"Dyer''s virtue is not the whole-hearted embrace of experience and exotic locales but the parsing of degrees of disappointment. He also doesn''t pretend to be heading anywhere, but then ''White Sands'' turns into a memoir and becomes unexpectedly moving....Dyer''s tone as he relates his frightening brush with tragedy is calm and full of curiosity, possibly as a result of eschewing drama for his entire life. ''White Sands'' is a short book, brisk, hard to take and worth the attempt, just the sort of paradox Dyer most enjoys."
         -- Jane Smiley, Los Angeles Times

"With philosophical incisiveness, Dyer extols the virtue of landscape to conjure in himself the tangible and the mirage, the real and the illusion, the possessed object and the desired object. There is an undeniable joy throughout Dyer''s writing, an affirmation that travel and the experience of place--not merely being someplace, but being present in it--is a gateway to the humanity of past, present, and future. A mesmerizing compendium that reflects on time, place, and just what, exactly, we are doing here."
         -- Kirkus *starred review*

"What is the point of anything, really? That''s the basis for much, maybe most, of the comedy in this world. And that''s the basis for the singularly entertaining oeuvre of the writer Geoff Dyer, who takes a headlong interest in things -- ideas, places, works of art -- only to fall back on his default position: prone, and despairing. In his ninth nonfiction book (he''s also turned out four novels and several essay collections), the very droll Dyer makes a series of pilgrimages, then wonders what all the fuss was about. The fact that the reader knows that this will be his reaction takes away nothing from the amusement, and occasional enlightenment, of the journey. That''s Dyer''s specialty."
         -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Reasons to read Dyer, a critic, novelist, and creative nonfiction writer with a clutch of prestigious awards: he is an exhilaratingly superb stylist who uses his literary might and artistic and cultural erudition to express irreverent and irascible opinions and philosophical musings. And when he is in travelogue mode, as he is here, his observations are stunning in their candor about disappointment (his heart, he tells us, ''is prone to sinking'') and acidly hilarious....Wherever he goes (Watts Towers, the Forbidden City), Dyer reports on the glorious complexities of both outer and inner worlds with acerbity, delving intelligence, and disarming and profound wit."
         -- Booklist

"Echoes and residues and lingering resonances thrill the author, which is ultimately the wonderful thing about Dyer''s racing, wildly associative mind....When Dyer''s insights gain altitude, they are transcendent, reminding us that every square inch of the planet shimmers with the magnetism of its former life and former meaning."
         -- The Boston Globe

"Where do we come from, where are we going, and when we get there, what, specifically, defines a particular place? These are the questions Dyer asks in a series of essays ostensibly about travel but actually much deeper. (Not surprisingly, since he''s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature who''s won the E.M. Forster Award, a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, and a 2015 Windham-Campbell Prize.) From touring Beijing''s Forbidden City with a suspect guide to picking up a hitchhiker near a prison at White Sands, NM, to visiting Norway to see the Northern Lights, which never materialize, but finding a whole new view of things after a medical incident at home in Venice, CA (he''s always wanted to live there), English author Dyer will surely be taking readers on a smart and meditative journey."
         -- Library Journal

"Dyer is a masterful cultural critic....In this collection about places he has visited, he searches for traces of Gauguin in Tahiti, visits a glitzy rooftop bar in Beijing with a seductive tour guide, and makes field trips in Los Angeles to the Watts Towers and the former home of Theodor Adorno....His fluid and surprising imaginative shifts keep these essays endlessly engaging."
         -- BBC.com,

"Books to Read in May"

"Dyer''s originality, in part, arises from a distinctly postmodern attitude toward literary genres -- he blends them better, and more surprisingly, than most writers. Wry and exquisitely observed, Dyer''s books emerge from the vanishing points between fiction and autobiography, comical travelogue and philosophical treatise, cultural criticism and historical revision. If there''s a limit to what a book can be, Dyer hasn''t found it yet. His latest work,  White Sands: Experiences From the Outside World, [is] a collection of essays in which Dyer muses about travel, memory, and the effects of both on one''s sense of self."
         -- The Village Voice

"Reading Dyer is like taking a trip around the world with your best-read, wittiest, most interesting friend. He whispers gossip, history, theory, and criticism in your ear while ogling Gauguin''s Tahitian babes, having a quasi-religious experience at the earthwork Spiral Jetty in Utah, and flirting in Beijing''s Forbidden City."
         -- O Magazine

"Dyer is humorous and erudite, a rare combination. He uses his novelistic gifts--documenting social behaviors, seamlessly following streams of thought, juxtaposing observation and dialogue--to capture ephemera, fleetingness, beauty."
         -- Christine Smallwood, Bookforum

"Funny, insightful, and asking big questions of the planet, of art, of the sacred nodality of places, and why we bother to go anywhere at all."
         -- The Hindu

"Geoff Dyer is a master at illuminating both the personal and the universal, and that has never been more evident than in his new essay collection  White Sands.

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         -- Largehearted Boy (BookNotes)