When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? In this beguiling meditation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last works of figures who've mattered to him throughout his life. With keen insight and sly wit, Dyer looks at Roger Federer's retirement, 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, and Beethoven's final quartets, stressing the accomplishments of geniuses who defied convention, even after youth had passed.