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Geoff Dyer has carved a place for himself as one of the most clever writers in contemporary literature with books like Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi and Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize. For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Dyer discussing genre, falling for America, and what he's been reading.

Like many of his previous works, Dyer's latest book White Sands is a book that refuses simple categories. The author discussed his sense that books ought not be understood through a crude matrix of genre:

"Something I've been going on about for years now: the way that something is categorized so determines the way that it's read, and so, I really want, if you like, the book to be read on its own self-generated terms, rather than having some sort of preexisting grid imposed on it... If something like the title story White Sands. To me it's all just writing anyway. I guess I expect essays to behave certain ways that some of the pieces in this book (I don't even like calling it a collection) don't conform to. So to me, it's all just writing really."

Some of his most important influences have been American writers. Dyer spoke of his affection for the United States and its culture:

"I'm of that generation where the writers that really got me into reading it was Kerouac, Joseph Heller, J.D. Salinger, that kind of thing. So they were the people I read rather than the British people... these Americans that I was reading seemed more contemporary than their British contemporaries, if you see what I mean. They just seemed more modern even though they shared the same dates. One of the great attractions for America always, if you're from England, is the freedom from the class issue, which is not to make the naive comment that there's no class in America, but what there really isn't—and that's why people in Britain love it so much—there is not the class hatred. The air doesn't cackle with that."

Asked about books he's recently enjoyed, Dyer eagerly endorsed two authors, Matthew Desmond and Karen Solie. He remarked:

"I've just finished reading Matthew Desmond's book Evicted, which I think is so amazing, partly because when I did my stint on the aircraft carrier, I realized I'm really not a reporter. So I really so admire that immersive reporting. I just finished a book of poems. I hope I've got this right: Karen Solie, the poet? I find it amazing that incredible sort of off-the-cuff metaphysics."

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