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The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings
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18/99
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1/99
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About This Book
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 Federeris a summation of Dyer's passions, and the perfect introduction to his sly and joyous work.
Reviews
"This book is not really about Federer."
"To be fair, he makes some imaginative leaps, including a nice comparison of the self-hating ex-boxer Mike Tyson with the poet Philip Larkin ..."
"A serious critic, Dyer is rarely solemn, even when speaking of death, depletion, dissolution, disappointment."
"Still, there is a lot of detritus in a book that often reads like an assemblage of notes, as if every thought that came to mind was so endearing that it deserved to be recorded in full ..."
"Dyer rambles as superbly as ever about whatever comes to mind after the lead sentence has been written, but like a Möbius strip, the segments repeatedly loop back on themselves, making room again and again either for one of those very familiar obsessions of his (sex, booze, music, tennis) or for one of the many figures he writes of with the awe reserved for heroes (is it common for a man over 60 to have heroes?), among whom are Bob Dylan, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Roger Federer."
"He provides some abstract pages on the painters De Chirico and J.M.W."
"It should come as no surprise to readers of Geoff Dyer that The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings isn't actually about the Swiss tennis idol, nor is it about the sport he mastered."
"Dyer's mix of sparkling prose, rich insight, and mordant wit suggests that a well-lived life is worth even the bitterest of endings."
"A rangy, rambling assemblage that will appeal most to Dyer's fans."
"At times the book seems a little random, but Dyer leisurely ties it all together with humor and inquisitiveness and offers a satisfying collection of reflective essays on life and memory that can be read with pauses to think ..."
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