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Infinity to Dine
Infinity to Dine is a collection of essays. Each was drafted in response to an anonymous question, over the course of six years. Dying, addiction, reading, NASA, racism, love, despair and other subjects are woven together by one of the kindest and most erudite voices writing today.
- GenresNonfictionEssays
171 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 16, 2018
There are not many bloggers left in the old sense of the word. At some point in the last ten years it became clear that if you wanted to be taken seriously as a writer on the internet, you should probably want to get paid for it as well. So bloggers became freelancers, or they put books out; and if they didn't want to do those things, they mostly gave up.
Alongside the growth (and subsequent withering) of sites whose stock in trade was the attention of bored, well-educated people, the idea that one should write (or 'produce content') for no remuneration at all became rare, and in some cases actively objectionable. It wasn't so much that everyone stopped cultivating their own gardens; it was more that they started hawking tickets for them on every street corner. And that’s fine. In many respects, it’s entirely admirable. After all, apart from a few flourishing sectors of self-publishing, nobody has quite figured out how to make prose writing pay in any other way. At least the poets found Instagram.
I first started following lazenby's blog many years ago. Back then, it seemed like tumblr could become not just a collection of fancy lookbooks but a new haven for interesting bloggers. But that never quite happened. Nothing about the platform made it easy for good, odd, irregular writing to get attention. Everything favoured a constant stream of moderately interesting pictorial dross – as it still does on every other social media platform.
This book is composed of a series of short pieces that were originally written in reply to questions submitted anonymous to the blog. Some of them might be new. Some of them might have been edited again. I haven't checked. The answers the author provides are digressive but considered. They’re generous: warm-hearted, while maintaining a kind of mysterious distance. There is a sense of an old soul at work. He's unafraid of a generalisation where an aphorism suits the music of his method. He's also not afraid to be very funny.
Look: the writing here is extraordinary. Think of the good teachers you've had who could hold the attention of the class just by talking very casually about something you didn't quite know about. Perhaps you didn't understand why at the time, but they were telling you about things for reasons that went beyond ensuring you knew enough to get through school. The workings of the Fallopian tubes. The means for mining salt. The light of a candle, reflected from a panel of polished metal, as it is described in 'Middlemarch'. A story about a robot porter in a hospital. This writing is good teaching about these important things. I can't think of anything more admirable.
One final thing worth noting: the author is a rare example – maybe the only one I can think of – of a consistently brilliant online writer who has remained resolutely silent on the subject of his personal life outside writing. I only know his first name now because of his recent appearances on the (excellent) Relentless Picnic podcast. But those recordings also offer virtually nothing in the way of context. This slim volume bears no biographical information at all; no framing, no preface, no dedication except a mysterious pyramidal cascade of initials.
I used to think that it would be enough for a writer to put themselves out there online on the basis of their writing alone. I think history has proved me wrong on this one: a name in the right place opens as many doors on the internet as it ever did anywhere else. Yet I think there's something worthwhile in this absolute lack of concern for conventional biographical blurb. The best thing would be to encounter these essays without knowing where they came from; the internet facilitated that, and now it’s something anyone can experience.
Alongside the growth (and subsequent withering) of sites whose stock in trade was the attention of bored, well-educated people, the idea that one should write (or 'produce content') for no remuneration at all became rare, and in some cases actively objectionable. It wasn't so much that everyone stopped cultivating their own gardens; it was more that they started hawking tickets for them on every street corner. And that’s fine. In many respects, it’s entirely admirable. After all, apart from a few flourishing sectors of self-publishing, nobody has quite figured out how to make prose writing pay in any other way. At least the poets found Instagram.
I first started following lazenby's blog many years ago. Back then, it seemed like tumblr could become not just a collection of fancy lookbooks but a new haven for interesting bloggers. But that never quite happened. Nothing about the platform made it easy for good, odd, irregular writing to get attention. Everything favoured a constant stream of moderately interesting pictorial dross – as it still does on every other social media platform.
This book is composed of a series of short pieces that were originally written in reply to questions submitted anonymous to the blog. Some of them might be new. Some of them might have been edited again. I haven't checked. The answers the author provides are digressive but considered. They’re generous: warm-hearted, while maintaining a kind of mysterious distance. There is a sense of an old soul at work. He's unafraid of a generalisation where an aphorism suits the music of his method. He's also not afraid to be very funny.
Look: the writing here is extraordinary. Think of the good teachers you've had who could hold the attention of the class just by talking very casually about something you didn't quite know about. Perhaps you didn't understand why at the time, but they were telling you about things for reasons that went beyond ensuring you knew enough to get through school. The workings of the Fallopian tubes. The means for mining salt. The light of a candle, reflected from a panel of polished metal, as it is described in 'Middlemarch'. A story about a robot porter in a hospital. This writing is good teaching about these important things. I can't think of anything more admirable.
One final thing worth noting: the author is a rare example – maybe the only one I can think of – of a consistently brilliant online writer who has remained resolutely silent on the subject of his personal life outside writing. I only know his first name now because of his recent appearances on the (excellent) Relentless Picnic podcast. But those recordings also offer virtually nothing in the way of context. This slim volume bears no biographical information at all; no framing, no preface, no dedication except a mysterious pyramidal cascade of initials.
I used to think that it would be enough for a writer to put themselves out there online on the basis of their writing alone. I think history has proved me wrong on this one: a name in the right place opens as many doors on the internet as it ever did anywhere else. Yet I think there's something worthwhile in this absolute lack of concern for conventional biographical blurb. The best thing would be to encounter these essays without knowing where they came from; the internet facilitated that, and now it’s something anyone can experience.
April 20, 2018
I loved this book so much I published it.
March 29, 2020
"But nobody thinks of an orchard in winter when eating a pear in June."
If you feel lost in the repetitive pattern of your own mind, read this, feel warm and look at things in a different way.
If you feel lost in the repetitive pattern of your own mind, read this, feel warm and look at things in a different way.
September 7, 2020
One of the heavier books on the shelf, despite its size. A good sparring companion.
October 28, 2018
I forced myself through the entire final chapter and it was worth it for the one sick burn contained in its midst.
November 12, 2017
"NASA needed astronauts to plant a flag on the Moon."
February 6, 2018
It's the best book of 2017 for me, and one of the best. This is one to keep close and study at different points in your life.
Lazenby (lazenby.tumblr.com) writes in a highly metaphorical style that's rare these days. His writing is tight and to the point, and while the path isn't always direct it is always insightful and educational. For me, it challenges my response to modern inequity and power and society and culture, which is always first anger, then sadness laced with anger, and replaces it with reflection. I like to think of it as a reflection of the practice of Stoicism, even though I don't think the author would agree, and he would know more.
Lazenby's my favorite living author and when I wrote him a year or so ago and threatened to make a book out of his writing, he said very little. When this came out I was overjoyed. I just hope more and more eyes get to see his work.
Lazenby (lazenby.tumblr.com) writes in a highly metaphorical style that's rare these days. His writing is tight and to the point, and while the path isn't always direct it is always insightful and educational. For me, it challenges my response to modern inequity and power and society and culture, which is always first anger, then sadness laced with anger, and replaces it with reflection. I like to think of it as a reflection of the practice of Stoicism, even though I don't think the author would agree, and he would know more.
Lazenby's my favorite living author and when I wrote him a year or so ago and threatened to make a book out of his writing, he said very little. When this came out I was overjoyed. I just hope more and more eyes get to see his work.
August 28, 2022
Thought provoking essays. I enjoy how the answers to questions come from oblique angles but reconnect to the query in a way that broadens horizons, offering not simply an answer to a question but an alternative perspective from where more comprehension contemplation can occur.
April 23, 2019
Indispensable.
January 3, 2021
It’s hard to say that I’ve completed this book, since I feel like I’ll be constantly picking it up and re-reading passages from it. These essays will be a companion throughout the rest of my life.
January 30, 2023
some very beautiful lines sometimes very tedious stories (just get to The Point you’re making!!!) self-help for the w existentially inclined……….,..
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October 11, 2023not sure how I feel about this/how to rate this, so I'm not going to
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews