A book for the beach: Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer | Sam Jordison

If you're uneasy about holiday idleness, this very strange, sort-of study of DH Lawrence is a very good companion

I quite like the idea of beaches. The idea. In the abstract, that sun and sea and rest all seem rather appealing. As I type this article, with the rain beating down outside and deadlines clamouring all around me, a seaside holiday seems like a fine plan. But I know that when I get there, I'll ruin it.

At first it will be great. I'll swim. I'll eat sandwiches. I'll swim again. I'll apply more suntan cream. And then? Ten minutes will have passed and there will be an entire day an entire week of enforced idleness before me. I will start worrying. I'll start to see time slipping away like sand through a glass. No, worse, like the sand that lies all around me. All of it wasted. Not even moving. Not even making as much of an impression on the world as its fellow sand that measures out the hours in egg timers and is at least useful as a metaphor for lost opportunity.

"Looking back it seems, on the one hand, hard to believe that I could have wasted so much time, could have exhausted myself so utterly, wondering when I was going to begin my study of DH Lawrence; on the other, it seems equally hard to believe that I ever started it, for the prospect of embarking on this study of Lawrence accelerated and intensified the psychological disarray it was meant to delay and alleviate."

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