Zona

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this spellbinding book, the man described by the Daily Telegraph as 'possibly the best living writer in Britain' takes on his biggest challenge yet: unlocking the film that has obsessed him all his adult life. Like the film Stalker itself, it confronts the most mysterious and enduring questions of life and how to live.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

An empty bar, possibly not even open, with a single table, no bigger than a small round table, but higher, the sort you lean against--there are no stools--while you stand and drink. If floorboards could speak these look like they could tell a tale or two, though the tales would turn out to be one and the same, ending with the same old lament (after a few drinks people think they can walk all over me), not just in terms of what happens here but in bars the world over. We are, in other words, already in a realm of universal truth. The barman comes in from the back--he's wearing a white barman's jacket--lights a cigarette and turns on the lights, two fluorescent tubes, one of which doesn't work properly: it flickers. He looks at the flickering light. You can see him thinking, 'That needs fixing', which is not the same thing at all as 'I'll fix that today', but which is very nearly the same as 'It'll never be fixed.' Daily life is full of these small repeated astonishments, hopes (that it might somehow have fixed itself overnight) and resignations (it hasn't and won't). A tall man--a customer!--enters the bar, puts his knapsack under the table, the small round table you lean against while drinking. He's tall but not young, balding, obviously not a terrorist, and there's no way that his knapsack could contain a bomb, but this unremarkable action--putting a knapsack under the table in a bar--is not one that can now go unremarked, especially by someone who first saw Stalker (on Sunday, February 8, 1981) shortly after seeing Battle of Algiers. He orders something from the barman. The fact that the barman's jacket is white emphasizes how not terribly clean it is. Although it's a jacket it also serves as a towel, possibly as a dishcloth, and maybe as a hankie too. The whole place looks like it could be dirty but it's too dingy to tell and the credits in yellow Russian letters--sci-fi Cyrillic--do not exactly clarify the situation.   It's the kind of bar men meet in prior to a bank job that is destined to go horribly wrong, and the barman is the type to take no notice of anything that's not his business and the more things that are not his business the better it is for him, even if it means that business is so slow as to be almost nonexistent. Far as he's concerned, long as he's here, minding his own business and wearing his grubby barman's jacket, he's doing his job, and if no one comes and no one wants anything and nothing needs doing (the wonky light can wait, as can most things) it's all the same to him. Still smoking, he trudges over with a coffeepot (he's one of those barmen who has the knack of imbuing the simplest task with grudge, making it feel like one of the labours of a minimum-wage Hercules), pours some coffee for the stranger, goes out back again and leaves him to it, to his coffee, to his sipping and waiting. Of that there can be no doubt: the stranger is defi nitely waiting for something or someone.    *** A caption: some kind of meteorite or alien visitation has led to the creation of a miracle: the Zone. Troops were sent in and never returned. It was surrounded by barbed wire and a police cordon. . . .   This caption was added at the behest of the studio, Mosfilm, who wanted to stress the fantastical nature of the Zone (where the subsequent action will be set). They also wanted to make sure that the 'bourgeois' country where all this happened could not be identified with the USSR. Hence this mysterious business of the Zone all happened--according to the caption--'in our small country', which put everyone off the scent because the USSR, as we all know, covered a very large area and Russia was (still is) huge too. 'Russia . . .', I can hear Laurence Olivier saying it now, in the Barbarossa episode of The World at War. 'The boundless motherland of Russia.' Faced with the German invasion of 1941, Russians fell back on the traditional strategy, the strategy that had done for Napoleon and would do for Hitler too: 'Trade space for time', a message Tarkovsky took to heart. Excerpted from Zona: A Book about a Film about a Journey to a Room by Geoff Dyer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Some films inspire devotion in viewers, while others spark obsession. Novelist and nonfiction author Dyer (Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi) has become obsessed with the 1979 Russian film Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Dyer gives the reader an impressionistic, deeply subjective tour of a cerebral film featuring a character who guides people through a forbidden wasteland zone. The author claims the work contains the "quality of prophecy" and has always "invited allegorical readings." As he explicates the film, Dyer supplies lengthy, deliberate digressions on such topics as drinking in films, the annoying quality of coming attractions movie trailers, and his perceived similarities between Stalker and The Wizard of Oz-the latter film he admits he's never seen and never intends to see. The book is a bit of a bumpy ride, not for all tastes. Verdict Some readers might enjoy getting inside Dyer's head, and his book is distinguished by his stylish if disjointed prose. However, because relatively few have seen the Tarkovsky film, this remains an optional purchase.-Stephen Rees, formerly with Levittown Lib., PA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

Stalker--though, this being a Dyer (Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, 2011, etc.) book, it's about plenty more besides. Stalker is a relatively obscure entry in Russian director Tarkovsky's oeuvre, but it's exceedingly receptive to critical analysis. The film follows three archetypes--Writer, Professor and Stalker--in a mysterious and heavily guarded wilderness as they ponder the meaning of life. Dyer doesn't provide a critical analysis of the film so much as a scene-by-scene walkthrough of it, just to see where it takes him--which is pretty far. He riffs on The Last of the Mohicans, Chernobyl, his affinity for particular brands of knapsack, the effect of aging on one's enthusiasm for cultural consumption, and more. At his most far-flung, he recalls his squandered opportunities for mnages trois. Such digressions are vintage Dyer: Inserted as footnotes or parentheticals, they sometimes go on for so long that it can be hard to recall the scene in the movie that prompted the comment in the first place. He delivers a few too many hokey puns, and he sometimes overreaches to argue for the film's ongoing influence. (A claim that the film works as a 9/11 allegory is particularly forced.) The lack of a strong thesis is frustrating, and ultimately this is a lesser Dyer book. However, it gets over on his enthusiasm for the film and on his infectious admiration of Tarkovsky's philosophical reach. The "room" at the center of Stalker represents our need to locate our deepest desires, Dyer explains, and in that context maybe talking about those failed three-ways was necessary after all. A digressive but impassioned mash note to a film that defies easy summary.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.