Geoff Dyer (born 1958)[1] is an English author. He has written a number of novels and non-fiction books, some of which have won literary awards.
Early life and education
Dyer was born and raised in
Cheltenham, England, as the only child of a
sheet metal worker father and a
school dinner lady mother.[2] He was educated at the local grammar school and won a scholarship to study English at
Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After graduating from Oxford, he claimed unemployment benefits, and moved into a property in
Brixton with other former Oxford students. He credits this period with teaching him the craft of writing.[3]
Writing career
His debut novel, The Colour of Memory, is set in Brixton in the 1980s, the decade that Dyer lived there. The novel has been described as a "fictionalization of Dyer's 20s".[4]
Dyer is the author of the following novels: The Colour of Memory;The Search;Paris Trance; and Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. He wrote a critical study of
John Berger – Ways of Telling – and two collections of essays: Anglo-English Attitudes and Working the Room. A selection of essays from these collections entitled Otherwise Known as the Human Condition was published in the U.S. in April 2011 and won the
National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Dyer has written the following genre-defying titles: But Beautiful (on jazz); The Missing of the Somme (on the memorialization of the First World War); Out of Sheer Rage (about
D. H. Lawrence); Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It;The Ongoing Moment (on photography); Zona (about
Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker); and Broadsword Calling Danny Boy (about
Brian G. Hutton's 1968 film Where Eagles Dare). In 2019, Out of Sheer Rage was listed by
Slate as one of the 50 greatest nonfiction works of the past 25 years.[5] He is the editor of John Berger: Selected Essays and co-editor, with Margaret Sartor, of What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney.
His book Another Great Day at Sea (2014) chronicles Dyer's experiences on the
USS George H.W. Bush, where he was writer-in-residence for two weeks. It has been described by
David Finkel as
"what we've all come to expect from Geoff Dyer—another great book. I loved everything about it. It's brilliantly observed, beautifully written, incisive, funny, and filled with stirring truths about life and the value of service."
"Geoff Dyer has managed to do again what he does best: insert himself into an exotic and demanding environment (sometimes, his own flat, but here, the violent wonders of an aircraft carrier) and file a report that mixes empathetic appreciation with dips into brilliant comic deflation. Welcome aboard the edifying and sometimes hilarious ship Dyer."
Dyer was made a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature in 2005.[6] In 2014 he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Dyer is married to
Rebecca Wilson, chief curator at
Saatchi Art, Los Angeles. He currently lives in
Venice, California.[8] In March 2014, Dyer said he had had a minor stroke earlier in the year, shortly after moving to live in Venice.[9]