SOURCE: “Innocents Abroad,” in Washington Post Book World, June 27, 1999, pp. 8–9.

In the following excerpt, Sallis offers a positive assessment of Paris Trance.

When blurbs apologize for a book's offering up “escapism” and depicting “sad, unremarkable lives,” the reader takes caution. In the case of Paris Trance such caution, any caution, is unwarranted. The book, by the author of last year's Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence, is a fine novel, written with a light, sure touch, affecting far beyond its length and apparent (but only apparent) insubstantiality. Dyer's novel suggests that, just as once America gave to the world the blues, rock-and-roll and the romance as serious fiction, transforming that world's perception of itself, slackerdom is now a chief American export.

The four characters of Paris Trance, Alex and Sahra, Luke and Nicole, all have come to Paris with vague, high expectations that gradually slacken...