The acclaimed British writer will be in conversation with Alessandro Raveggi at Gonzaga University, via Giorgio la Pira 11/13, at 6.30pm on November 19. Held as part of the ‘GIF Talks: Meetings with writers in Florence’ series, the event is in collaboration with publisher Il Saggiatore who reprinted Dyer’s works in Italy. Ahead of the event, we speak with Geoff Dyer about his relationship with Italy.
An opening question as to what it is about Italy that inspires the author gets an easy answer: “I’m English. All English people love Italy, but really everyone loves Italy”. The nation features frequently in his works, but most heavily in Jeff in Venice, death in Varanesi, a novel that will be the main focus of the event on November 19. There’s one line in the work that is particularly striking: “[Venice was] a concentrated version of everything he had ever wanted from his life,” a line that when repeated to Geoff prompts the confirmation, “Yes, it really was. When the book came out, quite a lot of people said it was a satire on the art world, and I can see that it sort of is, but I would always reply that really, it’s just my idea of a good time! More than anything, it’s a romance. Romance is part of travel, really. It’s a love story, and everyone likes romance.”
Travel is often treated by Geoff Dyer, making me curious as to his view on the current issue of overtourism. “After Florence, I go to Barcelona to address very directly this issue of tourism at the present time. So, it’s very much on my mind. We all lament this thing of overtourism. I was in two places in Italy this summer; one of them was a gorgeous Tuscan hill town, but it had been completely ruined by tourism, with every shop given over to tourism. It’s a real problem, and I’m conscious of the fact that we’re so often part of the process that we decry; when we’re in cars, we’re always complaining about traffic. I’m aware that I go to these places, and I was complaining all summer. Even Trastevere in Rome, for example, has been overrun. I lived in Trastevere in the 1990s at a time when it was, to my eyes, really idyllic, but they were probably already decrying the arrival of people like me! We’re all sort of implicated in it.”
Due to be published next year is a memoir about his life up to the age of 18. “I grew up in a house with no books at all. My parents were working-class people and reading wasn’t a part of their lives. But then I passed the Eleven-plus and went to grammar school, and for the O-level we did Shakespeare’s Richard III. There was this feeling of putting a foot in the ocean and it was transformative. There was a sense of something beckoning, of that great huge tide of language.”
To attend the event at Gonzaga University at 6.30pm on November 19 contact gif@gonzaga.edu or 055 2155226. The talk will be held in English, with translation into Italian.
