[William] Eggleston's photographs look like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekend he searches for the ticket - it must be somewhere - with a haphazard thoroughness that confounds established methods of investigation.
Geoff DyerI've never been much drawn towards satire of any kind. I don't like that style whereby you kind of stitch people up. But the deeper thing is that I just find these people so impressive and admirable.
Geoff DyerI guess that as life is speeded up and our capacity for concentration is being nibbled away at by all the obvious things, that leads us actually to be more susceptible to boredom.
Geoff DyerOne of the reasons so many nonfiction books are so boring is because what they've done, very diligently, is fulfill the terms of their proposals. They've written up their proposal, long-form, and often what this does is then set up a sort of serial deal, where the whole book can essentially be reduced back to the size of the original proposal!
Geoff DyerBeware of clichรฉs. Not just the ยญclichรฉs that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichรฉs of response as well as expression. There are clichรฉs of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ยญclichรฉs of form which conform to clichรฉs of expectation.
Geoff DyerNicholson Baker talks about the way in which the most successful nonfiction books are those that can be boiled down into an argument so that everybody can wade in with an opinion without having to undergo the inconvenience of having to read the book itself. The more you can condense it, the better.
Geoff Dyer