When I met Geoff Dyer, he was wearing wide wale corduroys and a zip flannel of matching blues and grays beneath a cardigan sweater. He buzzed me into the flat he shares with his wife in Ladbroke Grove, and at the top of three flights of stairs, the little door was open.  Inside, a tall, smiling soft-spoken man instructed me, warmly, to remove my shoes.  Occupying prominent kitchen wall space was a panoramic photo of Burning Man and across the hall, the bathroom had an orange floor.  In his study, sitting in a high-backed leather chair, Geoff put his feet up and folded his hands over his lap.  I gave him a Grateful Dead mix CD.  He put it on his desk.  Through the large window we could see the tops of expansive sycamores, manicured relentlessly, lining his street just a few blocks from a Tubestop and the corresponding bustle of misshapen and colorful pedestrians, which a Brit might refer to as rabble, but which were really just Londoners. We drank chamomile tea and ate peanut butter on bread.  It rained and then the sun came out and then it rained more.  The next day, at the top of his three flights of stairs the door was again open and Geoff was again wearing the same clothes.  I left my shoes on and we walked, in the rain, to a humid, bean-sprout-hip café where Geoff knew the waitresses and ordered a salad and bread with olive oil, both of which he ate quickly and incompletely. During our conversations, he appreciated the concision and noted the peculiarly American racism of the expression distinguishing Native American Indians and Indians from the Subcontinent: “feathers, not dots.”  I tried to slander Scientology and Damien Hirst’s diamond-studded skull, but Geoff remained unperturbed by craziness; he was thoroughly chilled out. “Stuff” was adequate in moments of inarticulateness.  “Just stuff.”  These moments occurred most frequently when he spoke of his own working class upbringing.  Hesitant and circular, his speech was filled with amendations that—sentences were never finished because they kept being restarted.  In that sense, and the way emphasis took the form of repeated reallys and verys, he was like a child still.  This was refreshing to see from an author who had recently won The Book Critics’ Circle Award for his polymathic essay collection, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition.  He’s written fiction as well, about joblessness in London (The Colour of Memory) and about the Ecstasy scene in Paris (Paris Trance).