A balm, not a burr, Gabbert's essays are a hauntingly perceptive analysis of the anxiety intrinsic in our new, digital ways of being, and also a means of reconciling ourselves to this new world. Moving from public trauma to personal tragedy, from the Titanic and Chernobyl to illness and loss, The Unreality of Memory alternately rips away the facade of our fascination with destruction and gently identifies itself with the age of rubbernecking. In these tender and prophetic essays, she focuses in on our daily preoccupation and favorite pasttime: desperate distraction from disaster by way of a desperate obsession with the disastrous. Poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert's The Unreality of Memory consists of a series of lyrical and deeply researched meditations on what our culture of catastrophe has done to public discourse and our own inner lives.
Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase "Did you see?" The feeling that we're living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten. Her essays have a clarity and prescience that imply a sort of distant, retrospective view, like postcards sent from the near future' New York Times We stare at our phones. 'A work of sheer brilliance, beauty and bravery' Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less 'Masterly. A literary guide to digital anxiety, The Unreality of Memory collects thought-provoking and playful essays on the Internet age's media-saturated disaster coverage and our addiction to viewing and discussing the world's ills.
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