Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It - Geoff Dyer

The first few chapters of Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It are quite confusing and you are not really sure what kind of book you are reading or where exactly it is going. It is not exactly a travel book, although Dyer takes us to a different location in each chapter - Amsterdam, Cambodia, Rome, Libya. While the surroundings are important, the real journey is going on inside the author’s head as Dyer unselfconsciously looks inward, looking for meaning in his life. Like a dislocated road movie, there appears to be no progression, development or destination in sight, the book as fragmented as the mind of the author himself as it jumps from location to location.

Relationships are a prominent theme, although the book doesn’t have a cast of characters that stray beyond each individual chapter, each chapter in a different place and a different exploration of ideas. It appears fragmentary and aimlessly drifting, but it is not without a plot. It clearly has a central theme running through it. The novel is not about individual characters, but about people and a search to understand oneself and the people and the world around us.

Many of the ideas Dyer uses are re-cycled and he makes no pretence of originality and he lists sources and influences at the end of the book. His Rome chapter starts to sound like Hemingway, only instead of the alcoholic haze, Dyer sees the world through the confusion of Ecstasy, Skunk, LSD and other mind-altering drugs. “Apart from Nick, everyone I knew was going away. Each day the city became hotter, emptier, quieter”, could be straight out of The Sun Also Rises, but then the city starts to conform to  Fellini’s depiction of it in Roma, with its layering of history and great observations of the Romans acting their parts, “being Roman”. 

Dyer takes this dialectical approach to his ideas, drawing on other writings, poetry, philosophies, films - anything that appeals to him, testing their validity and then forming a modern outlook. This doesn’t always succeed. Occasionally the philosophising is half-baked and clearly nonsensical, such as in the (otherwise brilliant) Leptis Magna chapter where he tries to describe his overwhelming desire to go to Libya and his total apathy at the same time - being interested in the place but bored by it at the same time. He is keen on subverting established thoughts or ideas in this way, turning Foucault’s ‘archaeology of knowledge’ into an ‘archaeology of ignorance’. Often though these ideas are just plain gibberish and his attempts to make them sound meaningful are a waste of time.

Earlier in the book he tries the same technique, considering a counter-movement to  Frank O’Hara’s “I do this and I do that” along the basis of “I did not do this and I do not do that” - but thankfully he doesn’t develop on that and leaves it as the vague whimsy it is. This happens increasingly more often, ideas and plans fizzle out as he can’t be bothered to follow them up. It all seems like too much trouble. However at the same time, the increasing indifference and indolence do give some idea on how fractured his mind is and where it is going. It gradually starts to become evident that the author is slowly and inevitably heading for a breakdown. His behaviour becomes more and more bizarre, his nerves are clearly shattered, his ideas are getting more absurd, he is experimenting with different and more mind-unbalancing drugs and it is clear that he is approaching breaking point. When it finally happens, it is clear that he needs to reach that stage of absolute rock-bottom in order to achieve some kind of self-realisation and move on from it.

Again the author borrows from other sources to describe what he is going through.  His choice of Tarkovsky’s Stalker however is a good one. If you have ever seen that remarkable film, you will know exactly what he is talking about.  In Stalker, a group of misfits are trying to enter The Zone, a mysterious place where the wretched, the lonely, people exploring for meaning, hope to reach a state of complete tranquility and inner peace, but not everyone makes it through with their sanity. In the end though - and it is there in the book although it is not clear that the author realises this himself - it is the process of getting there rather than reaching any ‘Zone’ that is what should be the outcome. I think the author strives too hard to point to one specific thing at the end, a moment of enlightenment or a specific goal or achievement.

As a result the final chapter seems totally unnecessary and unconvincing after what has come before; the whole process, the total contradiction and confusion of Leptis Magna followed by the rock bottom in Detroit would have summed everything up for me and been a fitting end to the book. But I won’t argue with Dyer, who is the person obviously who has gone through the experience and if that moment is the one that he needs to grasp onto, then so be it. Up to that point though, we have a fascinating and brilliant journey to that place. Superb writing, full of ideas and original observations, this is the product of a brilliant and astute intellect at odds with itself.