MC: In Zona, you quote Flaubert who says that “a book which would have almost no subject, or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible, if such a thing is possible… [is] the future of Art.”

GD: Those are great lines.  They are still defining the avant-garde the high water mark of what we can aim at.

MC: Why are works of art about nothing a high water mark?

GD: What could be more advanced than that: a book about nothing?

MC: A Seinfeldian interview about nothing.

GD: Anybody can write a book about something. A book about nothing is zen-like.  It’s part of this thing I’ve said before; I like books not being defined by their aboutness. 

MC: But even a book about nothing, is actually about something.  The nothing is the something. Or, contained in the lack of content, is the content.

GD: That’s the thing about Zona.  You could say it’s a book about Tarkovsky, but it’s not.  It’s…

MC: It’s about itself?

GD: Yeah. It’s got that nice thing at the end, whereby the route taken to the Room, becomes a kind of diagram of the route that I took writing the book. I like diagrammatic books.  

MC: I thought you were tired of “machinations.”

GD: I’m guilty of wild generalization there.  It’s not The Novel that I object to; it’s—I’ve got a nosebleed.

MC: Really? Terrific! I mean, oh no!  I was hoping I could induce one of your famous nosebleeds.