Asian Window

Pico Iyer reviews “Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi” by Geoff Dyer. In the New York Times:

When Martin Amis gave a central character in his scabrous, compulsive novel “Money” the name John Self, he was showing (or showing off) the impenitence and outsize ambitions of his satire on materialism and the ego. When Geoff Dyer, in his profoundly haunting and fearless new novel, gives his protagonist the name Jeff Atman – invoking the Hindu word for the true and universal self – he’s doing something much more subtle and original. Dyer’s trademark wit and uniqueness, in fact, surround you before you’ve even turned to the first page: the first half of his title, “Jeff in Venice,” at once offers a quippy come-on and announces he’s going to subvert and update the classic novella by Thomas Mann (putting the self, or anti-­self, in place of death); the second half, “Death in Varanasi,” alerts you that he will extend his hyper-­contemporary search all the way to classical India, playing off one Old World city of palaces against another and propelling his story into the domain of Allen Ginsberg and all those other loose-limbed seekers who have turned that holy city of Hinduism into a backpacker’s Vatican.

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