THE AGE OF SKIN: Essays by the late thinker/cultural critic Dubravka Ugrešić

THE AGE OF SKIN: Essays
DUBRAVKA UGREŠIĆ (tr. Ellen Elias-Bursać.)
Open Letter Books
$16.96 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: These essays are written on the skin of the times. Dubravka Ugrešić, winner of the Neustadt International Prize and one of Europe’s most influential writers, with biting humor and a multitude of cultural references—from La La Land and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, to tattoos and body modification, World Cup chants, and the preservation of Lenin’s corpse—takes on the dreams, hopes, and fears of modern life. The collapse of Yugoslavia, and the author’s subsequent exile from Croatia, leads to reflections on nationalism and the intertwining of crime and politics. Ugrešić writes at eye level, from a human perspective, in portraits of people from the former Eastern Bloc, who work as cleaners in the Netherlands or start underground shops with products from their country of origin.

A rare and welcome combination of irony, compassion, and a sharp polemic gaze characterizes these beautiful and highly relevant essays.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There is a timelessness to the literary form we call the screed. These extended snorts of derision, grumbles of dissatisfaction, howls of anguish, form in their bulk a screed against Ugrešić's many crotchets with the modern capitalist, hyperconsumptive, obsessional "culture" that's permeated our planet and bids fair to destroy its capacity to support us.

Technology has empowered him, our former statistic, to finally take center stage. Did not he, this worm in human form, also come into the world to leave his mark?! And sure enough, the little guys have raced to leave their mark, developing in the process voracious appetites: some of them strip naked and bare their posterior, others their genitalia, some sing, others write, some dance, others paint, while some are multiplexes and do all of this at once. The little guy has finally conquered the media.

The technology to have what Andy Warhol famously predicted would be our universally available "world-famous for fifteen minutes" cultural due is in place; is being used; and exacerbates the overuse of resources by the stupid on their individual search of their fifteen-minute slice:

Where did I go wrong, a friend of mine asked, an astrophysicist. He was left jobless, and scrolled through his computer to find something, anything, to make ends meet. There before him on the computer screen loomed Kim Kardashian’s large, oiled butt.{...} Kim Kardashian’s butt came jumping off every website, the world over, wherever he clicked. My friend realized this butt was the final greeting from a civilization breathing its last, and he relaxed. The Kardashian meteorite came slowly closer, in another second it would crash into Earth and shatter into a million bits. Where have I gone wrong, asked the astrophysicist with the last vestiges of his brain.

Flaunt what you like, show what you've got, no one's paying attention because everyone's looking for their reflection in your shiny, oiled-up abs, ass, tits.

{A}ll the world looks like a beach party, bare-naked bodies chanting Gorky’s man, how proud it sounds, that everything is cool, couldn’t be cooler, the party will last till the liberated bodies are stilled by that inevitable shovelful of dirt.

Even after they pat you in the face with a spade, your selfies and your butt will be proof for so long as the bits and bytes have juice to keep them available to whoever cares to look that You Were Here, that once upon a time Granny had a slammin' beach bod, that Papaw was well-hung, that Mom and Dad liked anal, too.

Everyone is preoccupied with their own life, their own little existence. And as long as people stare obsessively at their reflection on the smooth screen, there will be no room for the lives of others, there is simply no room.

No room, no room...never enough room for all the nothing-much that people want to insulate themselves against oblivion with, the immense pile of stuff we're pretty much padded from the grim reality that all that stuff came from someone's labor, made from resources they can't access, and all you're doing with it is plonking it into a (rented) storage unit until you die and whoever has to clean up after you throws it out, sells it, donates it to the needy.

And when the victims are many, there’s no place for them in human hearts of average emotional capacity. It bears remembering that in this society of ours, rooted in an overweening happiness, empathy has been jettisoned.

"The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me," says the original christian according to Matthew...and haven't his co-religionists just taken that right to heart, as written though not as it was intended. In a world padded by stuff the blows of misfortune and reversal aren't as sharp, are thye, so stuff is doing its job...dulling you to the reality that all the noise, all the "I AM, I AM, I AM" we shout onto the smooth screens reflecting the vacant spots that are the Others, is an appalling, desperate din of misery and not a joyful noise unto the lord.

Stupidity has become, over time, far too burdensome for me. I am finding it difficult to breathe under its weight and cannot shake free of it. I tried for a while with laughter, and, to be sure, that helped. But now stupidity has barged in, made itself at home, and soaked up all the oxygen. A quarter century ago, stupidity grabbed the microphone, gleeful with self-confidence, and hogged center stage. There is no hope that it will be relinquishing its position any time soon.

Bitter, disillusioned old curmudgeon that I am, Dubravka Ugrešić speaks for me more eloquently than I can mange to do for myself. Her death in March, 2023, was a huge loss of honesty, clarity, and grouchy, disappointed screed-making. I know I feel it as a loss. If you read these trenchant essays I expect you might, as well.