Red and Yellow and Pink and Green

I’m a big fan of the writer Geoff Dyer. I particularly like his later works such as Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It and The Ongoing Moment because it’s from these – in comparison with his first novel (The Colour of Memory) that we can see how a good writer such as Dyer (and this isn’t the case with all writers, of course) continues to develop his/her authority of technique across the years. There’s nothing wrong with his first novel – I’ve just finished reading it and it’s unmistakably Dyer in its style, wit and characterisations – but it’s still very definitely a work of juvenilia; very laddish. Notwithstanding that, I wish I could write half as well as he does.

In this earlier work, his use of colour is extraordinary. It’s everywhere in the novel – on the walls, across the ceiling, on the floor, in your hair, dripping down the side of the sofa; it's all over the fictional world he creates. It’s only when you read something like this that you realise how bereft of colour other writing often is. Dyer creates a huge artist’s palette of throbbing colour which he then hurls at the canvass of his text in great bursts of oily swirls. I did feel from time to time that he was trying a bit too hard to aim the paint too high, but in the main it was deftly applied with Dyer’s customary precision. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that there’s a medical condition where the patient translates all emotions and feelings into colour (I think that’s what Clare Morrall is also dealing with in her fabulous novel Astonishing Splashes of Colour). Well, I think Geoff Dyer is diagnosing that condition in us all.

On a personal note (not that you’re interested), I’ve just had a curate’s egg of a weekend. I did some very useful writer-ish stuff on Friday evening which was good; I had a jolly rib-tickling evening outside the Broadway on Saturday when I actually laughed out loud (something I never do), and this was also good; but the remainder of the time seems to have been spent looking after a stray cat that wandered into my apartment some time ago. Like all strays, this one is very good at making himself comfortable, at eating & drinking me out of house and home, and at treating me with the lofty disdain that is characteristic of their nature. But unlike most strays, this one doesn’t seem to show any signs of moving on. I think I might have to change the lock on the cat-flap when he’s out hunting one day. Someone else will take him in, I’m sure.

Yes, my little stray was a temporary splash of colour I think (rather than "astonishing"); the memory of which is already, sadly, fading fast.