How to grow old in America – Audio Long Reads

A tennis injury – and a spell in the US healthcare system – helped cure my delusions of youth.

Soon after finishing his most recent book, The Last Days of Roger Federer, the author Geoff Dyer decided to follow in his hero’s footsteps and have surgery. “Strictly speaking, I was following in the footsteps of Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas,” he writes, “in that I would be having surgery on my elbow (left) rather than a knee, but that’s just an anatomical detail.” Worsening tennis elbow was the latest sign that, at 63, Dyer might be getting old; “business-class” medical care near his home in Santa Monica, California, promised to undo the damage.

In this funny, sad and beautifully written reflection on mortality and late middle age, Dyer examines his own frailties and the differences between American healthcare and that received by his father in England. Meanwhile, the pain of a slow physical recovery is eased by a trip to a seniors’ holiday resort called the Fountain of Youth. If the American way is one of constant self-improvement, from yoga to decluttering, and from a bigger house to a better game of golf, what happens when you opt out? Can anyone escape? As Dyer writes: “Gore Vidal mocked F Scott Fitzgerald for whining on in his notebooks about how ‘he was young and now he’s middle-aged’. That now seems to me an entirely worthy theme, perhaps the biggest one there is.”

This article appeared on the newstatesman.com on 15 June and in the magazine on 17 June. You can read the text version here.

Written by Geoff Dyer and read by Chris Stone.

You might also enjoy listening to Big Tech and the quest for eternal youth by Jenny Kleeman

Podcast listeners can get a subscription to the New Statesman for just £1 per week, for 12 weeks. Visit www.newstatesman.com/podcastoffer

How to listen to Audio Long Reads

1. In podcast apps

Audio Long Reads is available to listen on all major podcast players, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube and more.

Either click the links above to open in your preferred player, or open the podcast app on your device and search for “Audio Long Reads”.

Follow or subscribe in your podcast app to receive new episodes as soon as they publish.

2. On the New Statesman website

The podcast is also available to listen right here on the New Statesman website. Bookmark https://www.newstatesman.com/podcasts/audio-long-reads, where we will publish new episodes every Saturday morning.