Dubravka Ugresic
Photo by Jerry Braun
Dubravka Ugresic is one of Europe's most distinguished writers of novels and essays. From exile to emigration, from Croatia to Amsterdam, her work has been translated over the decades into more than twenty languages. She has taught at a number of American and European universities, including Harvard, UCLA, Columbia and the Free University of Berlin. She is the winner of several major literary prizes (Austrian State Prize for European Literature 1998; finalist of Man Booker International Prize 2009; Jean Améry Essay Prize, awarded for her essayistic work as a whole, 2012; while Karaoke Culture was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism 2011). In 2016 Dubravka Ugresic has been awarded Vilenica Prize and Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Published 09/22/2017
Published 09/22/2017
Howl: What is your writing process like?
Ugresic: The most difficult part of the process is the very beginning. Imagine a little mouse running around a huge wheel of cheese, trying to climb, sliding, trying again, falling down, running around it, trying to find a little hole to get into the cheese. I am that miserable mouse. Once I manage to get into the cheese and place myself comfortably into my new home, I am happy as any mouse would be: I am inside my future novel, this is my house, I am protected by it. At the end of the process there are anxiety attacks, a fear of exposure (the novel is going to be published!), a fear of failure, and so on and so forth…
Howl: How do you edit your work?
Ugresic: Sometimes I think that the whole process of writing is, in fact, just an endless process of editing. I am able to write and then delete, cut, re-write a text many times. The only trouble is that I like to correct the text in the printed version. I see things better when they are printed.
Howl: What advice do you have for budding writers?
Ugresic: I don’t have any advice, simply because I feel like an eternal beginner. I never managed to learn anything. I don’t behave like responsible adult writer. Consequently, I don’t feel like an authority. I can’t see my writing as a “profession”. How can a person with such an attitude have any advice?! However, I do have one demand (it’s not an advice, mind you, it’s a demand!) concerning working ethics. If you want to be a writer, you must read your fellow writers. Who doesn’t read, does not deserve to call himself/herself a writer! How you can expect to be accepted and respected as a writer if you do not accept and respect somebody else’s writing?!
Howl: What do you look for in a good book and are you reading anything now or recently that you’re particularly excited about?
Ugresic: As a reader, I have quite a primitive evaluation ritual: I divide books into “warm” ones and “cold” ones. “Warm” books are full of life and they bring you a pleasure of reading. “Cold” books might bring you some other pleasures; they could be smart, excellent, cerebral, but they are “cold”. My favorite choice is also the rarest: both, cold and warm. And then, there are the books, and such are predominant, that pretend to be literature. The trickiest things are that many people – editors, critics, teachers, and readers – are often not able to tell the difference between literature and wannabe-literature.
Howl: Where do you typically get your inspiration and if you ever have writer’s block, how do you deal with it?
Ugresic: The magic of inspiration can’t be connected with anything “typical”. You never know what will inspire you, but you recognize that right tone, sentence, fragment, detail.
Howl: What is a quirk about you, as a writer, that most people wouldn’t know?
Ugresic: I know, you would like me to tell you that I can’t write until I put on my “magic hat” on my head or something similar. Unfortunately, no quirky things, no strange habits.
Howl: What do you believe is the responsibility of the writer to the reader, if there is one?
Ugresic: There is a responsibility, an enormous one. Writers should not underestimate their readers. Actually, a writer should write for a reader who is smarter than him, more educated than him, more experienced than him and more talented than him.
Howl: Why do you feel that writing is your creative medium of choice?
Ugresic: I got into it as a child. I dreamed of being a writer. I studied literature; I worked at the university for twenty years; I translated some writers; I did a lot of editing of some classical writers; I did a bit of literary history, literary theory, literary scholarship.
A big love of mine is art. I don’t know how to hold a brush, but I am sure that dealing with a brush and paint is one of the happiest activities invented by humankind.
Howl: As someone who has spoken out against war, how do you feel about the power writing can have to change the world?
Ugresic: Unfortunately, writing does not have power to change the world. However, literature helps us to see the world differently, with “new eyes”, to see what otherwise we wouldn’t be able to see. Sometimes some readers would say to me: “Your book saved my life”. It’s nice to hear such words, but books do not save our lives, neither they are supposed to. Great books are like magnifying glasses: they teach us to see the invisible.
Howl: Are you working on anything now, and if so, can we hear a little about it?
Ugresic: I just finished a novel. The title of the novel is Fox and it is going to appear next year in English, published by Open Letter Books. Ah, finally one quirky thing: I am a bit superstitious; I don’t like to talk about my books until they are out.
Ugresic: The most difficult part of the process is the very beginning. Imagine a little mouse running around a huge wheel of cheese, trying to climb, sliding, trying again, falling down, running around it, trying to find a little hole to get into the cheese. I am that miserable mouse. Once I manage to get into the cheese and place myself comfortably into my new home, I am happy as any mouse would be: I am inside my future novel, this is my house, I am protected by it. At the end of the process there are anxiety attacks, a fear of exposure (the novel is going to be published!), a fear of failure, and so on and so forth…
Howl: How do you edit your work?
Ugresic: Sometimes I think that the whole process of writing is, in fact, just an endless process of editing. I am able to write and then delete, cut, re-write a text many times. The only trouble is that I like to correct the text in the printed version. I see things better when they are printed.
Howl: What advice do you have for budding writers?
Ugresic: I don’t have any advice, simply because I feel like an eternal beginner. I never managed to learn anything. I don’t behave like responsible adult writer. Consequently, I don’t feel like an authority. I can’t see my writing as a “profession”. How can a person with such an attitude have any advice?! However, I do have one demand (it’s not an advice, mind you, it’s a demand!) concerning working ethics. If you want to be a writer, you must read your fellow writers. Who doesn’t read, does not deserve to call himself/herself a writer! How you can expect to be accepted and respected as a writer if you do not accept and respect somebody else’s writing?!
Howl: What do you look for in a good book and are you reading anything now or recently that you’re particularly excited about?
Ugresic: As a reader, I have quite a primitive evaluation ritual: I divide books into “warm” ones and “cold” ones. “Warm” books are full of life and they bring you a pleasure of reading. “Cold” books might bring you some other pleasures; they could be smart, excellent, cerebral, but they are “cold”. My favorite choice is also the rarest: both, cold and warm. And then, there are the books, and such are predominant, that pretend to be literature. The trickiest things are that many people – editors, critics, teachers, and readers – are often not able to tell the difference between literature and wannabe-literature.
Howl: Where do you typically get your inspiration and if you ever have writer’s block, how do you deal with it?
Ugresic: The magic of inspiration can’t be connected with anything “typical”. You never know what will inspire you, but you recognize that right tone, sentence, fragment, detail.
Howl: What is a quirk about you, as a writer, that most people wouldn’t know?
Ugresic: I know, you would like me to tell you that I can’t write until I put on my “magic hat” on my head or something similar. Unfortunately, no quirky things, no strange habits.
Howl: What do you believe is the responsibility of the writer to the reader, if there is one?
Ugresic: There is a responsibility, an enormous one. Writers should not underestimate their readers. Actually, a writer should write for a reader who is smarter than him, more educated than him, more experienced than him and more talented than him.
Howl: Why do you feel that writing is your creative medium of choice?
Ugresic: I got into it as a child. I dreamed of being a writer. I studied literature; I worked at the university for twenty years; I translated some writers; I did a lot of editing of some classical writers; I did a bit of literary history, literary theory, literary scholarship.
A big love of mine is art. I don’t know how to hold a brush, but I am sure that dealing with a brush and paint is one of the happiest activities invented by humankind.
Howl: As someone who has spoken out against war, how do you feel about the power writing can have to change the world?
Ugresic: Unfortunately, writing does not have power to change the world. However, literature helps us to see the world differently, with “new eyes”, to see what otherwise we wouldn’t be able to see. Sometimes some readers would say to me: “Your book saved my life”. It’s nice to hear such words, but books do not save our lives, neither they are supposed to. Great books are like magnifying glasses: they teach us to see the invisible.
Howl: Are you working on anything now, and if so, can we hear a little about it?
Ugresic: I just finished a novel. The title of the novel is Fox and it is going to appear next year in English, published by Open Letter Books. Ah, finally one quirky thing: I am a bit superstitious; I don’t like to talk about my books until they are out.