0:00:04 > 0:00:09Geoff Dyer writes fiction and writes about his travels with equal ease.
0:00:09 > 0:00:12He has a pen that's always being described as "original".
0:00:12 > 0:00:15In his new book, White Sands Experiences from the Outside World,
0:00:15 > 0:00:19he is out in the world.
0:00:19 > 0:00:21In French Polynesia, the strange wastelands of New Mexico,
0:00:21 > 0:00:23in the forbidden city of Beijing.
0:00:23 > 0:00:26But through it all, he is talking, of course, about himself,
0:00:26 > 0:00:28about the business of writing, and about the strange impulses
0:00:28 > 0:00:32that we all feel from time to time about wanting to be somewhere else.
0:00:32 > 0:00:33Welcome.
0:00:33 > 0:00:38Geoff Dyer, we all need to travel, don't we?
0:00:52 > 0:00:54Geoff Dyer, we all need to travel, don't we?
0:00:54 > 0:00:57Er, yeah, but staying put is nice too, isn't it?
0:00:57 > 0:01:03Not for you, I suspect?
0:01:03 > 0:01:06Well, the more you travel, with all the kind of exhaustion
0:01:06 > 0:01:09and inconvenience that entails, the more attractive the idea of just
0:01:09 > 0:01:17staying put and sitting tight.
0:01:17 > 0:01:20Well, it may be attractive, but when you see what you get out
0:01:20 > 0:01:28of these experiences - with all the confusions
0:01:28 > 0:01:31and all their surprises - you realise that as a writer
0:01:31 > 0:01:35particularly and as someone with an active imagination,
0:01:35 > 0:01:37there's always something to be gleaned from the simplest,
0:01:37 > 0:01:39most bizarre everyday experience in somewhere new.
0:01:39 > 0:01:41Yeah, I mean, that is certainly true.
0:01:41 > 0:01:44And even when you get to a place and it turns out that
0:01:44 > 0:01:51what you were going there for hasn't quite delivered.
0:01:51 > 0:01:53what you were going there for hasn't quite delivered,
0:01:53 > 0:01:55invariably, there's some kind of pleasing side-effect
0:01:55 > 0:01:57or incidental pleasure which renders the trip worthwhile
0:01:57 > 0:02:07in a way that sometimes the original purpose didn't.
0:02:07 > 0:02:09And this book, White Sands, begins with a quest
0:02:09 > 0:02:10to French Polynesia.
0:02:10 > 0:02:11Yeah.
0:02:11 > 0:02:13And that falls into the category that you've just
0:02:14 > 0:02:14mentioned, doesn't it?
0:02:14 > 0:02:16Yes, because it was a really...
0:02:16 > 0:02:18It was sort of a foolish undertaking.
0:02:18 > 0:02:20Because I didn't just want to go to French Polynesia,
0:02:20 > 0:02:23which is one thing you can do, I wanted to actually step
0:02:23 > 0:02:24into a Gauguin painting.
0:02:24 > 0:02:29Not as one of the bathing women, I take it?
0:02:29 > 0:02:32No, but more as sort of the Gauguin figure.
0:02:32 > 0:02:34And, you know, you see brochures for French Polynesia
0:02:34 > 0:02:37and what they don't advertise is, you can have the full-on
0:02:37 > 0:02:41Gauguin experience.
0:02:41 > 0:02:43Because that's really no longer available.
0:02:43 > 0:02:45And actually, Gauguin found after he'd been there first of all,
0:02:45 > 0:02:48went back to Paris for a little while, returned to Tahiti,
0:02:48 > 0:02:53and he found that, oh, he wasn't having the Gauguin experience there.
0:02:53 > 0:02:55It's interesting how disappointment can sometimes be the best
0:02:55 > 0:02:56thing for a writer.
0:02:56 > 0:02:57Yeah.
0:02:57 > 0:03:00I mean, there's a piece in the book where we go to see...
0:03:00 > 0:03:03my wife and I go to see the Northern Lights and, you know,
0:03:03 > 0:03:07the Northern Lights don't appear.
0:03:07 > 0:03:10And at one point, we hear that we're too far north to see
0:03:10 > 0:03:11the Northern Lights.
0:03:11 > 0:03:13And that was a thoroughly disappointing trip,
0:03:13 > 0:03:15except that it was worth going because out of it,
0:03:15 > 0:03:21this piece of writing emerged.
0:03:21 > 0:03:23Because all the places described in this sort
0:03:23 > 0:03:25of collection of experiences are in their way fascinating.
0:03:25 > 0:03:27The emptiness of New Mexico, for example, which is
0:03:27 > 0:03:33a very affecting place.
0:03:33 > 0:03:36For me, in New Mexico, I was there for a very concentrated
0:03:36 > 0:03:38experience of landscape, because there was one particular bit
0:03:38 > 0:03:43of it I was going to.
0:03:43 > 0:03:46It was Walter De Maria's Lightning Field, that land-art installation
0:03:46 > 0:03:49where he's installed these silver poles in a grid that's a kilometre
0:03:49 > 0:03:51by a mile, I think.
0:03:51 > 0:03:54And the idea is that it attracts lightning.
0:03:54 > 0:03:57Of course, it turns out that it's very vulgar to go
0:03:57 > 0:03:59to the Lightning Field and actually expect to see any lightning.
0:03:59 > 0:04:01It remains a very rare occurrence.
0:04:01 > 0:04:02But as a sort of...
0:04:02 > 0:04:04Erm, it's got an incredible sort of gravitational pull,
0:04:04 > 0:04:08that work of art, if you can call it that.
0:04:08 > 0:04:09Well, these big installations are extraordinary.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13But do you feel confined here?
0:04:13 > 0:04:15Do you know, I'd put it the other way round, actually.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18I mean, I think actually, the natives of Texas or Arizona,
0:04:18 > 0:04:20they're aware that they live in a place with big skies,
0:04:20 > 0:04:24but I think when you come from this cloud-shrouded rock in the Atlantic,
0:04:24 > 0:04:33you get a real sense of your spirit opening up.
0:04:33 > 0:04:35Many of your writings have connections that people
0:04:35 > 0:04:39who follow you on the page understand and enjoy.
0:04:39 > 0:04:41There's one particular connection between the Lightning Field that
0:04:41 > 0:04:44you mentioned a few moments ago and the Somme, which we're
0:04:44 > 0:04:47all thinking of this week as one of the big moments
0:04:47 > 0:04:49in the recollection of the First World War.
0:04:49 > 0:04:51The book that you wrote is being reissued to
0:04:51 > 0:05:01mark the experience.
0:05:01 > 0:05:04What did you learn first of all, or feel first of all,
0:05:04 > 0:05:09when you made that journey to the battlefields of Flanders?
0:05:09 > 0:05:13Yep, so I was actually living in Paris, writing a novel,
0:05:13 > 0:05:16and then I did something I'd wanted to do for ages - this
0:05:16 > 0:05:18was in the early-'90s - to visit the cemeteries
0:05:18 > 0:05:21on the Somme, not really being sure what I'd find.
0:05:21 > 0:05:24And then I came to that memorial designed by Sir Edwin
0:05:24 > 0:05:26Lutyens...
0:05:26 > 0:05:27The Thiepval.
0:05:27 > 0:05:29Yeah.
0:05:29 > 0:05:33And there I saw, in huge letters, 'The Missing of the Somme'.
0:05:33 > 0:05:35And there was such a sense of something converging
0:05:35 > 0:05:40there and, at the same time, something emanating from it.
0:05:40 > 0:05:43And for me, I think that was the start of my fascination
0:05:43 > 0:05:45with these places where, if you like, history
0:05:45 > 0:05:47is manifest in geography, where the temporal is expressed
0:05:47 > 0:05:56in the spatial.
0:05:56 > 0:06:02When I saw this memorial and those words...
0:06:02 > 0:06:05And that word the 'Somme', I think I'd heard it at home before
0:06:05 > 0:06:08I heard it at school, and it seemed to me...
0:06:08 > 0:06:11I asked the question, what is it that drew me to this place?
0:06:11 > 0:06:14And of course, in order to answer that question, you have
0:06:14 > 0:06:15to answer some more.
0:06:15 > 0:06:19You know, what baggage did I bring?
0:06:19 > 0:06:19Cultural, historical, autobiographical, familial,
0:06:19 > 0:06:23this kind of thing.
0:06:23 > 0:06:29So yeah, it's a place you feel where some sort of...
0:06:29 > 0:06:34Some of the real defining things of our century -
0:06:34 > 0:06:36sorry, of the last century - converge there.
0:06:36 > 0:06:38The Somme, the memorial, is all about remembering,
0:06:38 > 0:06:40but there's a prophetic dimension to it as well because...
0:06:40 > 0:06:42Because of course, it looks ahead to a kind of whole
0:06:42 > 0:06:44century of disappearances, of places and people
0:06:44 > 0:06:50being destroyed.
0:06:50 > 0:06:52The subtitle to the book, Geoff, is 'Experiences
0:06:52 > 0:06:54from the Outside World' and it strikes me that word 'Experiences'
0:06:54 > 0:06:57is the important one.
0:06:57 > 0:07:00It's not a question of going somewhere simply to take a mental
0:07:00 > 0:07:02photograph or see something new, understand something new,
0:07:02 > 0:07:09it's something deeper.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12It's a feel, it's an experience of place that moves
0:07:12 > 0:07:13you very strongly.
0:07:13 > 0:07:15Yeah, the pieces in the book, they're not the equivalent
0:07:15 > 0:07:19of postcards, or photographs, of monuments or whatever.
0:07:19 > 0:07:20It's more that...
0:07:20 > 0:07:24And it's certainly not the case that the place is a kind of backdrop
0:07:24 > 0:07:25in front of which...
0:07:25 > 0:07:28a sort of passive backdrop in front of which dramas are being enacted.
0:07:28 > 0:07:31It's more that the place - say, the Forbidden City in Beijing -
0:07:31 > 0:07:36is a kind of active component in the drama.
0:07:36 > 0:07:40It's got its own kind of agency and power.
0:07:40 > 0:07:50Geoff Dyer, thank you very much. Thank you.