num_pages: 272
description: 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 Memory collects 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 Memory collects 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 the Titanic to 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? With The 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 of Less 
language: English
title: The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays
publisher: FSG Originals