{"product_id":"unreality-of-memory","title":"The Unreality of Memory: Notes on Life in the Pre-Apocalypse","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A work of sheer brilliance, beauty and bravery' Andrew Sean Greer\u003ci\u003e, author of Less\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Masterly... Her essays have a clarity and prescience that imply a sort of distant, retrospective view, like postcards sent from the near future' \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePoet and essayist Elisa Gabbert's \u003ci\u003eThe Unreality of Memory\u003c\/i\u003e  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. 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMoving from public trauma to personal tragedy, from the Titanic and Chernobyl to illness and loss, \u003ci\u003eThe Unreality of Memory\u003c\/i\u003e  alternately rips away the facade of our fascination with destruction  and gently identifies itself with the age of rubbernecking. 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'One of those joyful books that send you to your notebook every page or so, desperate not to lose either the thought the author has deftly placed in your mind or the title of a work she has now compelled you to read.' \u003ci\u003eParis Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Atlantic Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Product","offer_id":54218307174744,"sku":"9781838950644","price":14.88,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/unreality-of-memory","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}