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PRINT Hannah Clarkson Diarmuid McGreal By the boo
k’s end it is doubtful that Carrère any longer resembles a spiritual guide so much as a kind of postmodern Virgil, as focused on the description of each new circle of hell as he is on his own, vertiginous descent. Yoga Emmanuel Carrère [Jonathan Cape] Near the beginning of Yoga, Emmanuel Carrère, our ostensible guide to the world of meditation, assures us he has set out to write “an upbeat, subtle little book”, designed to be of practical use to anyone with a sincere interest in the subject. If we regard the claim with some skepticism, it is partly because he has assumed the pose of spiritual guide before: in The Kingdom, Carrère examined his own life in the context of Saint Paul’s, finding an affinity for the first Christian, his fellow writer and obsessive self-publicist, and in the process achieved a daring synthesis that was every bit as restlessly selfsearching as it was fascinating. But Yoga seems a riskier prospect in that the Buddhist practices it explores sit less naturally within this autofictional frame, not least because they are partly concerned with the mitigation of the ego, the very source from which Carrère draws his creative energies. Nevertheless, he is at first faithful to his aim, recounting his experience of a Vipassana retreat in the Morvan region. But his enthusiasm has already begun to fade when news of the Charlie Hebdo massacre draws him back to the literary world of Paris, from there to the Sainte-Anne Psychiatric Hospital for the diagnosis and treatment of bipolar type 2, and finally to the Greek island of Leros, to teach writing to stranded refugees at the nadir of the Mediterranean crisis. By the book’s end it is doubtful that Carrère any longer resembles a spiritual guide so much as a kind of postmodern Virgil, as focused on the description of each new circle of hell as he is on his own, vertiginous descent. Yet, if we have followed him this far, it is not so much for his narration of the events themselves as for the digressions – reveries, fantasies and outright delusions – which draw the narrative together. From his adolescent penchant for science fiction to his mature love of Chopin’s 54 Heroic Polonaise, or his occasional marital indiscretions to his lifelong fidelity to his own personality, Carrère keeps us interested. It seems there is nothing in his life unsuited for reproduction in his fiction (almost nothing: Carrère’s ex-wife legally banned him from writing about her), up to and including masturbation and excretion: one of the numerous, dubious ways he defines meditation? ‘Pissing and shitting when you piss and shit’. In disburdening himself this way over 300 pages, we sense there is no human failing to which Carrère has not copped, and all the confession puts us in a forgiving frame of mind. If we have abandoned hope that Carrère will bring nirvana in sight, we are more than duly compensated for the time spent in his company. Unenlightened by his account of meditation, our eye is drawn to the radiant, tortured and thrilling self-portrait he has drawn in the attempt. As he says, ‘perhaps that’s the most interesting thing in life, trying to figure out what it’s like to be someone else’. DMG The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings Geoff Dyer [Canongate ] What do Roger Federer, Friedrich Nietzsche and Bob Dylan have in common? A sense of an ending, of something halted in its tracks, of the life and soul of the party going home early to bed. In this irreverent, insightful meditation by self-professed ‘dilly-dallying’ writer Geoff Dyer, we are treated to a litany of endings, final days and last works of the writers, artists and sports stars most important to the author throughout his life. This comes across as a series of beginnings, too, thoughts expressed – though with characteristic sly eloquence – before their time. Arranged in brief, numbered vignettes, this book implies that Dyer himself has unfinished business – that these are notes on what could have been unending commentaries, had the imposed endgame not been to meet the deadlines necessary for publication, spurred on by the realisation of being ‘middle-aged’. He has ongoing projects, after all, which he also describes in this book: literary tomes he has half-read but never finished, tennis matches halted by injury, and a lifelong vow to only wash his hair with shampoo stolen from hotel rooms. The latter, if somewhat absurd, epitomises Dyer’s attitude to producing and consuming writing, with a comic fatalism which makes the idea of giving up seem the most admirable thing in the world. Yet The Last Days of Roger Federer is not one of those books one is tempted to give up on, joyously mundane and gripping to the end as it is. HC