A 'Beautiful' writer in a 'Damned' era , 11 Oct 2007
F.Scott Fitzgerald is a writer of remarkable talent. His prose sparkles with a beauty that juxtaposes with his often tragic subject matter. 'The Beautiful and Damned' explores some of the issues that would plague his own career as a writer who never really managed to top the acclaim bestowed upon 'The Great Gatsby', a devastatingly beautiful and seminal piece of 20th century literature. 'The Beautiful and Damned' boasts an array of would-be writers, actresses and dancers whom epitomise an era of of vanity, excess and alcohol. But underneath the shiny veneer lurks the inner turmoil of Anthony's talent that is never successfully fulfilled and capricious Gloria's despair that her good looks cannot be maintained. Anthony's descent into alcohol and depression is truely heartbreaking, especially as it ironically peaks as both the main protagonists' bad luck is about to change. This is perhaps telling of the era that Fitzgerald evoked in lucid vitality with the hustle and bustle of fashion, jazz, and alcoholic delights, but at the same time viewed with cynicism. As Gloria bemoans that she cannot afford a much in vogue grey squirrel fur coat, and her husband self medicates with copious amounts of alcohol, Fitzgerald's prose exposes the subtle horrors of innocence lost to an era of excess.

Important development on the way to writing The Great Gatsby, 30 Jun 1999
This is by no means Fitzgerald's greatest work - it pales in comparison to The Great Gatsby. Still, it is extremely funny, well-written and at times intelligent. But Fitzgerald almost spoils his own work by his unnecessary use of sub-titles and his ocassional descents into a overly self-conscious writing style - reference is even made to his first novel, This Side Of Paradise. I actually think that The Beautiful And Damned, despite its obvious flaws, is much better than This Side Of Paradise, which is rather disjointed.

A Lost Jewel, 25 Nov 1998
i enjoyed this book much more than The Great Gatsby. I true masterpiece and a must-read for all thinking young people.

The Beautiful and Damned -- Damned Beautiful!, 03 Dec 1997
We're coming into an age referred to by many as the "Cocktail Nation," and our youth is experimenting with swing dancing, swing music, making bathtub absinthe, and trying to recreate the air of my most favorite decade of all times: the roaring '20s.

"The Beautiful and Damned," is by far the best work by the man who almost single-handedly created the image of the flapper. F. Scott Fitzgerald was as much the voice of his generation as we claim modern alternative musicians are the voice of ours.

A 'Beautiful' writer in a 'Damned' era , 11 Oct 2007
F.Scott Fitzgerald is a writer of remarkable talent. His prose sparkles with a beauty that juxtaposes with his often tragic subject matter. 'The Beautiful and Damned' explores some of the issues that would plague his own career as a writer who never really managed to top the acclaim bestowed upon 'The Great Gatsby', a devastatingly beautiful and seminal piece of 20th century literature. 'The Beautiful and Damned' boasts an array of would-be writers, actresses and dancers whom epitomise an era of of vanity, excess and alcohol. But underneath the shiny veneer lurks the inner turmoil of Anthony's talent that is never successfully fulfilled and capricious Gloria's despair that her good looks cannot be maintained. Anthony's descent into alcohol and depression is truely heartbreaking, especially as it ironically peaks as both the main protagonists' bad luck is about to change. This is perhaps telling of the era that Fitzgerald evoked in lucid vitality with the hustle and bustle of fashion, jazz, and alcoholic delights, but at the same time viewed with cynicism. As Gloria bemoans that she cannot afford a much in vogue grey squirrel fur coat, and her husband self medicates with copious amounts of alcohol, Fitzgerald's prose exposes the subtle horrors of innocence lost to an era of excess.

Important development on the way to writing The Great Gatsby, 30 Jun 1999
This is by no means Fitzgerald's greatest work - it pales in comparison to The Great Gatsby. Still, it is extremely funny, well-written and at times intelligent. But Fitzgerald almost spoils his own work by his unnecessary use of sub-titles and his ocassional descents into a overly self-conscious writing style - reference is even made to his first novel, This Side Of Paradise. I actually think that The Beautiful And Damned, despite its obvious flaws, is much better than This Side Of Paradise, which is rather disjointed.

A Lost Jewel, 25 Nov 1998
i enjoyed this book much more than The Great Gatsby. I true masterpiece and a must-read for all thinking young people.

The Beautiful and Damned -- Damned Beautiful!, 03 Dec 1997
We're coming into an age referred to by many as the "Cocktail Nation," and our youth is experimenting with swing dancing, swing music, making bathtub absinthe, and trying to recreate the air of my most favorite decade of all times: the roaring '20s.

"The Beautiful and Damned," is by far the best work by the man who almost single-handedly created the image of the flapper. F. Scott Fitzgerald was as much the voice of his generation as we claim modern alternative musicians are the voice of ours.

What a fantastic book!, 02 Jan 2008
A middle-class englishwoman and her banker husband travel round Yugoslavia in the 1930s. Sounds dull, but it's actually one of the most engrossing books I have read for a long time - all 1200 pages of it. The digressions on the history of the Republic of Dubrovnik, Diocletian's palace in Split, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand etc are absolutely magical.

West has some odd ideas about religion and monarchy. She seems to be an Islamophobe and a Turkophobe, and I don't entirely like what she writes about Jews. She is an unashamed Serbophile in a way that is most unfashionable these days, and she has scant sympathy for anyone else's nationalism, but her heart and brain are undoubtedly in the right place.

Worth a read by anyone interested in the history of the Balkans, though not to be read uncritically.

The Mind of the Balkan, 18 Feb 2001
Never before and never after have the mind of this tortured region - the Balkan - been thus penetrated: with such passionate, humane precision, with such eloquence, with such empathy and such conviction. A classic, if ever there was any, a masterpiece without a doubt. It is as fresh as yesterday's news and as ancient as the monasteries it describes. It is an eternal work, a must for Balkan afficionados, a work of scholarship and love. Influenced by it, I wrote this (in my 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'): 'The Balkans is the unconscious of the world...It is here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity - the tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-Christianity and Islam - is still easily discernible.' Thank you, Rebecca West. Sam Vaknin, author of 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'.

A must read if your traveling in the Balkans, 21 Dec 1999
After reading some of the history of the Balkans, all other authors recommended this book, and after reading it I can see why. It is the format others try to obtain. She keeps the reader waiting for the next corner in not only her travels but in history. It puts into perspective todays turmoil.

The Greatest Travel Book Ever Written, 06 Nov 1998
This book is, without a doubt, the greatest travel book ever written. Encylopaedic in its depth and scope, it is the vastly readable account of Dame Rebecca West's pre-war journeys through the Balkans. But it is more than a mere travelogue--it says much about the human predicament in general. It is impossible to understand the current problems in the former Yugoslavia without this book.

A 'Beautiful' writer in a 'Damned' era , 11 Oct 2007
F.Scott Fitzgerald is a writer of remarkable talent. His prose sparkles with a beauty that juxtaposes with his often tragic subject matter. 'The Beautiful and Damned' explores some of the issues that would plague his own career as a writer who never really managed to top the acclaim bestowed upon 'The Great Gatsby', a devastatingly beautiful and seminal piece of 20th century literature. 'The Beautiful and Damned' boasts an array of would-be writers, actresses and dancers whom epitomise an era of of vanity, excess and alcohol. But underneath the shiny veneer lurks the inner turmoil of Anthony's talent that is never successfully fulfilled and capricious Gloria's despair that her good looks cannot be maintained. Anthony's descent into alcohol and depression is truely heartbreaking, especially as it ironically peaks as both the main protagonists' bad luck is about to change. This is perhaps telling of the era that Fitzgerald evoked in lucid vitality with the hustle and bustle of fashion, jazz, and alcoholic delights, but at the same time viewed with cynicism. As Gloria bemoans that she cannot afford a much in vogue grey squirrel fur coat, and her husband self medicates with copious amounts of alcohol, Fitzgerald's prose exposes the subtle horrors of innocence lost to an era of excess.

Important development on the way to writing The Great Gatsby, 30 Jun 1999
This is by no means Fitzgerald's greatest work - it pales in comparison to The Great Gatsby. Still, it is extremely funny, well-written and at times intelligent. But Fitzgerald almost spoils his own work by his unnecessary use of sub-titles and his ocassional descents into a overly self-conscious writing style - reference is even made to his first novel, This Side Of Paradise. I actually think that The Beautiful And Damned, despite its obvious flaws, is much better than This Side Of Paradise, which is rather disjointed.

A Lost Jewel, 25 Nov 1998
i enjoyed this book much more than The Great Gatsby. I true masterpiece and a must-read for all thinking young people.

The Beautiful and Damned -- Damned Beautiful!, 03 Dec 1997
We're coming into an age referred to by many as the "Cocktail Nation," and our youth is experimenting with swing dancing, swing music, making bathtub absinthe, and trying to recreate the air of my most favorite decade of all times: the roaring '20s.

"The Beautiful and Damned," is by far the best work by the man who almost single-handedly created the image of the flapper. F. Scott Fitzgerald was as much the voice of his generation as we claim modern alternative musicians are the voice of ours.

What a fantastic book!, 02 Jan 2008
A middle-class englishwoman and her banker husband travel round Yugoslavia in the 1930s. Sounds dull, but it's actually one of the most engrossing books I have read for a long time - all 1200 pages of it. The digressions on the history of the Republic of Dubrovnik, Diocletian's palace in Split, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand etc are absolutely magical.

West has some odd ideas about religion and monarchy. She seems to be an Islamophobe and a Turkophobe, and I don't entirely like what she writes about Jews. She is an unashamed Serbophile in a way that is most unfashionable these days, and she has scant sympathy for anyone else's nationalism, but her heart and brain are undoubtedly in the right place.

Worth a read by anyone interested in the history of the Balkans, though not to be read uncritically.

The Mind of the Balkan, 18 Feb 2001
Never before and never after have the mind of this tortured region - the Balkan - been thus penetrated: with such passionate, humane precision, with such eloquence, with such empathy and such conviction. A classic, if ever there was any, a masterpiece without a doubt. It is as fresh as yesterday's news and as ancient as the monasteries it describes. It is an eternal work, a must for Balkan afficionados, a work of scholarship and love. Influenced by it, I wrote this (in my 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'): 'The Balkans is the unconscious of the world...It is here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity - the tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-Christianity and Islam - is still easily discernible.' Thank you, Rebecca West. Sam Vaknin, author of 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'.

A must read if your traveling in the Balkans, 21 Dec 1999
After reading some of the history of the Balkans, all other authors recommended this book, and after reading it I can see why. It is the format others try to obtain. She keeps the reader waiting for the next corner in not only her travels but in history. It puts into perspective todays turmoil.

The Greatest Travel Book Ever Written, 06 Nov 1998
This book is, without a doubt, the greatest travel book ever written. Encylopaedic in its depth and scope, it is the vastly readable account of Dame Rebecca West's pre-war journeys through the Balkans. But it is more than a mere travelogue--it says much about the human predicament in general. It is impossible to understand the current problems in the former Yugoslavia without this book.

One of the Most Beautiful Pieces of Writing Ever, 28 Sep 2006
This may well be the best book ever written about jazz. If you're not a jazz lover, But Beautiful is the book to make you one.

Each chapter is an episode from the lives of the genre's greats and explores the psyche of jazz musicians in exquisite form. The reader is taken, with great sensitivity, into the darker side of these peoples' personalities and the toll the jazz lifestyle sadly takes on them: Lester Young's struggle against racism, the psychotic tendencies of Charlie Mingus, Art Pepper's appetite for self-destruction and the drug addiction of other greats are just a few examples of such themes.

My favourite line in the whole book would have to be the following part of the author's description of Ben Webster:

"Watching him heave the saxophone case down from the rack like he was going to show you photos of his loved ones -which is exactly what he was going to do-..."

There's simply not a bad line in this book. Read it, you won't be disappointed.

Truly Original, 13 Mar 2004
Wow what a great little book. Dyer takes a genuinely original approach (pretty rare these days) and it comes off beautifully. As soon as I'd finished it I started reading it again. I can't explain it - just read it!

Jazz explained beautifully, 05 Dec 2003
This book describes perfectly the culture surrounding Jazz in the 1950s, just as the style became synonymous with alcohol, drugs, and rebellion against the mainstream. Dyer takes an approach to the characters he describes that merges the factual and the fictitious in such a way that it becomes unimportant just how much is true and how much is literary improvisation. What counts is the overall impression given, and this is done very sensitively. There are some beautiful images and lines, and the intensely sad is balanced with a beautiful touch of tenderness. I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates Jazz, and can promise you will never listen to all that 'old stuff' in the same way again. I would also recommend it to anyone who loves top quality writing, because this is a fine example.

Absolutely beautiful, 28 Aug 2003
This book is just that, beautiful! The writing is almost a musical experience in itself. I keep rereading random passages out loud.

More Than Beautiful: Literary Bebop, 17 Jul 2000
Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz is much more than an extended critical essay on a still-evolving, vital musical genre and a great deal more than fictional portrayals of Jazz legends. Here, Dyer focuses his considerable talents on creating a kind of Jazz-in-print, seeking to emulate the frenzied riffing, explosive spontaneity and creative interplay, which has given Jazz music so much more vitality than many other genres' created in the 20th century. Without question, one would have to agree that he has succeeded, totally to the readers' enrichment.

But Beautiful hits the reader on several levels; we are taken on a series of journeys into the lives, thoughts, conversations and seminal events of eight Jazz musicians. Between each chapter is inserted a fictional, road-tripping almost ghostly presence of Duke Ellington, a father figure of modern Jazz who may well have known, recorded and very likely influenced all eight men whom Dyer chose to write/riff about. What's real about the eight musicians are the bare-bones facts known to many Jazz fans; Lester Young court-martialed by the Army because of an inability to cope with a racist Drill Sergeant, Chet Baker's teeth knocked out by an angry drug dealer in a seedy, San Francisco diner, Art Pepper sentenced to five years in prison on a Heroin possession conviction and so on. What's possible, and perhaps no less real to the reader are the details of their lives, their anguish and the self-destructive passions which attend the day to day living of so many creative people. Dyer draws these details in part through listening to the music and inspiration gained by looking at photographs of some of the musicians. 'Not as they were but as they appear to me....' Dyer asks the reader to see the musicians as he sees them, to believe in the memory of what these photos inspired. The men and their lives are portrayed, much like Jazz itself, with a kind of heart-stopping intensity and a poignant, empathetic acknowledgement of lives spent creating and being swallowed whole by the gift that makes creation possible. On Thelonious Monk; "Whatever it was inside him was very delicate, he had to keep it very still, slow himself right down so that nothing affected it." On Ben Webster; "He carried his loneliness around with him like an instrument case. It never left his side."

Very little, insightful criticism or critical essays have been produced regarding Jazz and the people who play it and live it. Dyer has done more than write mere history or criticism in But Beautiful, he has written (and played) a genre-exploding, lyrical meditation on Jazz and on the terrifying, exhilarating possibilities of the music itself and what ought to be recognized as a new form of fictional riffing.

A 'Beautiful' writer in a 'Damned' era , 11 Oct 2007
F.Scott Fitzgerald is a writer of remarkable talent. His prose sparkles with a beauty that juxtaposes with his often tragic subject matter. 'The Beautiful and Damned' explores some of the issues that would plague his own career as a writer who never really managed to top the acclaim bestowed upon 'The Great Gatsby', a devastatingly beautiful and seminal piece of 20th century literature. 'The Beautiful and Damned' boasts an array of would-be writers, actresses and dancers whom epitomise an era of of vanity, excess and alcohol. But underneath the shiny veneer lurks the inner turmoil of Anthony's talent that is never successfully fulfilled and capricious Gloria's despair that her good looks cannot be maintained. Anthony's descent into alcohol and depression is truely heartbreaking, especially as it ironically peaks as both the main protagonists' bad luck is about to change. This is perhaps telling of the era that Fitzgerald evoked in lucid vitality with the hustle and bustle of fashion, jazz, and alcoholic delights, but at the same time viewed with cynicism. As Gloria bemoans that she cannot afford a much in vogue grey squirrel fur coat, and her husband self medicates with copious amounts of alcohol, Fitzgerald's prose exposes the subtle horrors of innocence lost to an era of excess.

Important development on the way to writing The Great Gatsby, 30 Jun 1999
This is by no means Fitzgerald's greatest work - it pales in comparison to The Great Gatsby. Still, it is extremely funny, well-written and at times intelligent. But Fitzgerald almost spoils his own work by his unnecessary use of sub-titles and his ocassional descents into a overly self-conscious writing style - reference is even made to his first novel, This Side Of Paradise. I actually think that The Beautiful And Damned, despite its obvious flaws, is much better than This Side Of Paradise, which is rather disjointed.

A Lost Jewel, 25 Nov 1998
i enjoyed this book much more than The Great Gatsby. I true masterpiece and a must-read for all thinking young people.

The Beautiful and Damned -- Damned Beautiful!, 03 Dec 1997
We're coming into an age referred to by many as the "Cocktail Nation," and our youth is experimenting with swing dancing, swing music, making bathtub absinthe, and trying to recreate the air of my most favorite decade of all times: the roaring '20s.

"The Beautiful and Damned," is by far the best work by the man who almost single-handedly created the image of the flapper. F. Scott Fitzgerald was as much the voice of his generation as we claim modern alternative musicians are the voice of ours.

What a fantastic book!, 02 Jan 2008
A middle-class englishwoman and her banker husband travel round Yugoslavia in the 1930s. Sounds dull, but it's actually one of the most engrossing books I have read for a long time - all 1200 pages of it. The digressions on the history of the Republic of Dubrovnik, Diocletian's palace in Split, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand etc are absolutely magical.

West has some odd ideas about religion and monarchy. She seems to be an Islamophobe and a Turkophobe, and I don't entirely like what she writes about Jews. She is an unashamed Serbophile in a way that is most unfashionable these days, and she has scant sympathy for anyone else's nationalism, but her heart and brain are undoubtedly in the right place.

Worth a read by anyone interested in the history of the Balkans, though not to be read uncritically.

The Mind of the Balkan, 18 Feb 2001
Never before and never after have the mind of this tortured region - the Balkan - been thus penetrated: with such passionate, humane precision, with such eloquence, with such empathy and such conviction. A classic, if ever there was any, a masterpiece without a doubt. It is as fresh as yesterday's news and as ancient as the monasteries it describes. It is an eternal work, a must for Balkan afficionados, a work of scholarship and love. Influenced by it, I wrote this (in my 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'): 'The Balkans is the unconscious of the world...It is here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity - the tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-Christianity and Islam - is still easily discernible.' Thank you, Rebecca West. Sam Vaknin, author of 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'.

A must read if your traveling in the Balkans, 21 Dec 1999
After reading some of the history of the Balkans, all other authors recommended this book, and after reading it I can see why. It is the format others try to obtain. She keeps the reader waiting for the next corner in not only her travels but in history. It puts into perspective todays turmoil.

The Greatest Travel Book Ever Written, 06 Nov 1998
This book is, without a doubt, the greatest travel book ever written. Encylopaedic in its depth and scope, it is the vastly readable account of Dame Rebecca West's pre-war journeys through the Balkans. But it is more than a mere travelogue--it says much about the human predicament in general. It is impossible to understand the current problems in the former Yugoslavia without this book.

One of the Most Beautiful Pieces of Writing Ever, 28 Sep 2006
This may well be the best book ever written about jazz. If you're not a jazz lover, But Beautiful is the book to make you one.

Each chapter is an episode from the lives of the genre's greats and explores the psyche of jazz musicians in exquisite form. The reader is taken, with great sensitivity, into the darker side of these peoples' personalities and the toll the jazz lifestyle sadly takes on them: Lester Young's struggle against racism, the psychotic tendencies of Charlie Mingus, Art Pepper's appetite for self-destruction and the drug addiction of other greats are just a few examples of such themes.

My favourite line in the whole book would have to be the following part of the author's description of Ben Webster:

"Watching him heave the saxophone case down from the rack like he was going to show you photos of his loved ones -which is exactly what he was going to do-..."

There's simply not a bad line in this book. Read it, you won't be disappointed.

Truly Original, 13 Mar 2004
Wow what a great little book. Dyer takes a genuinely original approach (pretty rare these days) and it comes off beautifully. As soon as I'd finished it I started reading it again. I can't explain it - just read it!

Jazz explained beautifully, 05 Dec 2003
This book describes perfectly the culture surrounding Jazz in the 1950s, just as the style became synonymous with alcohol, drugs, and rebellion against the mainstream. Dyer takes an approach to the characters he describes that merges the factual and the fictitious in such a way that it becomes unimportant just how much is true and how much is literary improvisation. What counts is the overall impression given, and this is done very sensitively. There are some beautiful images and lines, and the intensely sad is balanced with a beautiful touch of tenderness. I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates Jazz, and can promise you will never listen to all that 'old stuff' in the same way again. I would also recommend it to anyone who loves top quality writing, because this is a fine example.

Absolutely beautiful, 28 Aug 2003
This book is just that, beautiful! The writing is almost a musical experience in itself. I keep rereading random passages out loud.

More Than Beautiful: Literary Bebop, 17 Jul 2000
Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz is much more than an extended critical essay on a still-evolving, vital musical genre and a great deal more than fictional portrayals of Jazz legends. Here, Dyer focuses his considerable talents on creating a kind of Jazz-in-print, seeking to emulate the frenzied riffing, explosive spontaneity and creative interplay, which has given Jazz music so much more vitality than many other genres' created in the 20th century. Without question, one would have to agree that he has succeeded, totally to the readers' enrichment.

But Beautiful hits the reader on several levels; we are taken on a series of journeys into the lives, thoughts, conversations and seminal events of eight Jazz musicians. Between each chapter is inserted a fictional, road-tripping almost ghostly presence of Duke Ellington, a father figure of modern Jazz who may well have known, recorded and very likely influenced all eight men whom Dyer chose to write/riff about. What's real about the eight musicians are the bare-bones facts known to many Jazz fans; Lester Young court-martialed by the Army because of an inability to cope with a racist Drill Sergeant, Chet Baker's teeth knocked out by an angry drug dealer in a seedy, San Francisco diner, Art Pepper sentenced to five years in prison on a Heroin possession conviction and so on. What's possible, and perhaps no less real to the reader are the details of their lives, their anguish and the self-destructive passions which attend the day to day living of so many creative people. Dyer draws these details in part through listening to the music and inspiration gained by looking at photographs of some of the musicians. 'Not as they were but as they appear to me....' Dyer asks the reader to see the musicians as he sees them, to believe in the memory of what these photos inspired. The men and their lives are portrayed, much like Jazz itself, with a kind of heart-stopping intensity and a poignant, empathetic acknowledgement of lives spent creating and being swallowed whole by the gift that makes creation possible. On Thelonious Monk; "Whatever it was inside him was very delicate, he had to keep it very still, slow himself right down so that nothing affected it." On Ben Webster; "He carried his loneliness around with him like an instrument case. It never left his side."

Very little, insightful criticism or critical essays have been produced regarding Jazz and the people who play it and live it. Dyer has done more than write mere history or criticism in But Beautiful, he has written (and played) a genre-exploding, lyrical meditation on Jazz and on the terrifying, exhilarating possibilities of the music itself and what ought to be recognized as a new form of fictional riffing.

A travel book about not being where you are, 06 Jan 2008
This is not Geoff Dyer's best book. In fact, it's his worst, but Dyer's less good books are so much better than most other writer's best books that it deserves five stars anyway.

This only appears to be 'Geoff Dyer writes a travel book about some exotic places'. In fact, as fans of the man's work are aware, each book he writes is a chapter in a sort of ongoing autobiography. The problem with this one is that it's the most nakedly autobiographical one, travel books being what they are. The Travel Writer persona is not a mask that suits Dyer. His book on WW1, or his sort-of critical study of DH Lawrence, are more absorbing because they're about Dyer identifying with his subjects. Here, he has only himself as tourist to identify with. It also appears that he wasn't having the best time during his travels; there are strong hints at some sort of serious breakdown. This means that his customary stimulating interest in the outside world is somewhat muted - it's one of the most introspective travel books ever written.

Fortunately for us all he seems to have rallied, because he went on to write one of his best and richest books, 'The Ongoing Moment', a superb meditation on photography. In the meantime, savour this book for its melancholy, its troubled nostalgia, its longing to be somewhere else, and not least for its hilarious account of the author attempting to change out of his wet trousers in the toilet of a cafe in Amsterdam while very, very stoned - possibly the funniest two pages of English literature I have ever read.

A tour de force of tediousness, 07 Jun 2007
Travel books are invariably about more than mere journeys - they are evocations of places (the sights, the smells); they detail strange cultures experienced and fascinating people met; often, they reveal as much about the author as they do about the journey. I'm sad to say that this book is almost entirely about the author, which might have been worth reading had he come across as an interesting, insightful or even insane character. He doesn't. This book is a woeful waste of paper; an almost endless plod through a series of fascinating destinations, none of which the author bothers to investigate for the reader. Instead he talks endlessly about himself and his tedious little adventures. There are mild nuggets of humour here and there, granted, but they are rare. Much more common are his accounts of getting wasted, and the utterly dull 'adventures' he has while under the influence. The Paris Story can be summed up in a sentence - "Met a girl in a cafe, smoked some dope, she wandered off, I was a little worried about her but fortunately she got home alright." I challenge subsequent reviewers to prove that I've missed something of epoch-defining importance in this chapter.
He comes across as the very worst type of teenage drug bore. What's more, he seems to regard himself as something of an intellectual, justifying this rather mystifying belief by repeatedly reminding the reader that he's "read a lot of W. H. Auden." Good for you old boy!
Read this book if you must. If you like it, please drop me a line and tell me what on earth I missed.


Luxury, 01 Apr 2007
Dyer manages to sum up the essence of luxury - having the time and freedom from external pressures to navel gaze. Personally I love having the time and being in the places where I can enjoy such navel gazing. I have travelled in many of the places featured in this book - Dyer captures the essence of such places and the people who sit there, similarly, navel gazing.

If you've enjoyed dossing around Koh Phangan, or lost a few weekends in Amsterdam, you'll love this book.

It's also eloquently written, witty and beautifully structured, but all that stuff goes without saying !

"Self-Indulgence For Those Who Can Be Bothered To Finish The Book", 24 Oct 2006
I finished reading this book last night and breathed a deep sigh of relief when I got to the final page.
Dyer is clearly very erudite and his artistic,poetic,philosophical and anthropological references are no doubt well-informed (although often quite tenuous!)but my overall feeling about his musings are that of the kind of people you meet when far away from home who are pot-smoking drifters who take great pleasure in leading the lives of self-professed 'hippies' and over-philosophising everything which, after several chapters, becomes highly irritating, particularly as Dyer is so self-congratulatory about his ramblings and those of his girlfriend 'Circle' (oh please...).
Many of us can identify with the experience of getting to know oneself and finding some kind of inner peace and I too have a knowledge of the arts etc... and understand the allusions but feel the book is totally self-indulgent and has no more of a 'wow' factor than any other amateur travel journal.


Geoff Dire, 19 Jul 2006
Ever had a dinner guest who seems amusing at first, but then doesn't stop talking about himself all night long? Well - this is the book version.
Despite all his globe-trotting, Dyer is interested only in his internal landscape, which is pretty barren territory.
If you're a youngster having a pre-university gap year abroad, this pseudo fluff may appeal. If, however, you've had a modicum of experience yourself, this book is likely to come across as tedious navel-gazing.

Add my name to the list of people who can't be bothered - with any more Dyer.

A 'Beautiful' writer in a 'Damned' era , 11 Oct 2007
F.Scott Fitzgerald is a writer of remarkable talent. His prose sparkles with a beauty that juxtaposes with his often tragic subject matter. 'The Beautiful and Damned' explores some of the issues that would plague his own career as a writer who never really managed to top the acclaim bestowed upon 'The Great Gatsby', a devastatingly beautiful and seminal piece of 20th century literature. 'The Beautiful and Damned' boasts an array of would-be writers, actresses and dancers whom epitomise an era of of vanity, excess and alcohol. But underneath the shiny veneer lurks the inner turmoil of Anthony's talent that is never successfully fulfilled and capricious Gloria's despair that her good looks cannot be maintained. Anthony's descent into alcohol and depression is truely heartbreaking, especially as it ironically peaks as both the main protagonists' bad luck is about to change. This is perhaps telling of the era that Fitzgerald evoked in lucid vitality with the hustle and bustle of fashion, jazz, and alcoholic delights, but at the same time viewed with cynicism. As Gloria bemoans that she cannot afford a much in vogue grey squirrel fur coat, and her husband self medicates with copious amounts of alcohol, Fitzgerald's prose exposes the subtle horrors of innocence lost to an era of excess.

Important development on the way to writing The Great Gatsby, 30 Jun 1999
This is by no means Fitzgerald's greatest work - it pales in comparison to The Great Gatsby. Still, it is extremely funny, well-written and at times intelligent. But Fitzgerald almost spoils his own work by his unnecessary use of sub-titles and his ocassional descents into a overly self-conscious writing style - reference is even made to his first novel, This Side Of Paradise. I actually think that The Beautiful And Damned, despite its obvious flaws, is much better than This Side Of Paradise, which is rather disjointed.

A Lost Jewel, 25 Nov 1998
i enjoyed this book much more than The Great Gatsby. I true masterpiece and a must-read for all thinking young people.

The Beautiful and Damned -- Damned Beautiful!, 03 Dec 1997
We're coming into an age referred to by many as the "Cocktail Nation," and our youth is experimenting with swing dancing, swing music, making bathtub absinthe, and trying to recreate the air of my most favorite decade of all times: the roaring '20s.

"The Beautiful and Damned," is by far the best work by the man who almost single-handedly created the image of the flapper. F. Scott Fitzgerald was as much the voice of his generation as we claim modern alternative musicians are the voice of ours.

What a fantastic book!, 02 Jan 2008
A middle-class englishwoman and her banker husband travel round Yugoslavia in the 1930s. Sounds dull, but it's actually one of the most engrossing books I have read for a long time - all 1200 pages of it. The digressions on the history of the Republic of Dubrovnik, Diocletian's palace in Split, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand etc are absolutely magical.

West has some odd ideas about religion and monarchy. She seems to be an Islamophobe and a Turkophobe, and I don't entirely like what she writes about Jews. She is an unashamed Serbophile in a way that is most unfashionable these days, and she has scant sympathy for anyone else's nationalism, but her heart and brain are undoubtedly in the right place.

Worth a read by anyone interested in the history of the Balkans, though not to be read uncritically.

The Mind of the Balkan, 18 Feb 2001
Never before and never after have the mind of this tortured region - the Balkan - been thus penetrated: with such passionate, humane precision, with such eloquence, with such empathy and such conviction. A classic, if ever there was any, a masterpiece without a doubt. It is as fresh as yesterday's news and as ancient as the monasteries it describes. It is an eternal work, a must for Balkan afficionados, a work of scholarship and love. Influenced by it, I wrote this (in my 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'): 'The Balkans is the unconscious of the world...It is here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity - the tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-Christianity and Islam - is still easily discernible.' Thank you, Rebecca West. Sam Vaknin, author of 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'.

A must read if your traveling in the Balkans, 21 Dec 1999
After reading some of the history of the Balkans, all other authors recommended this book, and after reading it I can see why. It is the format others try to obtain. She keeps the reader waiting for the next corner in not only her travels but in history. It puts into perspective todays turmoil.

The Greatest Travel Book Ever Written, 06 Nov 1998
This book is, without a doubt, the greatest travel book ever written. Encylopaedic in its depth and scope, it is the vastly readable account of Dame Rebecca West's pre-war journeys through the Balkans. But it is more than a mere travelogue--it says much about the human predicament in general. It is impossible to understand the current problems in the former Yugoslavia without this book.

One of the Most Beautiful Pieces of Writing Ever, 28 Sep 2006
This may well be the best book ever written about jazz. If you're not a jazz lover, But Beautiful is the book to make you one.

Each chapter is an episode from the lives of the genre's greats and explores the psyche of jazz musicians in exquisite form. The reader is taken, with great sensitivity, into the darker side of these peoples' personalities and the toll the jazz lifestyle sadly takes on them: Lester Young's struggle against racism, the psychotic tendencies of Charlie Mingus, Art Pepper's appetite for self-destruction and the drug addiction of other greats are just a few examples of such themes.

My favourite line in the whole book would have to be the following part of the author's description of Ben Webster:

"Watching him heave the saxophone case down from the rack like he was going to show you photos of his loved ones -which is exactly what he was going to do-..."

There's simply not a bad line in this book. Read it, you won't be disappointed.

Truly Original, 13 Mar 2004
Wow what a great little book. Dyer takes a genuinely original approach (pretty rare these days) and it comes off beautifully. As soon as I'd finished it I started reading it again. I can't explain it - just read it!

Jazz explained beautifully, 05 Dec 2003
This book describes perfectly the culture surrounding Jazz in the 1950s, just as the style became synonymous with alcohol, drugs, and rebellion against the mainstream. Dyer takes an approach to the characters he describes that merges the factual and the fictitious in such a way that it becomes unimportant just how much is true and how much is literary improvisation. What counts is the overall impression given, and this is done very sensitively. There are some beautiful images and lines, and the intensely sad is balanced with a beautiful touch of tenderness. I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates Jazz, and can promise you will never listen to all that 'old stuff' in the same way again. I would also recommend it to anyone who loves top quality writing, because this is a fine example.

Absolutely beautiful, 28 Aug 2003
This book is just that, beautiful! The writing is almost a musical experience in itself. I keep rereading random passages out loud.

More Than Beautiful: Literary Bebop, 17 Jul 2000
Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz is much more than an extended critical essay on a still-evolving, vital musical genre and a great deal more than fictional portrayals of Jazz legends. Here, Dyer focuses his considerable talents on creating a kind of Jazz-in-print, seeking to emulate the frenzied riffing, explosive spontaneity and creative interplay, which has given Jazz music so much more vitality than many other genres' created in the 20th century. Without question, one would have to agree that he has succeeded, totally to the readers' enrichment.

But Beautiful hits the reader on several levels; we are taken on a series of journeys into the lives, thoughts, conversations and seminal events of eight Jazz musicians. Between each chapter is inserted a fictional, road-tripping almost ghostly presence of Duke Ellington, a father figure of modern Jazz who may well have known, recorded and very likely influenced all eight men whom Dyer chose to write/riff about. What's real about the eight musicians are the bare-bones facts known to many Jazz fans; Lester Young court-martialed by the Army because of an inability to cope with a racist Drill Sergeant, Chet Baker's teeth knocked out by an angry drug dealer in a seedy, San Francisco diner, Art Pepper sentenced to five years in prison on a Heroin possession conviction and so on. What's possible, and perhaps no less real to the reader are the details of their lives, their anguish and the self-destructive passions which attend the day to day living of so many creative people. Dyer draws these details in part through listening to the music and inspiration gained by looking at photographs of some of the musicians. 'Not as they were but as they appear to me....' Dyer asks the reader to see the musicians as he sees them, to believe in the memory of what these photos inspired. The men and their lives are portrayed, much like Jazz itself, with a kind of heart-stopping intensity and a poignant, empathetic acknowledgement of lives spent creating and being swallowed whole by the gift that makes creation possible. On Thelonious Monk; "Whatever it was inside him was very delicate, he had to keep it very still, slow himself right down so that nothing affected it." On Ben Webster; "He carried his loneliness around with him like an instrument case. It never left his side."

Very little, insightful criticism or critical essays have been produced regarding Jazz and the people who play it and live it. Dyer has done more than write mere history or criticism in But Beautiful, he has written (and played) a genre-exploding, lyrical meditation on Jazz and on the terrifying, exhilarating possibilities of the music itself and what ought to be recognized as a new form of fictional riffing.

A travel book about not being where you are, 06 Jan 2008
This is not Geoff Dyer's best book. In fact, it's his worst, but Dyer's less good books are so much better than most other writer's best books that it deserves five stars anyway.

This only appears to be 'Geoff Dyer writes a travel book about some exotic places'. In fact, as fans of the man's work are aware, each book he writes is a chapter in a sort of ongoing autobiography. The problem with this one is that it's the most nakedly autobiographical one, travel books being what they are. The Travel Writer persona is not a mask that suits Dyer. His book on WW1, or his sort-of critical study of DH Lawrence, are more absorbing because they're about Dyer identifying with his subjects. Here, he has only himself as tourist to identify with. It also appears that he wasn't having the best time during his travels; there are strong hints at some sort of serious breakdown. This means that his customary stimulating interest in the outside world is somewhat muted - it's one of the most introspective travel books ever written.

Fortunately for us all he seems to have rallied, because he went on to write one of his best and richest books, 'The Ongoing Moment', a superb meditation on photography. In the meantime, savour this book for its melancholy, its troubled nostalgia, its longing to be somewhere else, and not least for its hilarious account of the author attempting to change out of his wet trousers in the toilet of a cafe in Amsterdam while very, very stoned - possibly the funniest two pages of English literature I have ever read.

A tour de force of tediousness, 07 Jun 2007
Travel books are invariably about more than mere journeys - they are evocations of places (the sights, the smells); they detail strange cultures experienced and fascinating people met; often, they reveal as much about the author as they do about the journey. I'm sad to say that this book is almost entirely about the author, which might have been worth reading had he come across as an interesting, insightful or even insane character. He doesn't. This book is a woeful waste of paper; an almost endless plod through a series of fascinating destinations, none of which the author bothers to investigate for the reader. Instead he talks endlessly about himself and his tedious little adventures. There are mild nuggets of humour here and there, granted, but they are rare. Much more common are his accounts of getting wasted, and the utterly dull 'adventures' he has while under the influence. The Paris Story can be summed up in a sentence - "Met a girl in a cafe, smoked some dope, she wandered off, I was a little worried about her but fortunately she got home alright." I challenge subsequent reviewers to prove that I've missed something of epoch-defining importance in this chapter.
He comes across as the very worst type of teenage drug bore. What's more, he seems to regard himself as something of an intellectual, justifying this rather mystifying belief by repeatedly reminding the reader that he's "read a lot of W. H. Auden." Good for you old boy!
Read this book if you must. If you like it, please drop me a line and tell me what on earth I missed.


Luxury, 01 Apr 2007
Dyer manages to sum up the essence of luxury - having the time and freedom from external pressures to navel gaze. Personally I love having the time and being in the places where I can enjoy such navel gazing. I have travelled in many of the places featured in this book - Dyer captures the essence of such places and the people who sit there, similarly, navel gazing.

If you've enjoyed dossing around Koh Phangan, or lost a few weekends in Amsterdam, you'll love this book.

It's also eloquently written, witty and beautifully structured, but all that stuff goes without saying !

"Self-Indulgence For Those Who Can Be Bothered To Finish The Book", 24 Oct 2006
I finished reading this book last night and breathed a deep sigh of relief when I got to the final page.
Dyer is clearly very erudite and his artistic,poetic,philosophical and anthropological references are no doubt well-informed (although often quite tenuous!)but my overall feeling about his musings are that of the kind of people you meet when far away from home who are pot-smoking drifters who take great pleasure in leading the lives of self-professed 'hippies' and over-philosophising everything which, after several chapters, becomes highly irritating, particularly as Dyer is so self-congratulatory about his ramblings and those of his girlfriend 'Circle' (oh please...).
Many of us can identify with the experience of getting to know oneself and finding some kind of inner peace and I too have a knowledge of the arts etc... and understand the allusions but feel the book is totally self-indulgent and has no more of a 'wow' factor than any other amateur travel journal.


Geoff Dire, 19 Jul 2006
Ever had a dinner guest who seems amusing at first, but then doesn't stop talking about himself all night long? Well - this is the book version.
Despite all his globe-trotting, Dyer is interested only in his internal landscape, which is pretty barren territory.
If you're a youngster having a pre-university gap year abroad, this pseudo fluff may appeal. If, however, you've had a modicum of experience yourself, this book is likely to come across as tedious navel-gazing.

Add my name to the list of people who can't be bothered - with any more Dyer.

Classy Clubbing Novel, 06 Nov 2001
This is a story about two couples in their twenties in Paris enjoying life and having fun. One of the characters, Luke, turns away from life and love for no clear reason and the thrust of the narrative is another character's attempts to understand why he's done this. Since we know it's all going to end in tears, the happy times become all the more poignant. It's very well written and definitely far classier and more thoughtful than your average "we went out clubbing and took loads of drugs" yoof novel.

A magnificent work of late twentieth century fiction, 09 Aug 2000
'Paris Trance' traces the lives of two newly formed couples in Paris, thrown together by a volatile, and at times uncertain, bond of friendship, love, lust, sex, and drugs, and their adventures and relationships both inside and around Paris. 'Paris Trance' is skilfully executed throughout, capturing everything from the frustration (both emotional and sexual) of a single man in the heat of a Parisian summer, to the attempts of Dyer's narrator to make sense of the flourishing and later degenerating relationships and personalities around him.

Dyer crafts 'Paris Trance' at his own idiosyncratic (and now his trademark) intersection of genres, not least in his fascination with the ability of prose to convey the visual, as with film and photography, while always remaining sensitive to the emotional climate of the world that he creates. Dyer is also clearly the inheritor of the spirit, if not the style, of earlier twentieth century works of fiction such as Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', and F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Tender is the Night', with his concern for the degeneration of social relationships and the perils of admiration which approaches hero worship. It is the skill with which Dyer executes his exploration into the nature of highly restricted social circles, bordering on philosophy and social psychology, which makes 'Paris Trance' a magnificent, and thoroughly engaging, work of late Twentieth Century fiction.

Ceaselessly into the Past: F. Scott, Intimacy and Ecstasy, 17 Jul 2000
Paris Trance is both a novel and an elegy about romance, destiny, intimacy, and the rise and fall of an intense, short-lived friendship between two couples living an expatriate existence in 1990's Paris. The main character, Luke Barnes, arrives in Paris animated by a half-formed desire to write a novel, or perhaps make a film and live in a world of possibilities where one can move towards the center of one's own life; rapture, intimacy, consuming and discarding each moment. Luke forms a strong, brotherly bond with Alex, another Brit expat for whom Luke becomes one part of a vicariously lived whole. The two men hook up with girlfriends, and far too much time is spent on the humdrum details of each relationship/romance, which seems to slow the novel down considerably. But this problem is more than made up for by the strong focus on the bonds of friendship and intimacy between the two couples, deepend by the shared experience of tripping on ecstasy while being blasted by loud, house music until six o'clock in the morning; "They were still full of chemically engendered expectation but that anticipation was gradually coming to refer to the past, to something that had already taken place. They were wide wake, distracted, glowing." But Luke's quest to reach the peak of happiness, to "move to the center of one's own life" is seen by Sahra, Alex' girlfriend and Luke's friend, as a destructive flaw; "He doesn't really have emotions. Just appetites. At the moment he's as happy as a sandboy because there's so much still to gobble down. But what's he going to be like when he's tried it all ? " The emotional void/greed of Luke is further explored by his desire to hang on to, for a moment longer, a "tantalizing echo" of an experience lived just seconds ago; "And at that moment you glimpse the Eternal Recurrence as a potential fact, as a mechanism, rather than a metaphor. That is the solution contained in the riddle of deja vu. All memories are premonitions, all premonitions are memories". The novel also explores what one might call an expat view of existentialism, of seeing one's destiny not from the perspective of the positive will to achieve, but from that of failing so absolutely that one embraces it as one's true self, true destiny, the triumph of negative possibilities; "By letting things occur as they did he believed he was penetrating more deeply into himself, getting closer to the core. "All of the things he associated with happiness came to be lodged absolutely in his past. "his falling short was a kind of triumph; he was being faithful to some part of himself, to his destiny". One can't help but be reminded of the main character in Albert Camus' The Stranger, and of the "Black winds" of one's negative destiny. Luke never writes his novel, never makes his film, breaks up with Nicole, a woman he loves deeply, and separates himself from everything that makes him happy in an effort to confront his true self, his blighted destiny; "there are all sorts of propensities in people-but there are other kinds of negative potential: the potential for wasting the talents we are given, for blighting our prospects of happiness". Geoff Dyer is as close as Gen-X will get to reading their own version of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Paris Trance is an excellent, if extreme, example. This novel is not spectacularly well written, but it does (or should) strike a powerful chord with nearly anyone in late twenties or early thirties who have ever lived to eat up whatever happiness they could grab, and wondered if there was anything worthwhile beyond rapture.

Brilliant, wonderful, gorgeous, 25 Jun 2000
An elegant and mesmerising novel - really, adjectives don't do it justice! Geoff Dyer evokes a happiness so intense it can't last - and knowing that it doesn't somehow makes the story all the sweeter. Buy this, devour it, and read The Colour of Memory as well - your world will be a better place.

Buy this book!, 07 Dec 1999
Beautiful prose from one of England's best writer

A 'Beautiful' writer in a 'Damned' era , 11 Oct 2007
F.Scott Fitzgerald is a writer of remarkable talent. His prose sparkles with a beauty that juxtaposes with his often tragic subject matter. 'The Beautiful and Damned' explores some of the issues that would plague his own career as a writer who never really managed to top the acclaim bestowed upon 'The Great Gatsby', a devastatingly beautiful and seminal piece of 20th century literature. 'The Beautiful and Damned' boasts an array of would-be writers, actresses and dancers whom epitomise an era of of vanity, excess and alcohol. But underneath the shiny veneer lurks the inner turmoil of Anthony's talent that is never successfully fulfilled and capricious Gloria's despair that her good looks cannot be maintained. Anthony's descent into alcohol and depression is truely heartbreaking, especially as it ironically peaks as both the main protagonists' bad luck is about to change. This is perhaps telling of the era that Fitzgerald evoked in lucid vitality with the hustle and bustle of fashion, jazz, and alcoholic delights, but at the same time viewed with cynicism. As Gloria bemoans that she cannot afford a much in vogue grey squirrel fur coat, and her husband self medicates with copious amounts of alcohol, Fitzgerald's prose exposes the subtle horrors of innocence lost to an era of excess.

Important development on the way to writing The Great Gatsby, 30 Jun 1999
This is by no means Fitzgerald's greatest work - it pales in comparison to The Great Gatsby. Still, it is extremely funny, well-written and at times intelligent. But Fitzgerald almost spoils his own work by his unnecessary use of sub-titles and his ocassional descents into a overly self-conscious writing style - reference is even made to his first novel, This Side Of Paradise. I actually think that The Beautiful And Damned, despite its obvious flaws, is much better than This Side Of Paradise, which is rather disjointed.

A Lost Jewel, 25 Nov 1998
i enjoyed this book much more than The Great Gatsby. I true masterpiece and a must-read for all thinking young people.

The Beautiful and Damned -- Damned Beautiful!, 03 Dec 1997
We're coming into an age referred to by many as the "Cocktail Nation," and our youth is experimenting with swing dancing, swing music, making bathtub absinthe, and trying to recreate the air of my most favorite decade of all times: the roaring '20s.

"The Beautiful and Damned," is by far the best work by the man who almost single-handedly created the image of the flapper. F. Scott Fitzgerald was as much the voice of his generation as we claim modern alternative musicians are the voice of ours.

What a fantastic book!, 02 Jan 2008
A middle-class englishwoman and her banker husband travel round Yugoslavia in the 1930s. Sounds dull, but it's actually one of the most engrossing books I have read for a long time - all 1200 pages of it. The digressions on the history of the Republic of Dubrovnik, Diocletian's palace in Split, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand etc are absolutely magical.

West has some odd ideas about religion and monarchy. She seems to be an Islamophobe and a Turkophobe, and I don't entirely like what she writes about Jews. She is an unashamed Serbophile in a way that is most unfashionable these days, and she has scant sympathy for anyone else's nationalism, but her heart and brain are undoubtedly in the right place.

Worth a read by anyone interested in the history of the Balkans, though not to be read uncritically.

The Mind of the Balkan, 18 Feb 2001
Never before and never after have the mind of this tortured region - the Balkan - been thus penetrated: with such passionate, humane precision, with such eloquence, with such empathy and such conviction. A classic, if ever there was any, a masterpiece without a doubt. It is as fresh as yesterday's news and as ancient as the monasteries it describes. It is an eternal work, a must for Balkan afficionados, a work of scholarship and love. Influenced by it, I wrote this (in my 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'): 'The Balkans is the unconscious of the world...It is here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity - the tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-Christianity and Islam - is still easily discernible.' Thank you, Rebecca West. Sam Vaknin, author of 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'.

A must read if your traveling in the Balkans, 21 Dec 1999
After reading some of the history of the Balkans, all other authors recommended this book, and after reading it I can see why. It is the format others try to obtain. She keeps the reader waiting for the next corner in not only her travels but in history. It puts into perspective todays turmoil.

The Greatest Travel Book Ever Written, 06 Nov 1998
This book is, without a doubt, the greatest travel book ever written. Encylopaedic in its depth and scope, it is the vastly readable account of Dame Rebecca West's pre-war journeys through the Balkans. But it is more than a mere travelogue--it says much about the human predicament in general. It is impossible to understand the current problems in the former Yugoslavia without this book.

One of the Most Beautiful Pieces of Writing Ever, 28 Sep 2006
This may well be the best book ever written about jazz. If you're not a jazz lover, But Beautiful is the book to make you one.

Each chapter is an episode from the lives of the genre's greats and explores the psyche of jazz musicians in exquisite form. The reader is taken, with great sensitivity, into the darker side of these peoples' personalities and the toll the jazz lifestyle sadly takes on them: Lester Young's struggle against racism, the psychotic tendencies of Charlie Mingus, Art Pepper's appetite for self-destruction and the drug addiction of other greats are just a few examples of such themes.

My favourite line in the whole book would have to be the following part of the author's description of Ben Webster:

"Watching him heave the saxophone case down from the rack like he was going to show you photos of his loved ones -which is exactly what he was going to do-..."

There's simply not a bad line in this book. Read it, you won't be disappointed.

Truly Original, 13 Mar 2004
Wow what a great little book. Dyer takes a genuinely original approach (pretty rare these days) and it comes off beautifully. As soon as I'd finished it I started reading it again. I can't explain it - just read it!

Jazz explained beautifully, 05 Dec 2003
This book describes perfectly the culture surrounding Jazz in the 1950s, just as the style became synonymous with alcohol, drugs, and rebellion against the mainstream. Dyer takes an approach to the characters he describes that merges the factual and the fictitious in such a way that it becomes unimportant just how much is true and how much is literary improvisation. What counts is the overall impression given, and this is done very sensitively. There are some beautiful images and lines, and the intensely sad is balanced with a beautiful touch of tenderness. I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates Jazz, and can promise you will never listen to all that 'old stuff' in the same way again. I would also recommend it to anyone who loves top quality writing, because this is a fine example.

Absolutely beautiful, 28 Aug 2003
This book is just that, beautiful! The writing is almost a musical experience in itself. I keep rereading random passages out loud.

More Than Beautiful: Literary Bebop, 17 Jul 2000
Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz is much more than an extended critical essay on a still-evolving, vital musical genre and a great deal more than fictional portrayals of Jazz legends. Here, Dyer focuses his considerable talents on creating a kind of Jazz-in-print, seeking to emulate the frenzied riffing, explosive spontaneity and creative interplay, which has given Jazz music so much more vitality than many other genres' created in the 20th century. Without question, one would have to agree that he has succeeded, totally to the readers' enrichment.

But Beautiful hits the reader on several levels; we are taken on a series of journeys into the lives, thoughts, conversations and seminal events of eight Jazz musicians. Between each chapter is inserted a fictional, road-tripping almost ghostly presence of Duke Ellington, a father figure of modern Jazz who may well have known, recorded and very likely influenced all eight men whom Dyer chose to write/riff about. What's real about the eight musicians are the bare-bones facts known to many Jazz fans; Lester Young court-martialed by the Army because of an inability to cope with a racist Drill Sergeant, Chet Baker's teeth knocked out by an angry drug dealer in a seedy, San Francisco diner, Art Pepper sentenced to five years in prison on a Heroin possession conviction and so on. What's possible, and perhaps no less real to the reader are the details of their lives, their anguish and the self-destructive passions which attend the day to day living of so many creative people. Dyer draws these details in part through listening to the music and inspiration gained by looking at photographs of some of the musicians. 'Not as they were but as they appear to me....' Dyer asks the reader to see the musicians as he sees them, to believe in the memory of what these photos inspired. The men and their lives are portrayed, much like Jazz itself, with a kind of heart-stopping intensity and a poignant, empathetic acknowledgement of lives spent creating and being swallowed whole by the gift that makes creation possible. On Thelonious Monk; "Whatever it was inside him was very delicate, he had to keep it very still, slow himself right down so that nothing affected it." On Ben Webster; "He carried his loneliness around with him like an instrument case. It never left his side."

Very little, insightful criticism or critical essays have been produced regarding Jazz and the people who play it and live it. Dyer has done more than write mere history or criticism in But Beautiful, he has written (and played) a genre-exploding, lyrical meditation on Jazz and on the terrifying, exhilarating possibilities of the music itself and what ought to be recognized as a new form of fictional riffing.

A travel book about not being where you are, 06 Jan 2008
This is not Geoff Dyer's best book. In fact, it's his worst, but Dyer's less good books are so much better than most other writer's best books that it deserves five stars anyway.

This only appears to be 'Geoff Dyer writes a travel book about some exotic places'. In fact, as fans of the man's work are aware, each book he writes is a chapter in a sort of ongoing autobiography. The problem with this one is that it's the most nakedly autobiographical one, travel books being what they are. The Travel Writer persona is not a mask that suits Dyer. His book on WW1, or his sort-of critical study of DH Lawrence, are more absorbing because they're about Dyer identifying with his subjects. Here, he has only himself as tourist to identify with. It also appears that he wasn't having the best time during his travels; there are strong hints at some sort of serious breakdown. This means that his customary stimulating interest in the outside world is somewhat muted - it's one of the most introspective travel books ever written.

Fortunately for us all he seems to have rallied, because he went on to write one of his best and richest books, 'The Ongoing Moment', a superb meditation on photography. In the meantime, savour this book for its melancholy, its troubled nostalgia, its longing to be somewhere else, and not least for its hilarious account of the author attempting to change out of his wet trousers in the toilet of a cafe in Amsterdam while very, very stoned - possibly the funniest two pages of English literature I have ever read.

A tour de force of tediousness, 07 Jun 2007
Travel books are invariably about more than mere journeys - they are evocations of places (the sights, the smells); they detail strange cultures experienced and fascinating people met; often, they reveal as much about the author as they do about the journey. I'm sad to say that this book is almost entirely about the author, which might have been worth reading had he come across as an interesting, insightful or even insane character. He doesn't. This book is a woeful waste of paper; an almost endless plod through a series of fascinating destinations, none of which the author bothers to investigate for the reader. Instead he talks endlessly about himself and his tedious little adventures. There are mild nuggets of humour here and there, granted, but they are rare. Much more common are his accounts of getting wasted, and the utterly dull 'adventures' he has while under the influence. The Paris Story can be summed up in a sentence - "Met a girl in a cafe, smoked some dope, she wandered off, I was a little worried about her but fortunately she got home alright." I challenge subsequent reviewers to prove that I've missed something of epoch-defining importance in this chapter.
He comes across as the very worst type of teenage drug bore. What's more, he seems to regard himself as something of an intellectual, justifying this rather mystifying belief by repeatedly reminding the reader that he's "read a lot of W. H. Auden." Good for you old boy!
Read this book if you must. If you like it, please drop me a line and tell me what on earth I missed.


Luxury, 01 Apr 2007
Dyer manages to sum up the essence of luxury - having the time and freedom from external pressures to navel gaze. Personally I love having the time and being in the places where I can enjoy such navel gazing. I have travelled in many of the places featured in this book - Dyer captures the essence of such places and the people who sit there, similarly, navel gazing.

If you've enjoyed dossing around Koh Phangan, or lost a few weekends in Amsterdam, you'll love this book.

It's also eloquently written, witty and beautifully structured, but all that stuff goes without saying !

"Self-Indulgence For Those Who Can Be Bothered To Finish The Book", 24 Oct 2006
I finished reading this book last night and breathed a deep sigh of relief when I got to the final page.
Dyer is clearly very erudite and his artistic,poetic,philosophical and anthropological references are no doubt well-informed (although often quite tenuous!)but my overall feeling about his musings are that of the kind of people you meet when far away from home who are pot-smoking drifters who take great pleasure in leading the lives of self-professed 'hippies' and over-philosophising everything which, after several chapters, becomes highly irritating, particularly as Dyer is so self-congratulatory about his ramblings and those of his girlfriend 'Circle' (oh please...).
Many of us can identify with the experience of getting to know oneself and finding some kind of inner peace and I too have a knowledge of the arts etc... and understand the allusions but feel the book is totally self-indulgent and has no more of a 'wow' factor than any other amateur travel journal.


Geoff Dire, 19 Jul 2006
Ever had a dinner guest who seems amusing at first, but then doesn't stop talking about himself all night long? Well - this is the book version.
Despite all his globe-trotting, Dyer is interested only in his internal landscape, which is pretty barren territory.
If you're a youngster having a pre-university gap year abroad, this pseudo fluff may appeal. If, however, you've had a modicum of experience yourself, this book is likely to come across as tedious navel-gazing.

Add my name to the list of people who can't be bothered - with any more Dyer.

Classy Clubbing Novel, 06 Nov 2001
This is a story about two couples in their twenties in Paris enjoying life and having fun. One of the characters, Luke, turns away from life and love for no clear reason and the thrust of the narrative is another character's attempts to understand why he's done this. Since we know it's all going to end in tears, the happy times become all the more poignant. It's very well written and definitely far classier and more thoughtful than your average "we went out clubbing and took loads of drugs" yoof novel.

A magnificent work of late twentieth century fiction, 09 Aug 2000
'Paris Trance' traces the lives of two newly formed couples in Paris, thrown together by a volatile, and at times uncertain, bond of friendship, love, lust, sex, and drugs, and their adventures and relationships both inside and around Paris. 'Paris Trance' is skilfully executed throughout, capturing everything from the frustration (both emotional and sexual) of a single man in the heat of a Parisian summer, to the attempts of Dyer's narrator to make sense of the flourishing and later degenerating relationships and personalities around him.

Dyer crafts 'Paris Trance' at his own idiosyncratic (and now his trademark) intersection of genres, not least in his fascination with the ability of prose to convey the visual, as with film and photography, while always remaining sensitive to the emotional climate of the world that he creates. Dyer is also clearly the inheritor of the spirit, if not the style, of earlier twentieth century works of fiction such as Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', and F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Tender is the Night', with his concern for the degeneration of social relationships and the perils of admiration which approaches hero worship. It is the skill with which Dyer executes his exploration into the nature of highly restricted social circles, bordering on philosophy and social psychology, which makes 'Paris Trance' a magnificent, and thoroughly engaging, work of late Twentieth Century fiction.

Ceaselessly into the Past: F. Scott, Intimacy and Ecstasy, 17 Jul 2000
Paris Trance is both a novel and an elegy about romance, destiny, intimacy, and the rise and fall of an intense, short-lived friendship between two couples living an expatriate existence in 1990's Paris. The main character, Luke Barnes, arrives in Paris animated by a half-formed desire to write a novel, or perhaps make a film and live in a world of possibilities where one can move towards the center of one's own life; rapture, intimacy, consuming and discarding each moment. Luke forms a strong, brotherly bond with Alex, another Brit expat for whom Luke becomes one part of a vicariously lived whole. The two men hook up with girlfriends, and far too much time is spent on the humdrum details of each relationship/romance, which seems to slow the novel down considerably. But this problem is more than made up for by the strong focus on the bonds of friendship and intimacy between the two couples, deepend by the shared experience of tripping on ecstasy while being blasted by loud, house music until six o'clock in the morning; "They were still full of chemically engendered expectation but that anticipation was gradually coming to refer to the past, to something that had already taken place. They were wide wake, distracted, glowing." But Luke's quest to reach the peak of happiness, to "move to the center of one's own life" is seen by Sahra, Alex' girlfriend and Luke's friend, as a destructive flaw; "He doesn't really have emotions. Just appetites. At the moment he's as happy as a sandboy because there's so much still to gobble down. But what's he going to be like when he's tried it all ? " The emotional void/greed of Luke is further explored by his desire to hang on to, for a moment longer, a "tantalizing echo" of an experience lived just seconds ago; "And at that moment you glimpse the Eternal Recurrence as a potential fact, as a mechanism, rather than a metaphor. That is the solution contained in the riddle of deja vu. All memories are premonitions, all premonitions are memories". The novel also explores what one might call an expat view of existentialism, of seeing one's destiny not from the perspective of the positive will to achieve, but from that of failing so absolutely that one embraces it as one's true self, true destiny, the triumph of negative possibilities; "By letting things occur as they did he believed he was penetrating more deeply into himself, getting closer to the core. "All of the things he associated with happiness came to be lodged absolutely in his past. "his falling short was a kind of triumph; he was being faithful to some part of himself, to his destiny". One can't help but be reminded of the main character in Albert Camus' The Stranger, and of the "Black winds" of one's negative destiny. Luke never writes his novel, never makes his film, breaks up with Nicole, a woman he loves deeply, and separates himself from everything that makes him happy in an effort to confront his true self, his blighted destiny; "there are all sorts of propensities in people-but there are other kinds of negative potential: the potential for wasting the talents we are given, for blighting our prospects of happiness". Geoff Dyer is as close as Gen-X will get to reading their own version of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Paris Trance is an excellent, if extreme, example. This novel is not spectacularly well written, but it does (or should) strike a powerful chord with nearly anyone in late twenties or early thirties who have ever lived to eat up whatever happiness they could grab, and wondered if there was anything worthwhile beyond rapture.

Brilliant, wonderful, gorgeous, 25 Jun 2000
An elegant and mesmerising novel - really, adjectives don't do it justice! Geoff Dyer evokes a happiness so intense it can't last - and knowing that it doesn't somehow makes the story all the sweeter. Buy this, devour it, and read The Colour of Memory as well - your world will be a better place.

Buy this book!, 07 Dec 1999
Beautiful prose from one of England's best writer

Beauty in the bleak, 21 Jul 2004
I wasn't looking for an exciting plot, or an entirely new scenario. I know that the dole-queue of 80's Britain has been explored before and will be again, in fiction. This may be a nostalgic read, but isn't a nostalgic write as such, as it was first published in 1989.

I like Dyer's characters, I care about them. I find them real. They are sweet, sincere, kind people, with strong bonds of friendship. I care what they do, I enjoyed being part of their time together, time when often little happens but they enjoy eachother's company and the passing of time. I felt that male friendship was touchingly portrayed. These men have feelings (of course), they show them, not through flashy shows of emotion and "new-man" (this was before the "new-man of course!), but in the care they show one another.

Above all, I like that Dyer enjoys words. He clearly cares about language, and paints with it. The book is very sensual - lots of visual passages, but plenty of sounds and smells, too, and the feeling of hot or cold - depending on the season - well-evoked. In a couple of places I worried the prose was moving slightly towards the purple (but only everso slightly!). And in a few places I found the repetition of fire or jet-trail imagery a bit tiring, though on reflection, I think this adds to the feeling of repetition in the lives of Dyer's characters, who do live in a bit of a cycle.

I like Dyer's observation of detail, and the way that through this Brixton becomes almost a character in the novel. Though he acknowledges the bleak, miserable environment these friends inhabit, he does find the beauty in it, and conveys that beauty admirably.

I found the ending touching, it made me think back to earlier passages, and really tied the book up well for me.

I have read that Dyer is working on a book about a series of photographs. This makes perfect sense to me, as there is a lot of that in this novel - photographs evoking memories and wonderings. I will look forward to that book.

Certainly this is a novel I would recommend to friends, and one I know I will re-read.

A book with its own music, 17 Jan 2002
Usually when you read a book, they say the first ten lines are what hooks you. Words in this book are like a running rivulet running its own path, shinning and clear, resounding like crystal in a swiss pastoral scenery. There's music in this book, even if music is not the theme, the words are music and even when they show tranquil despair they are very agreeable to read.
Its a book for people who like movies and good films like trainspotting

Dolequeue Revisited, 04 Dec 2001
The Colour of memory is a nostalgic drench in those balmy happy-go-lucky days of 1980s unemployment, a sort of Dolequeue Revisited. Its cast of urbane, witty, 20-something Brixton-dwellers coast serenely from park to pub to party in a haze of soft drugs, beer, and sparkling conversation. This is the Dandy Aristocracy of the DHSS, critics and artists all, cunningly staying clear of the squalor of a dull job, biding their time on housing benefit until their genius is recognised. They are only occasionally menaced by the more brutal elements of the society around them, elements never as thin, beautiful, or musically-sophisticated as themselves, often identifiable by the noun+faced adjectives applied to them: lard-faced, lager-faced, pavement-faced etc. The story is told in short, episodic passages, each rising to a final poetic epiphany - ah, so many epiphanies in those blissful days of Thatcherite largesse! The writing is crafted in strong equiAmisian contours, marked by the play and reversal of cliche, the sharp decoding of metropolitan debris, the random danger of proletarian violence. It ends with a thin ooze of vague, unearned tragedy, and, rather strangely, warms one to the memory of Norman Tebbit.

This is not a great novel, 30 Nov 2001
This books seems to be little other than the cobbling together of the author's favourite quotes, most of which are numbingly familiar.

Dyer did write quite a good book called 'The Search', well worth tracking down.

'The Colour of Memory' fires off a few blanks and does not exactly resonate.

What Remains of our Hopes: Colour Of Memory, 14 Aug 2000
Geoff Dyer's The Colour Of Memory is an amazingly well-written novel, (the author's first) perhaps more so for how it is written than for what actually takes place on the pages, more about this a bit later. The narrator of Colour Of Memory, plus five or six close friends are all young, university-educated and living a near-impoverished existence in a series of barely inhabitable South London, Council flats.

In Colour Of Memory, Dyer describes in beautifully vivid detail a series of intimate snapshots of life lived day to day on the margins of Thatcher's Great Britain in the mid-1980's. The novel begins with a kind of lost generation, Hemingway-esque line; "In August it rained all the time-heavy, corrosive rain from which only nettles and rusty metal derived refreshment". From this line onward, the tone is set with the narrator losing his low-paying, unengaging, government-sponsored job as well as being evicted from his Brixton apatment. Narrator and friends are all portrayed by the author with a wistful, near-biographical approach; discussing the Darwinist, capitalist landscape of Tory-dominated Britain, listening to Maria Callas on a cloudy afternoon, arguing the merits of John Coltrane's sixties-era recordings, smoking strong dope on the roof of the narrator's flat, attending parties in dangerous neighborhoods and just scraping by while trying to nurture their separate, artistic ambitions. Without question, the characters of Colour Of Memory, narrator included, are all 1980's beatniks of one kind or another and the novel makes clear how quixotic a life this really is, living in a society and an atmosphere that values financial prowess and ordinary survival skills over creativity of any variety.

What takes place on the pages of Colour Of Memory is seemingly woven together with an invisible thread, there appears to be no obvious plot, rhyme or reason to the action. Yet, the reader is propelled forward through one shimmering vignette after another, one can't articulate why, one just seems to feel some connection to these people and therefore cares about what comes next, no matter the order of happenings. Colour Of Memory could be seen as self-indulgent and a trifle mundane, but fortunately for the reader it easily escapes this fate by presenting itself as a compelling group of beautifully written recollections, sometimes sad, usually funny and certainly tracing the beginnings of a great writer. Maybe Dyer summarized this novel before it even began with a quote from John Berger, probably his biggest influence: " What remains of our hopes is a long despair which will engender them again".

A 'Beautiful' writer in a 'Damned' era , 11 Oct 2007
F.Scott Fitzgerald is a writer of remarkable talent. His prose sparkles with a beauty that juxtaposes with his often tragic subject matter. 'The Beautiful and Damned' explores some of the issues that would plague his own career as a writer who never really managed to top the acclaim bestowed upon 'The Great Gatsby', a devastatingly beautiful and seminal piece of 20th century literature. 'The Beautiful and Damned' boasts an array of would-be writers, actresses and dancers whom epitomise an era of of vanity, excess and alcohol. But underneath the shiny veneer lurks the inner turmoil of Anthony's talent that is never successfully fulfilled and capricious Gloria's despair that her good looks cannot be maintained. Anthony's descent into alcohol and depression is truely heartbreaking, especially as it ironically peaks as both the main protagonists' bad luck is about to change. This is perhaps telling of the era that Fitzgerald evoked in lucid vitality with the hustle and bustle of fashion, jazz, and alcoholic delights, but at the same time viewed with cynicism. As Gloria bemoans that she cannot afford a much in vogue grey squirrel fur coat, and her husband self medicates with copious amounts of alcohol, Fitzgerald's prose exposes the subtle horrors of innocence lost to an era of excess.

Important development on the way to writing The Great Gatsby, 30 Jun 1999
This is by no means Fitzgerald's greatest work - it pales in comparison to The Great Gatsby. Still, it is extremely funny, well-written and at times intelligent. But Fitzgerald almost spoils his own work by his unnecessary use of sub-titles and his ocassional descents into a overly self-conscious writing style - reference is even made to his first novel, This Side Of Paradise. I actually think that The Beautiful And Damned, despite its obvious flaws, is much better than This Side Of Paradise, which is rather disjointed.

A Lost Jewel, 25 Nov 1998
i enjoyed this book much more than The Great Gatsby. I true masterpiece and a must-read for all thinking young people.

The Beautiful and Damned -- Damned Beautiful!, 03 Dec 1997
We're coming into an age referred to by many as the "Cocktail Nation," and our youth is experimenting with swing dancing, swing music, making bathtub absinthe, and trying to recreate the air of my most favorite decade of all times: the roaring '20s.

"The Beautiful and Damned," is by far the best work by the man who almost single-handedly created the image of the flapper. F. Scott Fitzgerald was as much the voice of his generation as we claim modern alternative musicians are the voice of ours.

What a fantastic book!, 02 Jan 2008
A middle-class englishwoman and her banker husband travel round Yugoslavia in the 1930s. Sounds dull, but it's actually one of the most engrossing books I have read for a long time - all 1200 pages of it. The digressions on the history of the Republic of Dubrovnik, Diocletian's palace in Split, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand etc are absolutely magical.

West has some odd ideas about religion and monarchy. She seems to be an Islamophobe and a Turkophobe, and I don't entirely like what she writes about Jews. She is an unashamed Serbophile in a way that is most unfashionable these days, and she has scant sympathy for anyone else's nationalism, but her heart and brain are undoubtedly in the right place.

Worth a read by anyone interested in the history of the Balkans, though not to be read uncritically.

The Mind of the Balkan, 18 Feb 2001
Never before and never after have the mind of this tortured region - the Balkan - been thus penetrated: with such passionate, humane precision, with such eloquence, with such empathy and such conviction. A classic, if ever there was any, a masterpiece without a doubt. It is as fresh as yesterday's news and as ancient as the monasteries it describes. It is an eternal work, a must for Balkan afficionados, a work of scholarship and love. Influenced by it, I wrote this (in my 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'): 'The Balkans is the unconscious of the world...It is here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity - the tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-Christianity and Islam - is still easily discernible.' Thank you, Rebecca West. Sam Vaknin, author of 'After the Rain - How the West Lost the East'.

A must read if your traveling in the Balkans, 21 Dec 1999
After reading some of the history of the Balkans, all other authors recommended this book, and after reading it I can see why. It is the format others try to obtain. She keeps the reader wa