Out of Sheer Rage cover art

Out of Sheer Rage

In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence

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About this listen

Sitting down to write a book about his hero D. H. Lawrence, Geoff Dyer finds himself compelled to write about anything else. He is in fact compelled to do more or less anything else instead of write.

In Sicily he is too preoccupied by his hatred of seafood to follow the great writer's footsteps; in Mexico he cannot get beyond a drug-induced erotic fantasy on a nudist beach...and yet, incredibly, this attempt to write a 'sober academic study' reveals the hold Lawrence and his work still exert on us today.

Out of Sheer Rage is a complete one-off, a richly comic study of the combination of bad temper, procrastination and the uncanny power of obliquity.

©2018 Geoff Dyer (P)2018 Canongate Books Ltd Art & Literature Authors Funny Witty Rage

Critic reviews

"An intriguing, magnetic, genre-rattling book." (The Times)

"Marvellous...a glorious truant from study...gives a better picture of [Lawrence] than any biography I know." (James Wood, Guardian)
"The kind of book that gives literary criticism a bad name. Hilarious!" (John Berger)
All stars
Most relevant
Most of this book is complaining about one thing or another, but it’s somehow uplifting and true and funny. Good droll narration.

Enjoyably droll

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Tom Hollander has exactly the right tone to carry off this book by Geoff Dyer. The work is a fantastic read, although it takes a while to get going as Dyer goes around in circles discussing what he might or might not do. I am aware this was done on purpose but in my opinion, it is overcooked at the beginning, and his editor should have reined him in. You want to scream 'I get it, move on!' Other than that, this book is highly original, funny as a F, and worth your money.

fabulous performance of a hilarious book

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This is a book about trying and failing to write a book about DH Lawrence. It’s much more enjoyable as a failure of a book about DH Lawrence than successful book about DH Lawrence would be. Probably.

Brilliant

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Loved Tom Hollanders dry reading of this book that makes me laugh like nothing else!

Got funny looks for laughing so much in public

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At first this seems like an entertaining enough exposition of footloose, literary prevarication, a funny meditation - although Dyer hates meditation - on what it’s like to write a book, fits and starts and block and all, all in book form.
It becomes much more than that. He has interesting things to say about freedom, work, destiny and the passions which drive us from where we start to wherever we set out to get to, or at least to elsewhere.
No knowledge of DH Lawrence required.

More than at first it seems

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