Geoff Dyer is one of those writers who resists categorization. His books and essays are usually a hybrid of several genres: reporting, memoir, travelogues, criticism, and humor. What makes most of them great, though, is Dyer's digressive curiosity, his ability to let one realization about his ostensible topic—D.H. Lawrence, say, or a donut—drift into some other, often personal or hilarious, thought, which then drifts into something else, perhaps adding a fart joke, on and on, until somehow you're back at the original subject, with an understanding of it that would've been impossible if Dyer had taken another, more direct route.

At 12 p.m. EDT today, the writer Geoff Dyer will drop by Gawker to talk about his new book, Another Great Day at Sea, about life on board the USS George H.W. Bush. If you're a New Yorker subscriber, you can read an excerpt from the book here.