{"id":647,"date":"2011-01-27T14:56:41","date_gmt":"2011-01-27T14:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15bytes12\/2011\/01\/27\/geoff-dyer-and-utah\/"},"modified":"2016-03-30T21:35:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T03:35:26","slug":"geoff-dyer-and-utah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/geoff-dyer-and-utah\/","title":{"rendered":"Geoff Dyer and Utah"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Magnificent Days:
\nGeoff Dyer makes Utah a habit<\/p>\n

On January 14, British author Geoff Dyer went public with the story of his obsession for vacationing in Utah. He did so in the Financial Times<\/a>, a London newspaper read by people who live in the world\u2019s most expensive city, where they probably pay more for their daily accommodations than we pay for our vacations. His generosity is of the most useful sort: no matter how dubious one may feel about filling up our vast scenic spaces with the homes of immigrants, the money spent by tourists is the one universally accepted argument for preserving the vistas they come to see. But who is Geoff Dyer, and why should we care what an Englishman is telling his countrymen about us?<\/p>\n

To call Dyer an \u201cauthor\u201d is to take the easy way out. Like many of today\u2019s writers, his techniques vary, rather like a painter who also makes videos or a lawyer who grows gourmet potatoes for local restaurants. He has written four novels, including last year\u2019s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, <\/em>part of which is set at the Venice Biennale, but his other books are harder to categorize.Booksellers generally put a book in whatever section of their stock the publisher dictates, but even Dyer\u2019s publishers aren\u2019t sure what to call some of his work. Imagine, on the basis of their titles, trying to decide what kind of book is called The Color of Memory<\/em>, But Beautiful<\/em>, or Out of Sheer Rage<\/em>. A man comes into a bookstore and asks for \u201cyour non-fiction section.\u201d The young lady at the counter points to a few paltry shelves. \u201cThose,\u201d she says, \u201care novels. Everything else,\u201d she continues, waving at the vast shelves and tables piled high with tomes of every size and color, \u201care non-fiction.\u201d Can you call a book about a religion you consider a joke \u201cnon-fiction.\u201d And what about jokes, which strictly speaking are never true: fiction or non\u2013? When we have the answers, we might be ready to tackle Dyer\u2019s most memorable title: Yoga For People Who Can\u2019t Be Bothered To Do It<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Some Utahans will be offended by the assertions Dyer starts from. He begins five years ago, at the point when he and his wife were on the verge of giving up the splendor of what had become their favorite destination: Utah landscapes. Magnificent days, yes, but not magnificent enough to compensate for evenings spent in dreary motels, eating food prepared for, and often by, folks for whom it\u2019s still considered little more than fuel. But that\u2019s not a criticism of how residents live. It\u2019s not an accusation: it\u2019s an honest admission that many places lack any alternative\u2014something for someone who wants to eat a meal that complements appetite the way sunset at Delicate Arch complements vision.<\/p>\n

The Financial Time<\/em> piece tells the story of how they solved this dilemma. Dyer offers plenty of proof that he isn\u2019t just spinning off advertising copy. Phrases like \u201csheer scale,\u201d \u201ca new topographical category of the sublime,\u201d and \u201cterrain that, until recently, basked in the confident belief it would only ever be traversed by foot or paw\u201d lead to encounters with Secret Canyon and Arches. At one point he promises two hikes and, in case that sounds inadequate, reminds us that nothing here is so feckless as to happen the same way twice:<\/p>\n

Two doesn\u2019t sound like much but bear in mind the way that the changing light and weather mean that the colours are all the time flaring up, fading, glowing and shifting, and it\u2019s unlikely you could ever be sated or bored. Everyone wants to see the Northern Lights but the western lights are hard to beat. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen so many colours as on the Hoodoo Trail, at sunrise and sunset. There was sky in every direction and every way you looked it was doing something different: pink and pretty one way, pandemonium in another, a dark slab of cloud overhead, and a blue haze everywhere else. Incredibly, the moon \u2013 last seen the night before in the east \u2013 was only now coming to the end of its shift, emerging from a bank of clouds, sinking like a silver sun in the west while the real sun was clearing the mountains in the east.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is more to Utah than the Redrock Country, and there is more to Geoff Dyer than travel writing. We\u2019ll hopefully be taking a closer look at this Utah enthusiast in the future. For now, those whose feelings for the land we call ours do not include a reflexive rejection of the opinions of an admitted outsider can check out the rest of what he has to say here<\/a>.
\n
\nMore Dyer:<\/strong>
\n<\/em>Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, Geoff Dyer’s newest collection of essays and reviews – mostly on literature – will be published on March 29 by Graywolf Press.<\/em><\/p>\n

The visual art-minded might check out Dyer’s 2005 <\/em>The Ongoing Moment, Dyer’s unique look at the history of photography published by Pantheon, or his 2010 collection of cultural essays <\/em>Working the Room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Magnificent Days: Geoff Dyer makes Utah a habit On January 14, British author Geoff Dyer went public with the story of his obsession for vacationing in Utah. He did so in the Financial Times, a London newspaper read by people who live in the world\u2019s most expensive city, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":12063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Geoff-Dyer-AUTHOR1_823073c.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 19:21:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32940,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/32940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}