Read my review on my blog here: https://annabookbel.net/zona-a-book-about-a-film-about-a-journey-to-a-room-by-ge... ( )

Sometimes Dyer doesn't shut up when he ought to. ( )

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/54062507677/geoff-dyer-and-zona

Zona, A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room is another in an increasing number of fine nonfiction works written by Geoff Dyer. This book, his latest, is definitely a continuance of his maturity as both a writer and a person aging gracefully. Two brilliant earlier works that bear remarking are The Ongoing Moment (a book about photography written by a man who doesn''t even own a camera) and Out of Sheer Rage (a potentially serious biographical study of D.H. Lawrence that turned out to be almost everything but. But still I learned enough about Lawrence to want to read all his collected letters and a couple biographies written about him. I have yet to read any of his fiction except for a couple key adulterous segments involving Lady Chatterly and the resident hired gamekeeper back when I was a virgin kid with pimples.) I bought this book Zona shortly after it was released in 2012, not too long after I had been initially introduced to Geoff Dyer and had already swiftly run through quite a few of his nonfiction works. His collected essays were very good as were the two earlier titles I mentioned at the top of the page. But the book about yoga was for the most part a silly bore that focused too much on his smoking pot and getting laid, or attempting to have sex with anybody except who he was supposed to be having it with. The book on yoga was a travelogue of sorts that failed on many levels and for me significantly lowered the standing of Dyer with me to some degree. I wish he hadn't written it. But with Zona he has again positioned himself as one of my favorite contemporary authors and along with the prior books already mentioned cannot be denied his place in the literary canon.

The film Dyer is summarizing for us, kind of, by way of his many digressions that bring to mind another favorite writer, now dead, by the name of W.G. Sebald (who would never stoop so low as to reveal his seedier side but still offers glimpses of his living darkness), the Dyer film study an historically revered work by the famous director Andrei Tarkovsky titled Stalker. So far, the only film by Tarkovsky that I have seen was Mirror made five years prior to this one in 1974. Mirror was a beautiful black and white film that I remember liking very much but at the time not enough to want to watch more of the director's work. (I do have his last film Sacrifice in my Netflix queue, but Dyer does not speak so highly of Tarkovsky's later films as they seemed to him to be retreads, or films patterned too much after the famous Tarkovsky.) I have been given more to the work of the Hungarian director Bela Tarr due to the influence of my teacher whom I have spoken probably too often about but feel the need to always give credit where it belongs. There are many other films listed and spoken about in Dyer's book Zona which I have also seen and found I could appreciate his personal take on them and the digressions they caused within this new literary creation of his. It is doubtful that Dyer is a brilliant film critic, but he can pass himself off as one if he so wishes. He is believable in what he has to say about all film, actors and directors, and the photographers who must produce these moving visions directed to them.

I was a bit concerned going into the reading of this book that one, it might be boring and two, that Dyer would ruin the film for me if I ever wanted to eventually see it. Neither was the case. Immediately from the get go the book was an engaging read. The synopsis, or summery, (Dyer resisted either) begins with reel one and follows the film to the end. At least it is written in that manner, but as I haven't seen the film I cannot confirm that Dyer was precise in his truthful accounting of the frames. But I like his style. The main thing for me, besides Dyer being a highly gifted writer, is that though he enjoys his certain measures of success and does enjoy a brief public encounter or two from adoring fans, he isn't really much concerned what you ultimately think of him or even how shocking his personal digressions may seem to some of us of a more prudish nature. I cannot recall a book I have read by Dyer that did not have the ubiquitous too-personal sex scene or sexual fantasy laced with illegal drugs, and almost always, especially his beloved hallucinogens. But make no mistake, this a serious work of art and Dyer's penchant for his personal delusions or deviant behavior seems to be kept at bay until a point far later in his narration that was destined to have some darker Dyer included in its telling. But again, that is what makes these Dyer books so interesting to me. There is so much of Geoff Dyer in it that the reader better find the author palatable or at least commanding enough in his writing to make you suffer through his personal lurid ordeals. If the personal were not included I would not be the fan of his I think I am these days. I love this guy, but I know he is not interested in building any permanent or longer-lasting relationship with me other than the getting of royalties from the sales of his books. But he isn't even much concerned with how commercial his work even is. Dyer generally writes only for himself and about topics he is interested in and if he cannot find the available book on the subject he is most interested in at the time he writes it. I would class him as the audacious type which is a compliment from me as he seems to be able to pull off anything he wishes to. And Zona just so happened to be his favorite film of all-time and one that very few people have seen in the scope of the ogling masses who view the trash so prevalent on our many big screens placed in malls and parking lots all over the world. He knew his audience for this book about a film would be limited, but still he wrote it because that is what Geoff Dyer does.

I know I haven't offered much help here in the way of a significant and enriching book review. I apologize for this obvious shortcoming. But the jacket blurbs and the publisher's hype should offer enough of a synopsis of the book to spike your interest in reading it. Plus there are some very good reviews already written about this book. All I hope to be saying here is that Geoff Dyer will not let you down with this one, this Zona, and he also won't ruin Stalker for you if you haven't seen the film yet. In the process, however, he will entertain you, take you through a life or two, ask some very good questions, offer a few good answers of his own and others, and show you the ropes around the room they all must call The Zone. ( )

http://wp.me/puHkv-3bA

Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Stalker' may be one of the greatest films ever made, but for this viewer it’s mostly laboured, inconsistent, portentous and yet inconsequential, and dreary. ‘I do know,’ Dyer writes on page 10, ‘that if I had not seen Stalker in my early twenties my responsiveness to the world would have been radically diminished.’ So I guess it’s too late for me in my mid 60s.

Still, I’m always fascinated when someone I respect differs wildly from me about a book or movie, so I settled down to read.

The book isn’t a learned dissertation. It’s pretty much a blow by blow account of the movie, interspersed with making-of anecdotes, snippets of autobiography, descriptions of how other films have been influenced by Stalker or refer to it, and reflections both serious and self-mocking on his own lifework as a writer. He probes at the reason the film has fascinated him so much. In true essayist style, he chases off on detours, airs his snobbery, throws harsh adjectives at films he doesn’t like , and quotes more or less casually from a vast range of cultural touchstones: Kundera and Wordsworth, Rilke and Billy Collins, Coetzee and Nadezhda Mandelstam, Cate Blanchett and Igmar Bergman, Bob Dylan and Bjork, Christian Marclay’s The Clock and James Turrell’s light sculptures. There’s a very funny account of his idiosyncratic response to Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 remake of Solaris, and an amusing account of some missed sexual opportunities.

I can’t say the book improved my appreciation of Tarkovsky in general or 'Stalker' in particular. But I enjoyed spending a little more than 200 pages in Geoff Dyer's company as he engages with a movie that he has watched many times and been fascinated by for more than 30 years.

Who cares what anyone else thinks about Stalker, one the most subjective and solipsistic examples of narrative cinema ever put to film? Well, I needed to think about Stalker for a project so I read this book and I wanted to read Geoff Dyer for a long time.

stalker

What happens in the Zone stays in the Zone. I’m getting ahead of myself. Stalker is kind of like Van Morrison’s voice and that horrible Greil Marcus book about Van Morrison was still leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Zona was very readable and I did get some factoids about Tarkovsky I didn’t know but really I’ve avoided biographical information about Tarkovsky because, you know, Stalker, it is a film you dream not something you think about. I’ll leave the thinking to the fools. Dyer’s prose are almost too slick. He effortless weaves anecdotal experiences about the film, historical data scree, and critical scalpel work. He’s obviously showing off how easily he can do this and it is kind of annoying. He also tries to hard to prove that even though he is now a silver fox, he is still up on hip music and capital D drugs. At least he acknowledges the debt the film has to LS capital D (at least to how it is perceived in the West). What I love is that he clearly gets little visual details wrong about the film (clearly HE CANNOT BE GETTING little details wrong about the film) but I think he wants the reader to go and watch it and scream and shout, “Dr. Dyer! But! But! But!” alá Codrescu’s Posthuman Dada Guide. Watch the film fools.

stalker

dier (just a little bit)

Don’t mind if I do.

I definitely want to read The Missing of the Somme.

====================

Gotta get this in somewhere: * is to ** as They Live is to Stalker. ( )