Geoff Dyer: White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World

202 ‘the Greeks’ idea’: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (London: Chatto & Windus, 2014), p. 384.

203 ‘Only through this’: Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 239.

215 ‘I even take the skin off chicken!’: Cf. Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) in Point Break .

223 ‘this remote western coast’: Adorno and Mann, Correspondence , p. 10.

2 Statue at Luxor (Courtesy of the author)

31 Salzburg, 1977 by Luigi Ghirri (Courtesy of Adele Ghirri)

82 The Questioner of the Sphinx by Elihu Vedder (Oil on canvas, photograph copyright © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

98 Koh Tao, 2014 by Chaiwat Subprasom (Reuters/Chaiwat Subprasom)

158 Los Angeles street scene (Courtesy of the author)

162 Muscle Beach, Los Angeles by Frank Thomas (Photograph courtesy of the Frank J. Thomas Archives)

227 Statue at Luxor (Courtesy of the author)

Plate section

1 Salzburg, 1977 by Luigi Ghirri (Courtesy of Adele Ghirri)

2 The Questioner of the Sphinx by Elihu Vedder (Oil on canvas, photograph copyright © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

3 Koh Tao, 2014 by Chaiwat Subprasom (Reuters/Chaiwat Subprasom)

4 Muscle Beach, Los Angeles by Frank Thomas (Photograph courtesy of the Frank J. Thomas Archives)

Salzburg, 1977 by Luigi Ghirri (Copyright © Eredi di Luigi Ghirri)

The Questioner of the Sphinx by Elihu Vedder (Oil on canvas, photograph copyright © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Koh Tao, 2014 by Chaiwat Subprasom (Reuters/Chaiwat Subprasom)

Muscle Beach, Los Angeles by Frank Thomas (Photograph courtesy of the Frank J. Thomas Archives)

Parts of this book have been previously published, often in very different form.

WHERE?

WHAT?

New Yorker

‘Space in Time,’ ‘Time in Space,’ 1, 2, 3, 4

Harper’s

‘Forbidden City’

Granta

‘White Sands’

Observer Magazine

‘Where? What? Where?’

Financial Times

‘Northern Dark,’* 10

London Review of Books

‘Beginning’

New Republic

5

I am grateful to the editors at those magazines, especially Nicholas Trautwein, Chris Cox, Matt Weiland, Christian Lorentzen, and Ben Crair. Thanks to Ethan Nosowsky for reading the entire manuscript, and to David Ulin for help with the Los Angeles chapters. Thanks also to Francis Bickmore and Jamie Byng at Canongate, to everyone at the Wylie Agency, and to Kimberly Burns.

*At about an eighth of its present length.