Thank You for Not Reading

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Thank You for Not Reading is a biting critique of book publishing: agents, subagents, and scouts, supermarket-like bookstores, Joan Collins, book fairs that have little to do with books, authors promoted because of sex appeal instead of merit, and editors trying to look like writers by having their photograph taken against a background of bookshelves. Nowadays, the best strategy for young authors wanted to publish is to become famous in some other capacity firstas a sports star, an actress, or an Ivana Trump.

One of the most interesting and paradoxical comparisons coming out of Ugresic's dissection of book culture is the similarity between the art of socialist realism (as prescribed by the Soviets) and the nature of the contemporary marketplace to produce and promote art that appeals to everyone. Thanks to cultural forces like listicles and celebrity book clubs, the publishing machine neglects literature in favor of accessible, entertaining books for the masses.

Reviews

Winner of the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

"It takes a stranger to see how dark this world is: Dubravka Ugresic is that stranger."--Joseph Brodsky

"A brilliant, enthralling spread of storytelling and high-velocity reflections. . . . Ugresic is a writer to follow. A writer to be cherished."--Susan Sontag

"Like Nabokov, Ugresic affirms our ability to remember as a source for saving our moral and compassionate identity."--John Balaban, Washington Post

"A genuinely free-thinker, Ugresic's attachment to absurdity leads her down paths where other writers fear to tread."--The Independent

"As long as some, like Ugresic, who can write well, do, there will be hope for the future."--New Criterion

"Ugresic's wit is bound by no preconceived purposes, and once the story takes off, a wild freedom of association and adventurous discernment is set in motion. . . . Ugresic dissects the social world."--World Literature Today

"Never has a writer been more aware of how one narrative depends on another."--Joanna Walsh

"Ugresic is unbeatable at explaining the inexplicable entanglements of Balkan cultural traditions, particularly as they relate to the hellish position of women."--Clive James

"Ugresic is also affecting and eloquent, in part because within her quirky, aggressively sweet plot she achieves moments of profundity and evokes the stoicism innate in such moments."--Mary Gaitskill

"Ugresic must be numbered among what Jacques Maritain called the dreamers of the true; she draws us into the dream."--New York Times

"Dubravka Ugresic is the philosopher of evil and exile, and the storyteller of many shattered lives."--Charles Simic

"Thank You for Not Reading is an indispensable critique as well as an exhilarating work of prose--a brilliant meditation on the literary, cultural, and existential consequences of the global triumph of the Bottom Line. . . . This book is something rare indeed: a work as pleasurable to read as it is edifying; as marvelously crafted, line by line, as it is wise throughout."--Mark Crispin Miller

Author Bio

Dubravka Ugresic is the author of six works of fiction, including The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, and six essay collections, including the NBCC award finalist, Karaoke Culture. She went into exile from Croatia after being labeled a witch for her anti-nationalistic stance during the Yugoslav war. She now resides in the Netherlands. In 2016, she was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature for her body of work.

Celia Hawkesworth has translated The Museum of Unconditional Surrender by Dubravka Ugresic, Omer-Pasha Latas by Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andric, and several works by Dasa Drndic, including EEG, which won the 2020 Best Translated Book Award.

Damion Searls is a translator from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch and a writer in English. He was longlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize with Jon Fosse, for The Other Name: Septology I-II; he has received Guggenheim, Cullman Center, and two NEA fellowships, and the Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize for Hans Keilson's Comedy in a Minor Key, the PEN Center USA Translation Award for Jon Fosse's Aliss at the Fire, and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for Uwe Johnson's four-volume Anniversaries, among other awards. He has also edited a one-volume abridgment of Henry David Thoreau's Journal; his own books include What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going (stories), The Inkblots (a history of the Rorschach Test and biography of its creator, Hermann Rorschach, which has been translated into ten languages), and The Philosophy of Translation.