The Final Book

It’s almost 5 in the morning and I’ve switched off the lights. It’s time to go to bed. I just finished reading a mammoth book by one of my favourite authors. His latest. Published in 2025. Or 2024. Or 2023. Who cares, man! (I do, secretly, but I’ve forgotten the exact year it came out because it’s a translation, and with translated books the publishing dates often differ.)

He must be around 80 now. I didn’t bother checking his age. I just know his first book was published in the early 1970s, and no good writer publishes anything before their 30s. Because to write, you gotta live first. So I presume he’s around 80. Life, after all, is about making good presumptions. I’ve presumed this statement to be true.

Soon, this 80-year-old author will pass away. This might be his last book ever. It’s a strange feeling, to have read someone’s entire life’s work in under a decade. I wish we gave the same years of space between reading an author's books that they gave while writing them. But we don’t have time for such silly, respectful things.

I’m straying from what I really want to say, because I know the moment I write it, it’ll become true. But here I go. I found the book utterly terrible. It was nothing I’d hoped for. The story felt like a faint, recycled shadow of his earlier works. The repetition, the motifs, the meandering passages. I found every word to be a drag. But the fact that I wasted my time reading this 700-page, plotless pulp didn’t make me sad. What made me sad was seeing my favourite author in decline.

I imagined him surrounded by greedy publishers, groaning emphatic yeses when he asked if the book made sense. I blamed everyone but him. And the fact that I did, that made me sad. I refused to believe the man I swore by could have written something this substandard. The possibility that this might be his final work made me sad. I don’t believe in leaving a legacy. But some people, deserving people, end up leaving one anyway. And the thought that this might make it into his legacy made me sad.

Naively, I wished he hadn’t written this book. But then again, is it really a legacy if all you leave behind is your best self, carefully edited for the history books? What if this was the plan all along? To get out on zero in his last innings, just to make sure he never hits perfection. All his stories have ended with the reader wanting more. What if this was the story? What if all his books were chapters, and this odd, hollow one was the final chapter?A quiet exit. Keep wanting more, as he finishes writing the afterword. The Bradman of books.

How clever, I thought.

Your mind is a beautiful thing. It understands perspectives, and projects the ones you want to have. I’m not sad anymore. Although I might be again when I open Goodreads and see I gave it 2 stars.