Geoff Dyer winds up and serves, 'Over time, the "Biographical Dictionary" has become an autobiography in the form of a reference book … Each edition is updated but the single most important addition was to the third, in 1994, when he included an entry about a friend whose name I won’t reveal because I want you to come across it, not to be directed to it. Thomson begins by writing about his life in the 1950s, how he met his friend on the steps of the National Film Theatre in London. He lists the fourteen films he saw in one week in 1961, how he discussed movies with his new friend, and, as a result of these talks, began to emerge slowly from a life of stammering. That increasing eloquence and confidence gradually began to express itself in the form of the book in which, several editions later, we read about its gestation. And then, in the last paragraph, he writes of how his friend became ill and died. "He was the best friend I’ll ever have, and in a way I feel the movies are over now that he’s gone." I know of no more moving moment in literature. And it takes place in a reference book.'
