atCentral: Geoff Dyer in Conversation with Stephen Harrigan

710 West Cesar Chavez Street,Austin TX 78701

11 May, 2022

Description

A reading and conversation with Geoff Dyer about his new book, The Last Days of Roger Federer 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 Federer is a summation of Dyer’s passions, and the perfect introduction to his sly and joyous work. The program will be followed by book sales and signing. Books will be available for purchase thanks to BookPeople. Become a member of The Library Foundation today! Membership benefits include priority seating for atCentral events and invitations to member receptions. To become a Library Foundation member, make a tax-deductible donation of $50 or more at http://weblink.donorperfect.com/atcentral. +++ ABOUT GEOFF DYER: Geoff Dyer is the award-winning author of many books, including Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, Zona, See / Saw, and the essay collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism). A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dyer lives in Los Angeles, where he is writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. ABOUT STEPHEN HARRIGAN: Stephen Harrigan is the author of twelve books of fiction and non-fiction, including the bestselling novel The Gates of the Alamo and Remember Ben Clayton. His most recent novel, The Leopard is Loose, was released in January. Harrigan is a writer-at-large and long-time contributor to Texas Monthly. He is also a screenwriter who has written many movies for television. Harrigan has received lifetime achievement awards from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas Book Festival and was presented in 2019 with the Texas Medal of Arts.