Working the Room: Essays and Reviews, 1999-2010

by Geoff Dyer

Alive with insight, delight and Dyer's characteristic irreverence, this book offers a guide through the maze of modern culture. Across ten years worth of essays, 'Working the Room' spans the photography of Martin Parr to the paintings of Turner, and the writing of Scott-Fitzgerald to the criticism of Susan Sontag.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Criticism, London, Cultural, British Literature, Photography

416 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham, England, in 1958. He was educated at the local Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is the author of four novels: Paris Trance, The Search, The Colour of Memory, and, most recently, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi; a critical study of John Berger, Ways of Telling; five genre-defying titles: But Beautiful (winner of a 1992 Somerset Maugham Prize, short-listed for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize), The Missing of the Somme, Out of Sheer Rage (a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award), Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It (winner of the 2004 W. H. Smith Best Travel Book Award), and The Ongoing Moment (winner of the ICP Infinity Award for Writing on Photography), and Zona (about Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker). His collection of essays, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012. He is also the editor of John Berger: Selected Essays and co-editor, with Margaret Sartor, of What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney. A new book, Another Great Day at Sea, about life aboard the USS George H W Bush has just been published by Pantheon.
In 2003 he was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship; in 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; in 2006 he received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2009 he was the recipient of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Best Comic Novel and the GQ Writer of the Year Award (for Jeff in Venice Death in Varanasi). His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. His website is geoffdyer.com

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a bit torn about this book since I just read Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews which shares over 300 pages of content with this volume arranged in nearly the same way.

If I were picking one to read, I'd go with Otherwise Known as the Human Condition since it contains a few essays I really liked that this one does not.

However, Working the Room has two advantages:

1. It has 8 color plates which are much better than the black and white reproductions in the other book, although the plates are oddly placed far beyond the essays on visuals.

2. It has an index which I'm nearly certain the other book does not.

My favorite essays from Working the Room (also in the other book) are: "John Cheever's The Journals" which ends with a great quote about writing, his observations during fashion week while on assignment from Vogue while knowing nothing about couture in "Fabulous Clothes," and his experience of "The 2004 Olympics" which reminded me so much of my own. Also his personal essays, "Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (with particular reference to Doughnut Plant doughnuts)" and "Of Course."

The best scenario is your library has both books, so you can look at the plates in this one while reading the essays in the other.

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, it's sort of cheating to mark it as read since I reckon I skipped a full half of it, but still. I hated the start, found slim pickings in the middle and really rather dug the end, autobiographical section. Even though at times, his disarming honesty about his own flaws conversely got my hackles up. But he is a kind of charming writer, especially when you feel he's writing freely. But I don't share his tastes in photography - or is that a backwards way of saying I don't think he's very insightful on it - and many of the literary review pieces struck me as slight. Martin Amis has ruined me for all others in this area. And his essay on being an only child terrified me. But then he can explain the weighty ennui of trudging up the same road every day in such a way that I grew to like him again. I did not imagine I'd come away from this collection feeling more ready to read one of his novels than, say, Out Of Sheer Rage, but there you are, I have done.

[Hettie Ashwin]

this volume started slow with chapter after chapter on photography and the critique of said pictures. While slightly interested in photography I couldn't wait to get to the opinion pages. Essays that really make you think, question, and laugh.
Geoff Dyer has the knack of writing in the everyday language that we all use and as his life has been one fast ride from the start, I found his personal, biographical essays the most interesting ones to read. It is a pity they are at the back.
I would have read back to front if I had known.

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection by a writer I have decided I will read more of. I agreed with so many of his opinions that I trust his judgement and will endeavour to check out those enthusiams he describes that I hadn't yet encountered.

[Katia N · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Geoff Dyer, but i think it is the case when the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

[Maksim Karpitski]

Working the Room is a collection of very bland essays where Geoff Dyer has nothing much to say about pretty much anything. All of this becomes tiresome very quickly, with the sentimentalism, pointless references and quotations that are meant not to provide insight but rather to embellish the uninspired prose (the most frequent guest star is Philip Larkin, and I hope he is ashamed wherever he is or isn't these days). This kind of journalism is narcissistic abomination and shouldn't exist.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a few revelations and interesting tidbits about various important figures from history but the stories were not so very absorbing for my own leisure reading. I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning about the champions of early photography, artwork and culture in general.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like essays and these are short and nice to read. I like learning new stuff and learning about photography was fun. Sort of boring as tho

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. I generally really like Geoff Dyer’s prose and some of his commentary here is very insightful and though-provoking, although this is my least favourite of his books that I’ve read so far; perhaps rather one to dip into occasionally.

[John Humber · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a two/half star for me. Generally I like books of collected essays such as this, mainly because I can read them when I have half an hour or so and they have plenty of convenient places to put them down and get on with something else.

Parts of this book I liked and other parts were ok. My one abiding memory, because it was so familiar for me, from On Being an Only Child is the following;

Many times when I asked my dad if I could have something that had taken my eye in a shop, he responded by saying "You don't want that". To which I wanted to reply, "But I do". . . (I now wonder if my father was unconsciously using 'want' in the archaic sense of 'lack', a distinction capitalism has since pledged most of its energies to rendering obsolete).

Spot on Geoff.

[Godzilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked up on a whim, another buy two get a discount find.

It is a mixture of reviews of artists, music and other ephemera, with later chapters devoted to essays on life and experiences.

As with any work of this nature, it's going to be hit and miss, and that was certainly the case for me. In some instances it felt like style over substance, but there were a few artists who intrigued me enough to explore further.

The autobiographical elements worked much better for me, in particular the essay on being an only child, which struck so many chords with me that I felt a complete harmony with the words.

[Vishvapani · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy Dyer's writing, especially on literature, and the I came away from this collection infected by his enthusiasm for so many authors, photographers etc. He writes simply and personally with very little affectation or effort to impress with his cleverness. After a while the book started to pall - maybe the effect of too much journalism, or too much of the same voice without quite enough depth to be truly satisfying.

[Colin N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays by the ever-interesting and eclectic Dyer. The strongest essays here are on the photographers and the more personal essays at the end. But some of the book reviews and jazz essays are quite good as well. At the very least he provides introductions to many artists I will now try to track down. Intelligent, funny, witty analysis.

[Ade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent on photography and music, very good on more personal topics, less so on literature but that's probably because I've read (and am likely to read) hardly any of the authors he covers. The last part does start to sound a bit "Woo, I got laid plenty and took loads of drugs in my youth, suck on that!" but Dyer overcomes this by remaining eminently readable all the same.

[Eric Randolph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing for others brings out a more direct honesty and greater erudition in Dyer, stripping away some of the cynicism and fictional flourishes of his semi-autobiographical books (that always felt like a bit of a pose), although the obsession with the nonconformist lifestyle of the itinerant writer often lets off a smug - even if justified - fart of self-satisfaction.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

He's just the best = provocative, insightful, annoying, clever and such a reader and listener and viewer - I absolutely adore him and have to re-read But Beautiful which is still my fav of his books (though Jeff in Venice is right up there!)

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[Justin Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apart from his fiction, I have enjoyed everything I've read from Dyer. He is lucid, funny and you learn from him. One of my favs

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading books like this just reminds me of how much I really enjoy tucking into a collection of essays, especially ones as diverse and well written as this. Amongst my favourites here were the intense “Ryszard Kapuscinski’s African Life” and the confessional “Sacked”, "On The Roof" and “On Being An Only Child”.

All in Dyer seems to pull off a lovely balance between informed art critic/bibliophile and all round good bloke, you could sit down the pub with and get lost in meaty, rambling chats about almost anything. He writes with intimacy, sensitivity and honesty but also with humour, insight and intelligence covering a whole number of engaging subjects in a number of refreshing ways. I didn’t enjoy all of them but even when reading about subjects I wouldn’t normally read I still felt like I discovered something new or interesting. I also came away from this collection with a long list of photographers and writers (many I had never heard of before) to check out in the future.

[dv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Geoff Dyer is always a pleasure and a source of inspiration. And here what's especially remarkable is that he's not just a master when writing about the culture realm (music, art, photography, literature), but can also be very deep and touching - and as always very ironical - when talking about himself (see especially the essays On Being an Only Child, Sacked, On the Roof, Something didn't happen, Of course).