Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence, by Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage is a book backed into a corner by its author’s pathological indecisiveness, selfishness, cynicism, and oppressively bleak sense of humor. Dyer only obliquely collides with his apparent subject (“a sober academic study of D. H. Lawrence”) during a shambolic trek from Paris to Rome to Greece to Sicily to Oxford to Oaxaca to New Mexico. From the outset it’s clear that Dyer has failed to achieve his stated goal and instead uses it as an excuse to deliver a sardonic, self-deprecatin travelogue that explores issues of literary legacy as well as the brass tacks of writing practice.
It’s a compelling structure in no small part because Dyer spares us sobriety (as well as, for the most part, D. H. Lawrence) and gives a brief exposition followed by an amusing, disastrous writing journey through southern Europe with his girlfriend, Laura, all before collapsing into a despair-riddled analysis of Lawrence’s letters and notes. In a way, he benefits from the charm of failure (writing about the failure to write is one of the book’s central concerns) while still making good on his deflected promise. From here though, Dyer resumes his travelogue and doubles down on all his worst qualities.
What really galls about the books’ second half is not only that Dyer broadcasts his insecurities as virtues but tries to lay them as the bedrock of some grand theory of literature. Because his foibles resonate with those of the good ol’ boys of Important Literature (Lawrence, of course, but also Nietzsche, Camus, and Rilke) he’s all too eager to deploy every grievance, every disappointment, every petty mishap as evidence for his bleak philosophy of Life and Art.[1] He may loathe Terry Eagleton and Co. for their alleged hit job on substantive literary analysis, but Dyer is just as much a (bad) theorist as the worst among them—instead of proffering an analysis of the mechanisms of literature or language, Dyer solipsistically reroutes his subject matter into justifications of his own curmudgeonliness writ large.[2]
Of course, I’ve stumbled into the classic mistake when it comes to this genre of writing: how can you criticize him for being an insufferable jack ass when he knows he’s coming across as an insufferable jack ass—isn’t that the whole point? It’s true to an extent; this is writing so self-reflexive that every time you turn the page Dyer’s leg jerks out and kicks you in the face as if you’ve tapped his knee with one of those little medical hammers. This is not a gimmick unique to Dyer but is kin with a handful of other cis/het-white-male writers of this period (some of whom are better than others: Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, Chuck Klosterman, Charlie Kaufmann, etc…). I don’t name-check these authors’ identity tags incidentally, but rather because this writing tends to reek of that particular subject position. Take Dyer’s god-awful scene at Zipolite Beach, for example, in which a literal damsel in distress acts as the fulcrum for his own insecurities re: manly sexual prowess. His whiteness is just as visible given the fantastical ease with which he seems to move across international borders (not to mention his frequent recourse to xenophobia).
Self-deprecation is a cornerstone of this kind of writing, but it often rings hollow given the hyper-performativity of its solicitations. The other key gesture of this style of writing is to erect a complex scaffolding of withering self-awareness around the book, in part to call attention to the highly constructed nature of any text, but also to deflect criticism for what might lie beneath the scaffolding. My problem with this particular move is not that it is “ironic,” (the scapegoating of irony in these instances turns out to be quite confusing) but rather that it is so smugly self-contained, a closed-circuit of thought devoid of good-faith inquiry. Out of Sheer Rage certainly makes a great show of its deft analysis of neglected literary sources paralleled by a rambling narrative of thwarted literary pilgrimage—but where that inquiry leads feels nebulous and static. Indeed, the book ends on much the same note of futile anxiety on which it began, not even a fist shaken at a cold, indifferent universe, but a shrug and a curse muttered under Dyer’s breath as he boards the bus. Certainly, no book is obligated to deliver a sea-change for its protagonist but given that Dyer’s perspective of the world is already so woefully conventional—from his (hetero)sexism to his classism to his fatphobia to his blithe racism—to see his reactionary meditations pass for edgy or transgressive literature is frankly alarming.
[1] For what it’s worth, this theory seems to amount to little more than Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus” drained of any hint of existential heroism.
[2] Just look at the cover art: a hazy photograph of Lawrence superimposed over one of Dyer.
Joshua Palmer 