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The last days of Roger Federer : and other endings / by Dyer, Geoff,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."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"--
Subjects: Artists; Athletes; Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.); Gifted older people.; Gifted persons.; Older artists.; Older athletes.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The immeasurable world : journeys in desert places / by Atkins, William(Editor),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In the classic literary tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Geoff Dyer, and for readers of Ryszard Kapuscinski and Rory Stewart, a rich and exquisitely written account of travels in six deserts on five continents that evoke the timeless allure of these remote and forbidding places and their inhabitants. One-sixth of the earth's surface is classified as desert. Restless, unhappy in love, and intrigued by the Desert Fathers who forged Christian monasticism in the Egyptian desert, William Atkins decided to travel to six of the world's driest, hottest places: the Empty Quarter of Oman, the Gobi Desert of North China, the Great Victoria Desert of Australia, the man made desert of the Aral Sea in Kazhakstan, the Black Rock and Sonoran deserts of the American Southwest, and the Sinai Desert of Egypt. Each of his travel narratives effortlessly weaves aspects of natural history, historical background, and present-day reportage into a compelling tapestry that reveals the human appeal of these often inhuman landscapes."--
Subjects: Travel writing.; Atkins, William (Editor); Voyages and travels.; Deserts.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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