Description

One of Esquires 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).

How and when do artists and athletes know that their careers are coming to an end? What if the end comes early in a writers life? How to keep going even as the ability to do so diminishes? In this ingeniously structured investigation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last works of writers, painters, musicians, and sports stars whove mattered to him throughout his life. With playful charm and penetrating intelligence, he considers Friedrich Nietzsches breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylans reinventions of old songs, J.M.W. Turners proto-abstract paintings of blazing light, Jean Rhyss late-life resurgence, and John Coltranes final works.

Ranging from Burning Man to Beethoven, from Eve Babitz to William Basinski, and from Annie Dillard to Giorgio de Chirico, Dyers study of last things is also a book about how to go on living with art and beautyand the sudden rejuvenation offered by books, films, and music discovered late in life. Praised by Kathryn Schulz as one of our greatest living critics, not of the arts but of life itself, and by Tom Bissell as perhaps the most bafflingly great writer at work in the English language today, Dyer has now blended criticism, memoir, and badinage of the most serious kind into something entirely new. The Last Days of Roger Federer is a summation of Dyers passions and the perfect introduction to his sly and joyous work.

Author: Geoff Dyer
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 05/02/2023
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.20w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781250867193
Language: English