LINES SUCH AS 'one of the best writers alive' appear on most Geoff Dyer books. The plaudits from reviewers mean nothing to his bank account, though.
Even 'cult writer' - the old consolation for scribes devoted to working in insular, reasonably lucrative, pockets of youth literature - is a little ahead of Dyer's commercial status.
Part of the problem is that if a store stocks his books, they'll be scattered around the premises. You may find his work in travel, history, music, war, fiction, memoir, non-fiction, philosophy, criticism and now photography.
The big plus in being a little-known, highly respected writer with an assorted shelf of books to your name is that publishers let you follow your nose. Little, Brown & Co had no idea what Dyer was even writing when he delivered the manuscript for The Ongoing Moment. The publisher barely wavered when he explained that this follow-up to his most successful book, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, a sardonic collection of backpacker tales, was about 20th-century photography.
Perhaps the publisher thinks writers as good as Dyer usually cover costs and sometimes strike an untapped vein of sales. Maybe it just likes having his talent on the roster. In any case, the most Little, Brown can hope to gain from The Ongoing Moment are yet more literary prizes for Dyer and the prestige of the review in Harper's magazine by Dyer's friend and mentor John Berger, an art critic, novelist and painter.
'Like all writers, I want the book to sell,' says Dyer, 47, from his home in Camden, London. 'But every book has been an abrupt change from what's gone before. First of all, there was a very serious academic book about John Berger [Ways of Telling], then that druggy novel The Colour of Memory, then the book about jazz [But Beautiful], then another novel [The Search], then the book about the first world war [The Missing of the Somme], then the crazy book about D.H. Lawrence [Out of Sheer Rage], then the novel Paris Trance, books of essays [John Berger: Selected Essays and What Was True], then Yoga, a travel book.
'There is a consistency there and the consistency is in the constant changing. What's happened is that any readership I gain for one book I immediately lose for the next one. But by the time of Yoga people were getting aware of this. That one did have a small following. But The Ongoing Moment inherently appeals to a much smaller audience.