Festival of Ideas: Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians who’ve mattered to him throughout his life.

The award-winning author of Out of Sheer Rage and Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bother to Do It returns to Bristol to talk about his new book, The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings. Using the great tennis player’s twilight years as a jumping off point, Dyer examines Friedrich Nietzsche’s breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan’s reinventions of old songs, J W Turner’s paintings of abstracted light, John Coltrane’s cosmic melodies, Jean Rhys’ return from the dead (while still alive) and Beethoven’s final quartets – and considers the intensifications and modifications of experience that come when an ending is within sight. What can we learn from those who quit, those who died and those who push on a little too long?

Dyer joins Jenny Lacey to talk about last things and, judging by his previous events with us, will delight with his insight and wit, and make us all feel much cleverer at the end.

‘Most authors use language to write about things. Dyer uses things to write about language. He’s a clever clogs but he’s one of us at the same time. Genius’ – Simon Armitage

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