Infinite Books

We, mortals, are fascinated by the events defined as “the last”. This fascination is reflected even in the titles of our films, paintings, and books such as The Last Supper, Last Tango in Paris, or The Last of the Mohicans. The newest book by Geoff Dyer The Last Days of Roger Federer is very much in the vein of our interest.

This is not a story about the last matches of a famous tennis player, although they occupy a prominent place in it, but about the last works of artists for whom life meant creating. As their lives drew to an end, their creativity changed along with the weakness of their physical bodies – sometimes it diminished completely, sometimes it manifested itself in a completely different way, like in Beethoven’s case where ‘the dissociation and disintegration themselves become artistic means’.

Geoff Dyer describes the last years of Beethoven, Nietzsche, Turner, and Coltrane, just to name a few subjects of his analysis, looking at them with inquisitiveness, justified by the fact that, being a writer over 60, he cannot resist the thought that perhaps this book could be his last. While we usually know what our “firsts” were – the first kiss, the first job, the first sushi – we usually do not know what will be the “last”. Rarely, we make a conscious decision to do something for the last time, such as in Dyer’s case, his Burning Man experience; describing it he’s well aware that he’s doing it for the last time. Not because he is bored, but because he knows he won’t be able to experience anything new there. Coming back will be truly just a sentimental journey. The stigma of finality gives his experience the mark of freedom, and every moment becomes important.

The Last Days of Federer’s writing reminded me of Emmanuel Carrere’s The Kingdom but also of a diary of someone I would like to talk to, partly because that person is extremely witty, and partly because you never know which way the conversation will go. Will it become a description of a narcotic trance or an in-depth analysis of jazz? I have to admit that this way of narrative suits me very well. By intertwining information that could be presented in a good academic lecture with lightly examining his own problems with tennis injuries, Geoff Dyer makes it easy for us to contemplate in a calm, unhurried way the fragile connection between creativity and age.

The Last Days of Roger Federer and other endings by Geoff Dyer, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022