books published in the past twelve months.  This year, I immediately checked out a book that appeared on several lists.  This is what the Economist said in its blurb:  "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. By Geoff Byer.  Pantheon; 304 pages; $24. . . Mr. Dyer is one of the most interesting young English writers.  Every Dyer novel seems to end in a moment of ecstatic transformation.  This time, though, there is darkness visible.  His fourth novel, this is by far his best." 

The book is constructed around two seemingly disparate narratives and there is no obvious transition between them.   First, there is Jeff in Venice.  A writer, Jeff Atman, is sent by his publisher to cover the Venice Biennale art exhibition.  The Biennale becomes the background for Jeff's mostly non-artistic interests:  desire, sex (if you are squeamish about extremely detailed descriptions of sex you may not want to read this), drinking, drugs, food, fun   . . . . . . I imagine Atman as a slightly Woody Allen-esque neurotic art critic who suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder. 

The characters in Jeff in Venice all seem "very now" in their trendiness, irony, lack of deep-seated ethics. In one memorable statement, Atman remarks that "it's possible to be a hundred percent sincere and a hundred percent ironic at the same time." 

There are hints at depth and more than surface at almost all corners:  Jeff in Venice recalls the great Thomas Mann novel  Death in Venice.  His surname "Atman" is the name of the Hindu Brahman who is regarded as the Universal Soul .  . . a lower-case "atman" is the essence of an individual.  In the reflective light of Venice everything is constantly shifting and changing.  Nothing is as it seems.  This includes Jeff who is yearning for some kind of transcendance in the disorganized frenzy and aimlessness of his life.  This yearning takes him astray early on as he dies his salt and peppered hair before the Biennale.

Just at the moment when Jeff bids farewell to the woman he has been sleeping with during the exhibition, the narrative concludes.  What now?  Will he see her again?  No answers.  We are now in Varanasi, the great Hindu pilgrimage city formerly known as Benares, on the Ganges.  And someone is talking to us.  Is it Atman?  Maybe but we cannot be certain it is him and the text does not reveal this protagonist's identity.

Here in the epitome of otherness (to Westerners) he immerses himself in visiting Hindu temples, funeral pyres on the Ganges, transacting with the poor Indian masses, deciphering holy men and fake holy men, relating to and looking at other Western tourists.  Slowly Varanasi assumes a grip on him that he cannot shake.  He doesn't quite understand this grip.  But he literally ingests it with a little water in his mouth from the Ganges.  And from that moment forward he disintegrates, going native in dress and mysterious thought.

At least, that is what we might think.  His (Atman's?) reconfiguration and dazzling death at the end is a release of himself into a bigger Reality.  As in Venice, the reflection on the water, the importance of the water, makes what seems to be real only ephemeral.  And this includes the protagonist's own life.

What is going on in these two separate but related stories?  I read them as a narrative of the loss of ego.  In the Venice story, Jeff Atman loses himself, his dreams, his ideas through Venice itself and in sex and drugs.  In the Varanasi story, the protagonist loses himself in Varanasi itself and in the addictive connection to the water, the rites, the buildings and to something mysteriously bigger, overarching.

To the right:  British novelist, Geoff Dyer

One of the key passages in the Varanasi section is a key to this idea:  "For a few days we were joined by Sayoko, a young Japanese woman.  She was eating dinner at a table on her own and Darrell asked if she wanted to join us.  She spoke very little english and so, when she had sat down at our table, he began speaking to her in Japanese--which, even by his standards, was pretty cool.  Sayoko and I couldn't say much to each other, but she was easy to be around.  Her way of being in the world was unlike anyone else's I had encountered.  Having worked in London, in journalism, often interviewing artists, I had pretty well accepted that the sole point of existence--especially for artists, but among journalists too--was to make a mark, a splash, to draw attention to oneself.  Sayoko was the opposite.  She moved through the world as though the idea was to have a minimum impact on it.  Like a skilful driver, she negotiated her passage through things without collisions or near misses.  In the context of Varanasi the comparison made no sense, but to be in her company was to be reminded of how relaxing it was not to be honking your own horn and constantly expecting a crash, not to have your attention strained to the breaking point. . ." (p.p 235-236).

In Venice everyone was honking their own horns and the ancient city would long outlast them.  In Varanasi people were constantly bouncing off of each other in close proximity.  But the city and the water of the Ganges would long outlast them.  And some persons, Sayoko included, glide  and navigate through these realities not impacting them unduly.  At the end of the Varanasi story and at the end of the book, the protagonist or Atman navigate away from it all to some other shore.  Optimistic?  Pessimistic?  Hopeful?  Hopeless? Meaningful?  Meaningless?  Dyer leaves those conclusions to his readers.

I can't get this book out of my mind.  Now I am looking forward to the second reading.