Geoff Dyer Reflects on His Formative Years in a Nonreading Household

Geoff Dyer once described his upbringing as rooted in a family indifferent to reading, a factor he considers crucial to his development as a writer. His latest memoir, "Homework," traces his formative years in Cheltenham, England, and the environment he left behind when he moved to Oxford at nineteen.

Yet, did he truly leave that world behind? Like many authors, Dyer revisits childhood experiences that preceded his ability to articulate them. The memoir probes the connection between the writer he is today and the boy who eagerly collected promotional cards from Brooke Bond tea boxes.

A persistent theme in Dyer's work is his complex relationship with boredom. He has famously transformed his frustration with writing about D.H. Lawrence into the unique narrative of "Out of Sheer Rage." As a child, Dyer’s hobbies included collecting cards, assembling model airplanes with impatience, and amassing plastic soldiers, before his interests shifted to progressive rock records and modernist literature in his teenage years. These youthful obsessions evoke a distinctly English cultural moment, now largely faded.

While personal memorabilia can often seem tedious to outsiders—and at times reading "Homework" feels like enduring an uncle’s nostalgic monologue—Dyer excels in portraying the peculiar nature of memory itself. He observes that his childhood fascination with a card featuring a Galápagos tortoise surpasses the emotion he felt when seeing the creature in person. The memoir captures universal memories—first beer, first fight, first sexual experience—alongside peculiar recollections, such as neighborhood children playing with a beach ball until it burst on a summer afternoon. The fleeting importance of significant moments contrasts with the lasting impression of trivial ones.

Dyer’s father emerges as a vivid figure in the narrative. A factory worker, his frugality fostered an atmosphere ripe for boredom. He also served as a primary source of his son’s challenges. An illustrative episode involves a trip to buy a tennis racket, which turns awkward when Dyer’s father inquires about a discount for tennis club members without being one himself, resulting in an embarrassing confrontation with the shop staff. Despite receiving the discount as a one-time favor, the humiliation lingered. Dyer later wrote thoughtfully about tennis and players like Roger Federer.

Similarly thrifty but emotionally so, Dyer’s mother worked serving lunches at a local school and once stopped bringing home leftovers when her son refused them. She harbored dreams of becoming a seamstress and crafted outfits for her son’s action figures, yet never pursued this passion professionally—reflecting societal limitations many women of her generation faced. The memoir hints at a poignant turn in her story, providing some of the book’s most evocative passages. Ultimately, it was the attitudes of his parents that shaped Dyer’s decision to become a writer, as he rejected the narrow acceptance he was taught at home.

A pivotal moment in Dyer’s youth was passing the exam that enabled him to attend a grammar school, a more academically demanding institution in Britain’s two-tier system at the time. There, encouragement from an English teacher helped him realize that the things he valued most could not be shared with his parents. Unbeknownst to him then, his education would lead him into a tradition of British writers—from Thomas Hardy to Zadie Smith—who revitalized the English novel through an outsider’s perspective. His memoir skillfully captures this unlikely yet destined journey.