ABSTRACT
Geoff Dyer's Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi is a highly self-conscious and postmodern text which can be placed in the tradition of pilgrimage literature, but whose comment on the connection between travel and transcendence is highly unconventional. In the slippery text, which delights in paradox, it becomes difficult to say whether the New Age ideal of transcendence is being ridiculed, or just reformulated. This chapter considers Dyer's comment on the possibility of a meaningful experience of transcendence through travel, but also considers the ethical implications of his conclusions. Jeff's growing interest in spirituality becomes synonymous with his breakdown, especially as it is dictated by his own idiosyncratic take on Hinduism rather than any scholarly interest. While Death in Varanasi represents Jeff's negation, it could be argued that the text itself represents a part of how Geoff Dyer establishes himself as a cultural authority of the modernist exile-artist type.
