English writer years ago. Geoff Painter (Gloucestershire, 1958) argued that his life was a complete failure because he did not live in California. That refrain ended when his wife, an art curator, Rebeca Wilson, was offered a job to head Saatchi Art in Los Angeles, and she adapted quite well by working at the University of Southern California. Now, at the height of that ‘victory’, he regrets not being used to not having public transport and misses the proximity of major European cities to his home in London. “Oh, those years when we jumped to Madrid or Zurich,” she recalls. And this Brexit has increased that distance mentally.
Dyer is one of them. tough and bright charismatic intellectuals Occurring in England from time to time and usually developing far from home. This avid traveller, practitioner, and tennis fan is a connoisseur of all kinds of knowledge, from jazz—his ‘But Beautiful’ is essential—to painting and above all literature, but he’s also allergic to pedantry – which is no small thing. merit – could write about success but preferred to focus on a diametrically opposite theme, the endings, to put together one of his indescribable books.
Cataloging his work has been a headache for booksellers since he started writing: what the hell could they put on the shelves? “Roger Federer’s last days and other endings” (Random House) Perhaps one of the rarest. It deals with the different final stages of creators, including the painter. William Turner, beethoven about their magnificent final quartet or their final alienation nietzsche and endless other stories. The author happily jumps from one to the next with no apparent order, causing the reader to ask the million-dollar question: what is this really about? “I like that it’s a book you can’t answer easily,” Dyer replies via videoconference from his Los Angeles home. Most of the time, I feel like the title or the information on the cover of a book already tells me everything about that book, so I don’t need to read it as I’ve already digested it. I prefer that you can only answer this question by reading it.” Dyer’s originality does not depend on the theme, but above all on his personal style. capable of combining wisdom and, frankly, a playful look: “This is a very British thing, but I don’t want to see myself condemned to being classified as a humorist, I don’t want to lock myself in one area because I like to play all the keys.”
signs of time
What is certain is that this book is not about tennis. On the contrary misleading title, Turner’s picture on the cover already offers a good clue. And the sport is one of Dyer’s greatest passions, and he complains that severe back pain during a set the previous day had physically left him out of the game. “I was young when I started playing, and now I suddenly feel like I’ve aged 50 years,” explains the 64-year-old and apparently well-off author. A little self-criticism joke, that physical regression, a snapshot of a possible end that grips anyone who has reached the age of sixty, and this often does not go unnoticed. A series of minor physical ailments leave their mark in a first-person book, often during the pandemic.: “With no indication of when the sense of finitude would end, the world seemed to have determined its own end. Now we’ve left all that behind, because it was a silent disaster, not a war that left very clear traces of destruction.
What comes out of Dyer’s book is that while the ending is unique, the ways to experience it are often very diverse. Turner’s impressionism has its final phase going back at least 40 years, but here coincidence intervenes. “If their form seems too abstract to us right now, it’s because they’re incomplete,” he states. But also the rare last glimmer of a deaf Beethoven; Jean Rhys’s creative recovery after decades of silence, or the way writers slowly give up after great success – “whom the gods want to destroy, first they call hopeful”. Or even those who decide to stop writing, which allows Dyer to mention Enrique Vila-Matas and his Bartleby. “I’ve written a lot more books than I ever imagined. And of course, sometimes I thought it was over, but I cleared my doubts by starting a new book”.
What will Federer think?
Dyer rolls her eyes as she details the tennis player’s style regarding Federer, one of the cases analyzed:His style of play is the most beautiful and elegant, embodying a kind of purity of tennis. this contrasts with the athletic style that dominates today. And he adds: “No, it is not possible to compare with me. I don’t reach that level of grace as a writer because I’m much more raw.
He also doesn’t know if Swiss has read his book, even though he saw a photo of him signing the cover online. “It seems to me that he has a sense of humor and we could be great friends if we met. But he was still disappointed because he believed the book should be more about him.”