Otherwise known as the human condition : selected essays and reviews, 1989-2010 /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Dyer, Geoff.
Imprint:Minneapolis, Minn. : Graywolf Press, c2011.
Description:xii, 420 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Language:English
Subject:
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/8397325
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ISBN:1555975798 (pbk.)
9781555975791 (pbk.)
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (p. 417-420).
Summary:A volume of nonfiction writings and essays by the National Book Critics Circle finalist draws on twenty-five years of work and includes pieces that reflect on subjects ranging from jazz and the British-dole queue to haute couture and hotel sex.
Description
Summary:

*Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism*
*A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice*
*A New York Times Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year, as selected by Dwight Garner*

Geoff Dyer has earned the devotion of passionate fans on both sides of the Atlantic through his wildly inventive, romantic novels as well as several brilliant, uncategorizable works of nonfiction. All the while he has been writing some of the wittiest, most incisive criticism we have on an astonishing array of subjects--music, literature, photography, and travel journalism--that, in Dyer's expert hands, becomes a kind of irresistible self-reportage.

Otherwise Known as the Human Condition collects twenty-five years of essays, reviews, and misadventures. Here he is pursuing the shadow of Camus in Algeria and remembering life on the dole in Brixton in the 1980s; reflecting on Richard Avedon and Ruth Orkin, on the status of jazz and the wonderous Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, on the sculptor ZadKine and the saxophonist David Murray (in the same essay), on his heroes Rebecca West and Ryszard KapusĀ“cinĀ“ski, on haute couture and sex in hotels. Whatever he writes about, his responses never fail to surprise. For Dyer there is no division between the reflective work of the critic and the novelist's commitment to lived experience: they are mutually illuminating ways to sharpen our perceptions. His is the rare body of work that manages to both frame our world and enlarge it.

Physical Description:xii, 420 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (p. 417-420).
ISBN:1555975798
9781555975791