Dominic Green
World Traveller Plus
White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World
By Geoff Dyer
Canongate 233pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
Connoisseurs of modern autobiography will recall Freaky Dancin’, the memoirs of Bez from Happy Mondays, especially the scene in which our hero, having taken ecstasy for the first time, experiences his consciousness opening ‘like a tap-it-and-unwrap-it Chocolate Orange’. Here, Bez confirms empirically Wittgenstein’s statement that the limits of language are the limits of the world.
I think of Bez’s enlightenment whenever I taste a slice of Terry’s Chocolate Orange, and also when I get to gorge on a new collection by Geoff Dyer. No sooner does Dyer tap and unwrap some strange experience at one end of the world or the other – the Northern Lights, or Gauguin’s Tahiti – than the whole thing falls apart. The original object of the journey dissolves before his eyes and the narrator’s personality shatters into shards.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency