![]() ![]() As ever, he might have been careful what he wished for: his solo cabin is directly beneath the runway from which F-18s take off and land throughout the night. Aboard the communal floating city state, in which the working crew is bunked up 200 to a below-deck dorm, Dyer insists on a writerly room of one's own. He accepted this commission with some typical caveats. There are no doubts about the credentials of the battle-hardened photographer Chris Steele-Perkins for this particular assignment, but in some ways Dyer was a brave choice as journalistic pioneer since however far he travels, as he would be the first to admit, he always ends up writing about himself. The series is the idea of Alain de Botton, the busy and well-connected cultural critic, whose not-for-profit organisation Writers in Residence seeks to place "some of the best writers and Magnum photographers in some of the key institutions of the modern world" and have them collaborate to tell the tale. Geoff Dyer's voyage on the vast aircraft carrier named after the 41st president of the United States is not only a memorable exercise in incongruity – self-conscious Englishman cabined, cribbed and confined at the sharp-end of American military efficiency – but also a well-directed opening salvo in a new publishing venture. ![]()
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