Customer Reviews

Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It

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I love Geoff Dyer, but this is not his best book. Consisting of stories that take place around the globe and which may or may not have happened or may not have happened quite as presented(the "genre-bending" the publishers are pushing, but anyone whose read autobiographical material... Spalding Gray, Bertrand Russell is aware of the may (not) have happened factor), the stories are Dyer's trademark style and sense of humor unevenly applied. Some of the stories ("Miss Cambodia") are simply excellent. Others are good stories peppered with far too much name checking of other authors ("Leptis Magna") and still others ("The Infinite Edge") are just simply mired in pretentious navel-gazing.

To take the latter, the author is in South-east Asia, but aside from the fact that it's ever-so-green (the first thing anyone notices about the region), there is nothing remotely remarkable about the setting. It is as though Dyer hopped half way around the world to hang around with Western backpackers (which is, I suppose, what all backpackers do, but I digress). Then, to top it off, he (rather, a character) quotes Rilke! So narrator-Geoff has traveled to the ends of the earth to quote Western authors with European backpackers? Ech. It's why people shudder at tourists. Even in "Miss Cambodia," narrator-Geoff admits that he can't distinguish between one temple and the next, but from all the Western quotes sprinkled throughout it becomes apparent that narrator-Geoff has no way to relate to his exotic settings because he knows nothing about them. He only knows a corpus of Occidental thought, DWEM's if you will.

One of the things that made "Out of Sheer Rage" so good was that every location imparted some meaning to narrator-Geoff, every event had an impact central to an intellectual development. Too often in "Yoga" the settings have no meaning whatsoever because they have no purpose for the narrator.

Having gotten my complaints out, I must say that many of the stories had me laughing out loud. The humor is quite self-deprecating in a very un-Bill Bryson way (thank goodness). "Leptis Magna" may lose its momentum navel gazing, but anyone who has ever travelled to a North African country can relate to the author's predicaments and culture barriers.

In short, it's worth reading after you've completed Dyer's better work. Just don't expect to have your Tevas knocked off.

If the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a travel memoir, perhaps he would have written "Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It." Geoff Dyer's search for meaning and genuine happiness - a journey that takes him around the world - is loaded with laughs and numerous meditations expounding on pithy quotes by luminaries such as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the poet W.H. Auden.

He bungles through New Orleans, Paris, Rome, other exotic destinations and not so beautiful places like Detroit in a stoned Woody Allenesque manner. He beautifully captures the moment of a place and its scene in a clear voice. In Amsterdam he's caught in a downpour after ingesting mushrooms and goes to a nearby café to change. "In the cramped confines of the toilet I had trouble getting out of my wet trousers, which clung to my legs like a drowning man."

Despite excessive self-absorption at times, the book still works on many different levels. Reading this quirky meditation one really gets a three for one deal as travel, philosophy and comedy all take their respective well-deserved bows. But the common thread throughout this text that connects the reader is Dyer's steady stream of honest writing.

Bohdan Kot

Don't buy this book if you're looking for some version of Yoga Lite. It's actually a serious collection of personal essays that chronicle globe-trotting Geoff Dyer's travels between the ages of 20-40. As such, it's really a story about growing up, maturing into some version of adulthood, coming to piece with what Is. Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It is not about yoga - but it IS about finding inner peace.

I have to admit I picked up this book with the comic title because I heard the author writes of his experiences at the Full Moon Party on Hat Rin Beach in Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand. I have indeed been to this relatively isolated island but not to the infamous festival of alcohol and psychedelic trance music. Luckily, British writer Geoff Dyer has actively partaken fully in all the legendary activities that have made the festival's reputation. But this episode is not the only attraction in this slyly funny, surprisingly introspective travel journal, which glides seamlessly from place to place on a magic carpet of hallucinogenic drugs. With a blessed lack of apology, Dyer chronicles his wide variety of mood swings with mind-bending wit and precise observation. A true drifter, he takes his jaundiced eye, as well as his loneliness, frequent listlessness and pervasive self-dissatisfaction, along with him wherever he goes, but what prevents the book from being an incoherent downer is how he makes his restless nature palpable and often hilarious.

In a collection of eleven short stories, the author takes us to New Orleans, Cambodia, Bali, Paris, Ko Pha Ngan, Rome, Miami, Amsterdam, Libya and Detroit, but he makes a point of ending each chapter with something to leave the reader wanting more. It could be a vivid image or a personalized sensation but never a look-back summary. Whether it's musing about the potential of a racially motivated incident on a Mississippi road trip or the details of a suicide in Miami's South Beach or the lush greenery of Bali's rice paddy fields or the artistry of a one-legged barber in Cambodia, Dyer has a gift for conveying his thoughts in an authentic, descriptive way that does not smack of posturing. It seems only appropriate that he ends his book at the Burning Man festival, the pinnacle of radical, often hedonistic self-expression. There, he sneaks up on a deeper purpose in life with little contrivance. If drug-induced states of alternating euphoria and depression are not your cup of tea, clearly this is not the book for you. Otherwise, I suggest you sit back and enjoy a most intriguing and idiosyncratic travel writer.

This book has some great stuff in it but a lot more of not so great stuff. I think the best essay in this book is "Leptis Magna." It's Dyer in top form. It is funny, intelligent, unusual, and also moving. Dyer is very good at writing about his own depression and disappointment. (Very good at writing about other people's too.) His take on Libya and Libyans is really very funny. And his reflections on the ruins at Leptis Magna are interesting. That's the good news about the book.

The bad news is that the rest of it is not just bland but almost juvenile in some places. The writing is so-so, the events sort of forgettable (except one funny scene in which he tries to take off a pair of wet trousers in a small space), the mood just not compelling. I found it hard to care about his interests, and his indecision and dithering, which is at times funny in other books of Dyer's, becomes grating here. This just feels like a collection of mediocre essays held together and given weight by one very good one.

It's not Geoff Dyer's fault that a lot of people seem pick up this book and think they're going to get something else-a travel guide or a memoir or a philosophical treatise. Judging by the reviews, a lot of readers are uncomfortable with something that they can't really pin down. Dyer doesn't help these readers out by flitting around the globe and resolutely refusing to say anything meaningful about anything but his own state of mind. But once you let go of expectations, "Yoga" really starts to grow on you, adding up to a pleasant if transitory experience, kind of like an evening with an aging backpacker in a seedy hostel with a bottle of Thai whiskey. Dyer also charms as someone who is obviously staggeringly well-read, yet wears his knowledge lightly and seems to actually live with his favorites, instead of just name-drop. That must be a British thing, because it's rare to find American writers who can pull this off. (...)

This is the first book I bought on my shiny new Kindle, and it was very disappointing. Can you say self absorbed? Because Mr Dyer certainly can't. The inane ramblings of a middle aged man. Well written ramblings, but ramblings none the less. I found myself switching over to reading Kant for an essay to save myself from the tedium.

Geoff Dyer's more recent book, "Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi," won my vote for best book of the year; so I figured I'd see what his earlier books were like. I was particularly interested in learning about "Burning Man" which Dyer said was one of the highlights of his life. "Burning Man" is a happening which takes place in the Nevada desert each year: art, music, etc., and I figured maybe I should chance going to Burning Man for the experience. The "Yoga" book concludes with Geoff's descriptions of "Burning Man" but it did not inspire me to head out there...(although I do visit Nevada often.) Geoff was there for the first "Burning Man" in 1990, and again in 1991. I think it was different in those days. Nowadays, they inspect your vehicle before they let you in, for stuff like "2-ply toilet paper" (not permitted), and at my age I do need my 2-ply. And I'll use ever more-plys if you got 'em.

Well, the book is "Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi" - Light. Dyer travels around the globe, gets "stoned" pretty much everywhere, beds pretty much every woman he meets, gets "stoned" some more, wanders around modern cities or ancient ruins, can't find his hotel he's so stoned, wanders around some more, quotes Rilke and Auden to complete strangers, finds something called "The Zone" where he feels at one with the universe and it brings him to tears, etc etc etc.

I DID enjoy the book. Very relaxing and funny. Definitely good reading for subway riders on the way to work. That's the real "Zone."

Dyer's wonderful, drug haze of `travel essays' depend on decisive comments, deliberately undermined by doubt added, almost as an afterthought, at the end of most sentences. He's a man who you suspect is going to throw five dollar words at you, who always opts for the simple route. This lends a friendly, emotional warmth to his writing that relaxes you, lets him sidle right up to you before you begin to understand that his writing is perhaps more subversive, and more aggressive than you'd think. Dyer's essays can be genuinely funny, for instance, the moment while constantly changing rooms in a run down Miami hotel, changing again and again because of vicious mice, cigarette smells, and a French woman he finds sitting on his toilet. It's all delivered in a paragraph, so quickly that you have to stop to enjoy your laughter. The book sustains a naive quality that keeps Dyer's sense of the world fresh. Perhaps his only weakness is that his prose is much stronger than his dialogue. His dialogue can take ten lines to make a point, or reach the laugh, something he can often achieve in a single line of prose.

You can draw a line from Francis Fukuyama's question: "Have we in fact reached the end of history? Are there, in other words, any fundamental 'contradictions' in human life that cannot be resolved in the context of modern liberalism, that would be resolvable by an alternative political-economic structure?" to Geoff Dyer's "Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It." Dyer's quest assumes that there *are* such contradictions and questions and that the resolution lies within. (In a way, Dyer's book is a resounding affirmation of Fukuyama's assertion that modern liberalism provides an adequate context to deal with our most vexing questions - but that's for another day.)

Two-thirds of Dyer's book highlights the dreary devolution of everyday-life-now. Dyer starts with the premise that there is no Grand Scheme of things in which one must find one's happy place. What, then, is an intelligent, thinking being to do? He can go down the path of hedonism, but this is unsatisfactory for most such people-as it apparently is for Dyer. Dyer takes on this challenge by being out and about, observing, filching nuggets of wisdom wherever he can. One story, he's in New Orleans, another in Phnom Penh. Ultimately, it can't be sustained. The wanderings yield increasingly diminished returns, until the marginal utility of New Experiences dips so far that he's pumping in more inconvenience than wisdom or meaning he can eke out. You see this most prominently (and humorously) in his trip to Libya. In the end, Dyer finds what he's looking for in Detroit and is handed the icing on the cake at Burning Man. His realization is in line with the Western take on the main tenets of Buddhism: One should "just be"-- i.e. be in the moment, and the ability to achieve this "state" is favored when one is generous and giving of oneself.

This endpoint left me feeling cheated - because every story, every thought that Dyer has, points to a far more pessimistic conclusion. It's as if the publisher or editor read some of Dyer's earlier stories, saw where he was headed, didn't feel like printing a book that not-so-subtly advocated nihilism, and instituted some sort of course correction. In any event, assuming Dyer was faithful to his inquiry and where it led him, what for me would have been its most interesting phase is, unfortunately, not in his book: What did he do with his wisdom? Did it sustain him much beyond six months? Or did his life, with or without Sarah (a woman who merits a few mentions in his stories) crash down anyway? That is, I would have liked to see the application of the moral of "Yoga ... . " I strongly suspect that an impatient person like Dyer does not have the constitution to write that book. That book would involve long technocratic explications; Dyer would moreover, being English, balk at making the necessary revelations. That book would, I think, require much more generosity of spirit than, I suspect, Dyer has, his embrace of Buddhism notwithstanding. That book, I think, would look a lot like "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." I'd have been interested in Dyer's version.

Still, this book definitely merits a read in a sunny place on a trip that's taken as an escape from winter. Travelling vicariously through Dyer is a treat. His observations are touched with moments of quirky hilarity even as they're insightful. And he may save you a trip you thought you needed to take. It's a quick read. But instead of accepting Dyer's neat summing up, the thoughtful reader should draw his/her own conclusions. That's the time-consuming part.