The Last Days of Roger Federer
And Other Endings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
One of Esquire's best books of spring 2022
An extended meditation on late style and last works from "one of our greatest living critics" (Kathryn Schulz, New York).
When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating torment? As our bodies decay, how do we keep on? In this beguiling meditation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last works of writers, painters, footballers, musicians, and tennis stars who’ve mattered to him throughout his life. With a playful charm and penetrating intelligence, he recounts Friedrich Nietzsche’s breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan’s reinventions of old songs, J. M. W. Turner’s paintings of abstracted light, John Coltrane’s cosmic melodies, Bjorn Borg’s defeats, and Beethoven’s final quartets—and considers the intensifications and modifications of experience that come when an ending is within sight. Throughout, he stresses the accomplishments of uncouth geniuses who defied convention, and went on doing so even when their beautiful youths were over.
Ranging from Burning Man and the Doors to the nineteenth-century Alps and back, Dyer’s book on last things is also a book about how to go on living with art and beauty—and on the entrancing effect and sudden illumination that an Art Pepper solo or Annie Dillard reflection can engender in even the most jaded and ironic sensibilities. Praised by Steve Martin for his “hilarious tics” and by Tom Bissell as “perhaps the most bafflingly great prose writer at work in the English language today,” Dyer has now blended criticism, memoir, and humorous banter of the most serious kind into something entirely new. The Last Days of Roger Federer is a summation of Dyer’s passions, and the perfect introduction to his sly and joyous work.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Things coming to an end, artists' last works," and "time running out" are forthrightly probed in this soulful meditation. Novelist and essayist Dyer (Otherwise Known as the Human Condition) surveys a multitude of gifted people as they edge toward quitting time, including the long twilight of tennis great Roger Federer, Nietzche's collapse into madness just when his philosophical ideas were catching on, Jack Kerouac's descent into lifeless writing after On the Road affirmed his greatness, and Bob Dylan's endless touring with a voice that's been "shot to hell." Dyer also explores his own experiences slouching into his 60s—slowing down, suffering injuries that dampen his tennis game, and, on the upside, smoking psychedelics with an aging surfer buddy. Dyer's musings unfold in a loose-limbed ramble of bite-size biographical sketches, artistic and literary appreciations, and wry reflections. ("It's not just that time passes more quickly as you get older; life becomes progressively less eventful.... For the young a year lasts for ages, and a night in—a night spent not getting wasted—feels like a wasted life.") Dyer's mix of sparkling prose, rich insight, and mordant wit suggests that a well-lived life is worth even the bitterest of endings. It makes for a smart, memorable take. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Disparate ramblings
Self absorbed and self indulgent ramblings …. Really never seeming to link or connect as the writer intends, or maybe he intends for them not to. I wanted to like this book, I tried, however I simply didn’t.