Dyer's 'My Frst Time', in The Observer's new monthly technology glossy, 24 July 2005:
A choice had to be made and I opted for the high ground of literature - or at least the bit of it occupied by Conrad and the famous exhortation in Lord Jim: 'In the destructive element - immerse!' Specifically, I immersed myself in the immensely destructive element of Grand Theft Auto.
Set in San Andreas, a simulation of LA gangland, it looked more real than a lot of the other worlds I'd sampled. (Getaway: Black Monday takes places in a London that is both drearily familiar and, since no one wants to play a game that involves being stuck in traffic for days on end, implausibly deserted.) In Grand Theft Auto this homey, Carl, gets dumped in the middle of another gang's territory and has to make it back to his own hood through a gangsta rap city of drive-bys, whores, foul language and anthropologically interesting handshakes. [...]
One of the virtues of these games, though, is that they allow you to customise your experience, and so, after that initial orgy of violence, I abandoned all attempts to 'progress' or get back to the sanctuary of the hood (wherever that was). I preferred to go for a stroll through the city or for a spin on my bike.
The challenge, as I saw it, was to stay out of trouble and do nothing that diminished the enjoyment or threatened the safety of other people in this virtual world. Granted, I occasionally let off a little steam by wasting someone behaving in an anti-social manner (there is, surely, huge potential for a game called Yob Killer) but most of the time I just wandered through the infinite city, having a nice time and being a good citizen.
Once I discover how to do it, I bet it's even possible to find a tree on a hillside and sit there quietly, with my Rilke, reading the Duino Elegies.
More Geoff Dyer:
At the Port Eliot's literary festival in The Observer, 2005
My favourite moment at Port Eliot last year came after a walk through the woods, by the estuary. The tide was out, leaving a stretch of dark silt where, a few hours earlier, there had been a brimming river. On the far bank was a view of green fields and wheat or barley, or whatever that stuff is. It was one of those perfect afternoons - so rare that they're actually anomalous, even though one thinks of them as being quintessentially English. In the mud we noticed a figure walking, stumbling. It was like being taken in a time machine back to a crucial stage in evolution, as Man emerged from the primordial slime. We thought he was trying to cross the estuary, but he was zigzagging back and forth, leaving tracks in his wake. And then, just as he was making the final O, we all saw that his walking was not random, that he'd actually been writing the word HELLO in the mud. It wasn't just the ascent of man we were seeing: it was the dawn of language.
Interviewed at length by Robert Birnbaum, 2003
Writing for LA Weekly, 2000-4:
On the best photography books of 2003 in 'Revelations', 2004 (and on Sontag here)
On WG Sebald in 'Terrible Rain', 2003
On Michel Houellebecq’s Platform in 'French Ennui, Thai Sex and Three-Way', 2003
On Ryszard Kapuscinski in 'Among the Wretched', 2002
On Christopher Nolan's Memento in 'Something To Forget Me By', 2001
On having many books but no interest in reading them in 'Reader's Block', 2000
On a photo of a group on a Briston roof in Granta: 'On The Roof', 2003 (see also Colour of Memory and But Beautiful)
On the echo of history in a photo, The Observer, 1999
Toby Litt collects the parts of works that were cut for whatever reason. Here's a line cut from Paris Trance.
List of books, articles etc. ("Pros: writes exceptionally well... Cons: occasionally smug")
More rubbish (and ruin) in Dyer's The Search and Yoga
Perhaps Dyer would like this version of Mario, in which all you can do is have Mario go for a walk, in a world without architecture or enemies...
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/24/mario_without_archit.html
Posted by: rodcorp | July 25, 2005 at 11:02 AM