"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 age's media-saturated disaster coverage and our addiction to viewing and discussing the world's 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 we're living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten--and 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 theTitanicto Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. These deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will end--if indeed it will--and why we can't 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

Unreality of Memory

Literature & Fiction

Gabbert, Elisa

Essays & Correspondence

FSG Adult

Any Person Is the Only Self: Essays

FSG Originals

Poetry. "What a complex and lovely book this is! Reading Elisa Gabbert's obsessively interior, technically rigorous poems is like listening in on the thoughts of a mind so fiercely observant and subtle that I find in them always some new twist, some surprising layer I hadn't noticed before. By turns moving and witty, sharp-eyed and impressionistic, Gabbert writes with technical sophistication and keen intelligence. This is a terrific book"--Kevin Prufer.

The French Exit

Poetry

Birds, LLC

Literary Nonfiction. Elisa Gabbert's THE SELF UNSTABLE combines elements of memoir, philosophy, and aphorism to explore and trouble our ideas of the self, memory, happiness, aesthetics, love, and sex. With a sense of humor and an ability to find glimmers of the absurd in the profound, she uses the lyric essay like a koan to provoke the reader's reflection—unsettling the role of truth and interrogating the "I" in both literary and daily life: "The future isn't anywhere, so we can never get there. We can only disappear." "Gabbert strikes a perfect balance between heart and head, between cleverness and earnestness, between language that demonstrates its own fallibility and language that is surprisingly, perfectly precise."—Make Magazine "... smart and philosophically dexterous, capable of showing the self to be a fetish-object of its own and also a refractive subject of Lacanian devotion, as a mirror which doesn't so much distort as endlessly `reveal,' like the panopticon eye of a camera."—The Rumpus "... the dispassion about the self allows the writer to enact a number of equally lovely sleights of hand . . . Even while the author is drawn to image and reason, she is also in love with the vanishing point, where all perspective is ecstatically compressed into a single node."—Gently Read Literature

The Self Unstable

History & Criticism

Black Ocean

A collection of funny and thought-provoking poems inspired by surprising facts that will appeal to poetry lovers and poetry haters alike, from the author of the essay collection The Unreality of Memory, “a work of sheer brilliance, beauty, and bravery” (Andrew Sean Greer)\nKnown to be both “casually brilliant” (Sandra Newman) and a “ruthless self-examiner” (Sarah Manguso), acclaimed writer Elisa Gabbert brings her “questing, restless intelligence” (Kirkus Reviews) to a new collection of poetry.\nBy turns funny and chilling, these poems collect strange facts, interrogate language, and ask unanswerable questions that offer the pleasure of discovery on nearly every page: How does one suffer “gladly,” exactly? How bored are dogs? Which is more frightening, nothing or empty space? Was Wittgenstein sexy?\nThe poems in this collection are earwormy, ultracontemporary, essayistic, aphoristic, and philosophical—invitations to eavesdrop on a mind paying attention to itself. Normal Distance is a book about thinking and feeling, meaning and experience, trees and the weather, and the boredom and pain of living through time.

Normal Distance

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Soft Skull

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 we're living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten-and 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 end-if indeed it will-and why we can't 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.

The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Tantor Audio

'A work of sheer brilliance, beauty and bravery' Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less\n'Masterly... 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\nWe 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.\nPoet 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. 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.\nMoving 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. 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.\n'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.' Paris Review

The Unreality of Memory: Notes on Life in the Pre-Apocalypse

ATLANTIC BOOKS *

Poetry. Drama. Elisa Gabbert's L'HEURE BLEUE, OR THE JUDY POEMS, goes inside the mind of Judy, one of three characters in Wallace Shawn's The Designated Mourner, a play about the dissolution of a marriage in the midst of political revolution. In these poems, Gabbert imagines a back story and an emotional life for Judy beyond and outside the play. Written in a voice that is at once intellectual and unselfconscious, these poems create a character study of a many-layered woman reflected in solitude, while engaging with larger questions of memory, identity, desire, surveillance, and fear.

L' Heure Bleue

Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. Memoir. Cultural Criticism. In THE WORD PRETTY Elisa Gabbert brings together humor and observational intelligence to create a roving and curious series of lyrical essays on writing, reading, and living. Combining elements of criticism, meditation, and personal essay, this book reveals a poet's attention turned to subjects from translation to aphorism, from unreliable memory to beauty and the male gaze.

The Word Pretty

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gabbert, Elisa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gabbert, Elisa

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gabbert, Elisa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Unreality of Memory

Any Person Is the Only Self: Essays

The French Exit

The Self Unstable

Normal Distance

The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays

The Unreality of Memory: Notes on Life in the Pre-Apocalypse

The Unreality of Memory: Notes on Life in the Pre-Apocalypse

L' Heure Bleue

The Word Pretty