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“At a time when books are written, published and read more than ever before, the writer and the reader are the loneliest and most threatened species.��

Witty, acerbic, cynical, thought-provoking, darkly funny, important. Those were the words that came to mind as I read this collection of essays by Dubravka Ugresic, in which she mercilessly takes down the book publishing industry, the way modern literature is sold and consumed, and the reality for writers and readers of books that don’t end up with an Oprah’s Book Club sticker on them.

Of course, Ugresic is a snob (and oh boy, does she hate writers�� how-to-books!). But let’s be honest here: so am I. At least when it comes to books. It’s hard to avoid when you read more than a hundred books in a year, but I’ve always been that way; I was raised by readers who scoffed at best-sellers held the heavy-weight classics in the highest regards. So I found myself nodding in agreement with Ugresic, and was often brought back to conversation I had with my colleagues back in the days when I worked in a bookstore that shoved more interesting and challenging books to the side and made huge displays of recipe books for slow-cookers and endless copies of “The Secret��.

She is from a former Yugoslavia, and having been raised in that environment clearly affected her vision of writing as more than a simple vanity project, - as often seems to be the case today, where many celebrities have ghost-written books published before they turn thirty. To her, writing is art, sure, but it’s also serious work that deserves to be treated as such. And also as someone born and raised in such a politically charged time and place, she bemoans the hyper-commercialism and crass-consumerist transformation of the literary market, where the mark of success is not longer a quality stamp awarded by academics and intellectual, but rather, the amount of copies sold and whether or not it was adapted into a blockbuster movie.

That writers are now seen as content providers (who have to look good enough to sell their “product��) and simple cogs in the great publishing machine is, indeed, upsetting, as is the idea that reality must now be “fictionalized�� and dramatized in order to make the new or seem interesting and relevant. Many of the essays were written in the 90s, and it’s appalling to think that things haven’t really evolved all that much since.

A lot of her reflections are also strongly colored by her life as a expatriate/voluntary exile, and the dichotomy between Western and Eastern European�� well, everything! I found that perspective truly fascinating, sometimes contradictory and frustrating, but she is self-aware enough to take her own thought process apart and show the readers where the different pieces come from.

I enjoyed Ms. Ugresic’s writing and opinions, but sometimes, I found myself a little irritated by her puritanism. She is very smart and she makes lots of good points, but she is kind of a downer. I guess I am not as much a literary elitist as she is, because I think you should be allowed to enjoy trash books every once in a while. Nevertheless, these essays are an important reminder that we should consume culture conscientiously, as we definitely seem to be living more and more in Aldous Huxley’s nightmare scenario. 3 stars, and now I want to read her fiction!