Geoff Dyer - Zona - A Book About a Film about a Journey to a Room

‘THE SOVIET REPRESSIVE SYSTEM’: Applebaum, Gulag.

‘HE’S SUCH A’: Mick Jagger, quoted in Peter Doggett, There’s a Riot Going On (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007.

‘TOTALLY OUT OF IT’: Vladimir Sharun, interview at nostalghia.com.

‘A MAN’S WORK’: Albert Camus, Selected Essays and Notebooks (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984).

‘MEN SWAGGERING INTO SALOONS’: Don DeLillo, Libra (New York: Viking, 1988).

‘A BOOK ABOUT NOTHING’: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830–1857, edited by Francis Steegmuller (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980).

‘RIGHT IN THE EYES’: Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985).

‘DID NOT MAKE SOLARIS ’: Stanislaw Lem, quoted in Robert Bird, Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema.

‘ON THE THRESHOLD’: Roberto Calasso, K. (New York: Knopf, 2005).

‘SOMEONE EMBARKS’: Billy Collins, Sailing Around the Room (New York: Random House, 2001).

‘BEGAN TO MAKE FILMS’: Ingmar Bergman, quoted in Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of ‘Stalker’ (film).

‘USING SOME OF HIS TYPICAL’: Wim Wenders, The Act of Seeing (London: Faber & Faber, 1997).

‘TO BEGIN TWO CONSECUTIVE’: Anthony Hecht, quoted in Christopher Ricks, True Friendship (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

‘HAPPY THE HARE’: The English Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson (London: Faber & Faber, 1977.

‘MAKE VISIBLE WHAT’: Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer (London: Quartet Books, 1986).

ROAD TRIP: I got the story about Tarkovsky and the road trip through Utah from Tom Luddy himself. It is broadly corroborated by Zanussi’s reminiscences in Marina Tarkovskaya (ed.), About Andrei Tarkovsky: Memoirs and Biographies.

‘THE UNHOMELY’: Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

‘RASHIT, THE FLOWERS’: Georgi Rerberg in Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of ‘Stalker’ (film).

AN AMAZING PLACE…IS NORMAL HERE: slightly adapted from Roberto Calasso, Ka (New York: Knopf, 1998).

‘PUTTING ITSELF IN A PERSONAL RELATION’: William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: The Modern Library, 1999; first published 1902).

‘SOBBING UNCONTROLLABLY’: J. M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year (London: Harvill Secker, 2007).

‘THIS IS WHAT EXISTS’: Max Frisch, quoted in Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Civil War (London: Granta, 1994).

ROBERT POLIDORI and JONAS BENDIKSEN: see, respectively, Zones of Exclusion (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2003) and Satellites (New York: Aperture, 2006).

‘WHAT CONFERS ON IT’: Slavoj Žižek, ‘The Thing from Inner Space’. It seems there are various different versions of this essay floating around. The one quoted from here can be found at http:// www.lacan.com/zizekthing.htm (September 1999).

‘THEY FED IT’: for German original, see The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage International, 1989). Translation by Shaun Whiteside.

SCIENTISTS WHO CARRIED OUT: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ science-environment-10819027.

‘BEYOND A CERTAIN POINT’: quoted in Roberto Calasso, K. (New York: Knopf, 2005). This translation suited me better than Michael Hofmann’s in Zürau Aphorisms (New York: Schocken, 2006).

‘FEEL…THAT THE ZONE’: Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time.

‘ONCE I WAS A MAN’: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge Classics, 2002,).

NOT A SET OF EVENTS: adapted from David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (New York: Vintage, 1997). I am indebted to Abram more generally for my discussion of the Zone and the sudden gust of wind in this section.

‘HAS NO MEANING IN ITSELF’: Milan Kundera, Immortality (London: Faber & Faber, 1991).

‘SHOULD DOUBT…THE EXISTENCE’: Tarkovsky, interview with Guerra at nostalghia.com .

‘THE IMAGE BECOMES’: Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time.

‘OVER AND OVER’: Andrei Tarkovsky Interviews, edited by John Gianvito.

‘A LIFE OF WHICH THE KEYNOTE’: William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

‘SUDDENLY ONE OF’: Vladimir Sharun, interview at nostalghia.com.

‘TOTAL DISASTER’: Tarkovsky, Time Within Time.

‘A RIGID IDEA’: Evgeny Tsymbal in Dunne, Tarkovsky.

‘EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE DIFFERENT’: Tarkovsky, Time Within Time.

‘HE COULD NOT UNDERSTAND’: Vladimir Sharun, interview at nostalghia.com.

‘KALASHNIKOV REFUSED’ and ‘HE DIDN’T HAVE THE GUTS’: Tarkovsky, Time Within Time.

‘ALMOST VISUALLY IDENTICAL’: Maria Chugunova, quoted by Tsymbal, in Dunne, Tarkovsky.

‘LACKED SIMPLICITY’: Ibid.

‘LIGHTWEIGHT SHALLOW PEOPLE’: Tarkovsky, Time Within Time.

‘FOR BEHAVING LIKE A BASTARD’: Ibid.

‘BUT AT THE COST’: from Rerberg and Tarkovsky: Reverse Side of ‘Stalker’ (film).

‘A CORPSE’: Tarkovsky, Time Within Time.

‘INVINCIBLE’: Andrei Tarkovsky Interviews, edited by John Gianvito.

‘YOU ARE DISTINGUISHED’: Alexander Galich, quoted in Lesley Chamberlain, Motherland (London: Atlantic, 2004).

‘THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT’: Robert Bird, Andrei Tarkovsky.

‘THERE REALLY IS’: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic (London: Gollancz, 2007; translation first published 1977).

‘UP THE RIVER’: Vladimir Sharun, interview at nostalghia.com .

‘TO EVERY NATURAL’: Wordsworth, from The Prelude: A Parallel Text, edited by J. C. Maxwell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972).

‘I SEE AROUND ME’: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Wordsworth, edited by Geoffrey Hartman (New York: Signet Classics, 1970).

‘THE THEN IS CONSTANTLY REPEATED’: Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (New York: Vintage, 1996).

‘SOME KIND OF DRUG DEALER’: Tarkovsky, Time Within Time.

‘WHERE ART IS DYING’: Milan Kundera, Encounter (London: Faber & Faber, 2010).

‘IF AT THE END’: quoted in Robert Bird, Andrei Tarkovsky.

‘EVERYTHING ON EARTH’: Ibid.

‘PERHAPS WE ARE HERE ’: for German original, see The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited by Stephen Mitchell. Translation by Shaun Whiteside.

‘CAME TO FEEL’: Lesley Chamberlain, Motherland.

‘IN THE RIVER’: Andrei Tarkovsky Interviews, edited by John Gianvito.

NOTHING ON THE WALLS BUT DAMP: adapted from Wislawa Szymborska’s poem ‘Cave’, in Poems New and Collected 1957–1997 (London: Faber & Faber, 1999).

‘UTTERLY NEW TERRAIN’: Wim Wenders, The Act of Seeing.

‘THE DARKNESS GREW LOUD’: William Langewiesche, American Ground: The Unbuilding of the World Trade Center (New York: North Point, 2002).

‘SHOOTING IS GOING OUT’: Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer.

‘I SAW TARKOVSKY’S STALKER’: Tilda Swinton, http://www.movie line.com/2009/05/tilda-swinton-i-think-youve-got-the-wrong-person.php.

‘THERE OUGHT TO BE IN PARIS’: Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographe.

‘FROM WHERE ELSE’: John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous (Harmondsworth: Granta, 1992).

‘ENTIRE LIFE HAS CONSISTED’: Tarkovsky, quoted in Robert Bird, Andrei Tarkovsky.