In his essay “The Critic as Artist,” Oscar Wilde famously declared that “the highest criticism is really the record of one’s own soul.” More delightful than history and more concrete than philosophy, for Wilde, the best kind of non-fiction writing deals with “the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind.” No 21st-century writer has taken this advice more to heart than Geoff Dyer, the author most recently of a charming and highly idiosyncratic work of “highest criticism” titled The Last Days of Roger Federer and Other Endings. Dyer will appear in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s (SBMA) Parallel Stories series on Thursday, May 26, conversing with novelist and UCSB professor Sameer Pandya.
I spoke with Dyer recently by phone from his home in Venice Beach. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Among many other things, this book dwells on the infirmities of aging. When did that become a preoccupation for you? I noticed that things started going wrong almost exactly from my 60th birthday. Since then, I have warned all my friends in their late fifties. Now, I always say to them, “Enjoy your youth.”