Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer Review

A young Geoff Dyer became enamoured of DH Lawrence and decided that he would one day write a book about his literary hero. An older Geoff Dyer decided to realise that ambition - and then realised that that book was beyond his abilities! Out of Sheer Rage is the result of that realisation.

I liked the idea of this book - essentially about procrastination - more than what the book turned out to be - a rather unremarkable travelogue. It’s a unique idea and speaks to anyone who’s ever tried writing a book. Dyer is a decent writer with a good sense of humour, and reading about failure from someone like that should be more entertaining. And yet the flashes of brilliance Dyer’s capable of were too few and far between for my liking.

He has a wonderful rant on how much he detests seafood, in the process mimicking Lawrence’s prose style by repeating words in the same paragraph or page (“filth”) which Lawrence did to express visceral scenes. His rant on how academic literary criticism kills everything it touches is great too. The book certainly earns its title from Dyer’s vitriol.

The title comes from a letter Lawrence wrote on 5 September 1914: “Out of sheer rage I’ve begun my book on Thomas Hardy. It will be about anything but Thomas Hardy I am afraid - queer stuff - but not bad.” You learn that not only is Dyer doing the same thing to Lawrence that Lawrence did for his literary hero, but that the two writers have a temper and Dyer brings the similarities closer through that mimic of Lawrence’s style in moments of passion.

The book is intermittently funny too. Dyer’s approach is to not bother reading any of the many of Lawrence’s novels that he hasn’t read, any of the author’s biographies, and not even consider re-reading the few that he has - he has nothing but contempt for Women in Love - and when he does summon up the will to do some research, he ends up reading about Rilke instead of Lawrence!

But he does actually read all seven volumes of Lawrence’s letters and communicate some of their contents, so that you do end up learning something of Lawrence as a person, rather than an artist, which is what interests Dyer anyway. “The fact that Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover means next to nothing to me; what matters is that he paid his way, settled his debts, made nice jam and marmalade, and put up shelves.” (p.152)

Besides reading all of Lawrence’s letters, the other concession Dyer makes in “researching” his book on Lawrence is to follow in his footsteps - no mean feat as Lawrence travelled widely in his 44 years - going to America, Mexico, and Italy. And this is what makes up the bulk of the book: Dyer’s accounts of this travelling.

He doesn’t enjoy the travelling much, gets injured, generally feels fed up, and mentions steadfastly not doing anything related to his Lawrence book. It just gets a bit tedious after a while. Not just repetitive but that the accounts themselves aren’t that funny or compelling.

You find out why he wrote this book towards the end - gotta do something, may as well do this - and I do think the book itself is a clever concept: a fourth-wall breaking look at the process of writing, while making fun of yourself, and occasionally providing insightful forays into your subject - not DH Lawrence but what we do with our lives. Except these passages were few and far between and rather than read about Dyer’s latest travel nightmare - most of which were fairly banal; delays, discomfort, etc. - I would’ve preferred actually reading more about Lawrence’s work from Dyer’s perspective.

Out of Sheer Rage is very accessible, the infrequent passage is inspired and Dyer is an affable narrator to spend a book with, but ultimately the book is a forgettable, dull travelogue disguised as something more creative.