SOURCE: “In This Case, Writer's Block Became a Conduit for Creativity,” in Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1998, p. E6.

In the following review, Eder offers a positive assessment of Out of Sheer Rage, though he notes that Dyer's approach to the subject matter is somewhat self-defeating.

You just might wrestle a pig out of the mud, but it is quite as likely that the pig will wrestle you into the mud. Geoff Dyer, a writer of fine but jittery sensibility, found himself in a state of personal and literary breakdown. He was beyond blocked; he was splintered. Accordingly, in the hope of grounding his out-of-control fancifulness, he decided to attempt, or so he tells, us a sober academic study of D. H. Lawrence [in Out of Sheer Rage].

But, “conceived as a distraction, it immediately took on the distracted character of that from which it was intended to be...