Terror, disaster, memory, selfhood, happiness . . . leave it to a poet to tackle the unthinkable so wisely and so wittily. * A literary guide to life in the pre-apocalypse,The Unreality of Memorycollects profound and prophetic essays on the Internet ages media-saturated disaster coverage and our addiction to viewing and discussing the worlds ills.
We stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase Did you see? The feeling that were living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gottenand each new catastrophe distracts us from the last.
The Unreality of Memorycollects provocative, searching essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom. In this new collection, acclaimed poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert explores our obsessions with disasters past and future, from the sinking of theTitanicto Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. These deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will endif indeed it willand why we cant stop fantasizing about it.
Can we avoid repeating history? Can we understand our moment from inside the moment? WithThe Unreality of Memory, Gabbert offers a hauntingly perceptive analysis of our new ways of being and a means of reconciling ourselves to this unreal new world.
A work of sheer brilliance, beauty and bravery. *Andrew Sean Greer, author ofLess
Elisa Gabbert is the author of the poetry collections,
LHeure Bleue,
The Self Unstable,and
The French Exit. Her debut collection of essays,
The Word Pretty, was published in 2018.
The Self Unstablewas chosen by the
New Yorkeras one of the best books of 2013. Gabbert's work has appeared in the
New Yorker, Boston Review, The Paris Review Daily, Pacific Standard, Guernica, The Awl, Electric Litelc
![The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/3/3/8/2_4349941.jpg "The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays [Paperback]")