Cicero Pro Archia Poeta Oratio 2 Book

The first essay is very entertaining. The second essay is entertaining. And... so on down the line.

Here is my problem with this collection: there is a formula that emerges after you read about three of the essays. Here is it:

a) Dyer arrives in a foreign city.
b) Dyer quickly befriends a fellow traveler/crank/drugged-out loony.
c) Said Loony introduced Dyer to Very Hot Girl.
d) Dyer & Loony acquire some drugs.
e) Dyer & Loony wander around foreign city. Insert scenery.
f) VHG drifts in for a scene, and out again.
g) Dyer laments the fact that he's getting absolutely nothing accomplished while wandering around the city stoned.
h) Dyer sleeps with VHG.
i) Dyer departs city.

There is a variation here--Dyer might have actually arrived in the city with a VHG of his own, an actual girlfriend. This changes the essay only in that they do not sleep together.

These essays strike me as the mostly mundane fantasies of a 20-something guy--that there is some value (not articulated here) of a peripetetic existence, and that work factors into life very little, that drugs are essential, and that the world is filled with VHGs interested in sleeping with you. Dyer was in his 40s when he wrote these essays.

That said, there are occasionally moments of interest and entertainment, but nothing revealing about the places he visits, what is it to be a tourist interacting in these places, what it might mean emotionally to be moving around constantly, what he thinks he's going to get out of traveling, or anything else truly thoughtful.