Several months ago I decided to make yet another attempt at publishing my writings. To lessen the reader’s burden, I stripped my Residua of most early pieces with philosophical ambitions and of all time-accounting detail. In particular, I removed the addenda and the dates. The resulting volume I named Abbreviations. This time I decided to approach the marketplace via a literary agent, as is only appropriate. Lauren gave me a copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 1992, the eighty-fifth issue of the guide published in London by A&C Black, and there I found the addresses of several promising agents. According to my guide, all the agents require a preliminary letter with a synopsis of the manuscript, a few words about the author, and a self-addressed and stamped envelope.

Glancing casually through my Abbreviations I was surprised by the extent to which my writings focused on Yugoslavia. My reminiscences about years spent there appeared to dominate the collection. The synopsis I wrote reflected that discovery:

This is a book about the gradual collapse of the world in which I grew up. It is about Yugoslavia, Central and Eastern Europe, the socialist world as a whole—east and west. It is about my generation’s belief that the world was our material, that it was at our disposal to shape it in our own image. The book offers a glimpse at the slow demise of socialism in my own mind and heart. It is very personal, and yet it paints the implosion of an entire universe. In this book I do not propose anything; rather, in it I “explain” why I am loath of proposing anything any longer. This I find to be one of the most important characteristics of many people in my generation in Yugoslavia and elsewhere in the socialist world.

Abbreviations is a collection of short pieces written since 1976. Most pieces are literary, some are philosophical, a good proportion is reminiscent of journal entries. The manuscript is divided into three sections, corresponding to three places where I have lived in the last 17 years, three places which have shaped me to some extent: Ljubljana, Slovenia (1975-1979), Cambridge, Massachusetts (1979-1990), and Reading, Berkshire (1990-1992). The middle section dominates the text. There are some 250 pieces on about 150 single-spaced manuscript pages. This would be the size of the book in published form, as well. The shortest pieces contain a few lines; the longest spread on a few pages. The pieces appear to be thrown together haphazardly, at random, blindly. This is a part of my “message”: the form and content of the book coincide.

This collection of short pieces will grow. Some of the pieces included in Abbreviations may appear in literary reviews under a common title. In a decade or so I envisage either an enlarged second edition, or a second volume of the book. My wish to go on adding to my book is expressed clearly in its preface.

The full text of the preface was appended. By the way, the story about the sprawling hospital in Siena gives me enormous pleasure every time I return to it, and especially if I read it aloud. My synopsis ended with a boastful prophecy:

I believe that my life-long project has already borne some fruit. I want to see my book published, read. I am confident that it will become an important book for many people in the east and west who have watched themselves carefully while the socialist world has crumbled around them.

On a separate page I said a few words about myself, making sure that my convoluted lineage is as clear as possible:

My first name is Yugoslav and my family name is Venetian. My parents come from Istria, an ancient world that passed from Venice to Austria in the Eighteenth Century, from Austria to Italy in 1918, when Yugoslavia was born, from Italy to Yugoslavia in 1945, and from Yugoslavia to Croatia in 1992. They met in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, were I was born in 1946. When I was two, we all moved to Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, where my father was one of the most prominent architects. I studied architecture, as well, but immediately upon my graduation I decided to move on to city and regional planning. In 1970 I went to the States, where I got a master’s from Harvard and a Ph.D. from MIT. Although these degrees were in city and regional planning, the core of my work was in economics. In 1970 I got married. My son was born in Boston in 1975. From 1975 to 1979 I worked as a planner in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. For a while I felt obliged to help my country grow and develop. This romantic notion evaporated soon enough. In 1979 we returned to the States, where I taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts for a year, at Northeastern from 1980 to 1983, and again at MIT from 1983 to 1990. From economics of planning I moved to building or construction economics, which remains my field to this day. In 1983 I separated from my wife, and in 1989 I met my second wife. Our first child will be born in a few months. In 1990 we decided to leave the States and I got a prominent chair at the University of Reading. We now live in Reading and spend much of our time in London and Oxford. We travel a lot. My wife is a sculptor. I also paint, so we often work together on various projects.

In 1976, while working in Yugoslavia, I started writing critical notes on the planning system there. These notes were written in the Frankfurt School tradition, and many of them were published in Yugoslav underground reviews and in Telos, an American critical review. My notes soon got a literary flavor. As all the notes were dated, they became my intellectual diary, as it were. To dated notes I started appending dated addenda. By 1980 I stopped publishing my notes because they were becoming a bit too personal. I gave them a collective name, Residua, and I started “publishing” them myself and distributing them to friends and acquaintances in the form of yearbooks. I am now working on Vol. XVII of my Residua. Many of my friends welcome my yearbooks. I believe that this book will sooner or later be recognized as one of the central documents about my generation.

So far, my attempts to publish Residua in their “raw” form have been unsuccessful. I offered the book to a dozen publishing houses in 1980 and again in 1990, by which time it had grown considerably. Although many editors have written to me that they would wish to be able to publish a book like mine, they could not act against their commercial judgment. They all felt the general reader would not be interested in the thoughts, no matter how incisive, of someone not already well known. Last year I realized that I might have a better chance with a selection of literary pieces from the Residua. Also, I removed the dates and the addenda to make reading easier. That is how Abbreviations came about.

I have published a large number of papers in academic and professional journals. I have been fortunate to publish in the best journals in economics. Together with a colleague from the University of Reading, I am now the editor of the leading journal in my field, E. & F.N. Spon’s Construction Management and Economics. In addition to papers I have published several books, of which the most important was published by Prentice-Hall in 1989, Building as an Economic Process: An Introduction to Building Economics. I am acting as the editor-in-chief for a book series in building economics, sponsored by the International Building Council. My papers and books are very well received. It is fair to say that I am one of the leading people in the world in my field.

I was reasonably happy with all this. My first letter went to John Johnson (Authors’ Agent) Limited in London. A certain Patricia Reynolds replied by saying that she was sorry to tell me that they could not take any new work for the time being. The reason was that the office was rather small. She also said she hoped I would be successful with another agent soon. This was reminiscent of the publishers’ letters I have received in the past, but I did not lose heart. My second letter was addressed to Alexandra Nye, Writers & Agents, in Edinburgh. The reply arrived surprisingly quickly and it gave me some hope. Alexandra Nye, who had meanwhile moved to London, was quite enthusiastic about my preliminary letter:

I have looked at your information with great interest. This is a topical subject, and the extract enclosed in your synopsis is very beautifully and evocatively written. I have recently placed a manuscript about Romania after the collapse of communism with Routledge, and I am confident that books dealing with the changing face of Europe can easily find a market—so, I would recommend that you persevere in finding a publisher.

She said she would be delighted to see the manuscript. However, she pointed out that there was a reading fee of £1.50 per 1,000 words, with a maximum charge of £150. A detailed report, consisting of four to five pages of constructive criticism, would reach me in four or five weeks. Most important, the report would indicate whether or not she would be interested in representing me. As my manuscript turned out to contain some 90,000 words, I sent it to Alexandra Nye with a check for £135.

The report arrived this morning, well within the announced review period. As promised in Alexandra Nye’s letter, the report discusses the manuscript in terms of its content, style, structure, presentation, and marketability. It was written by a certain Patrice Gollaglee, a reader for the agency. The report is in three distinct parts—synopsis, comments, and conclusion. The synopsis is brief:

Abbreviations is a collection of short prose pieces which have been put together in volume form. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be much continuity running through the collection, and they are largely documented [?] according to when and where they were written. This inevitably raises the problem of marketability and makes this volume extremely difficult to place. This need not necessarily have been the case if the author had observed the need for a [sic] structure and a [sic] measure of continuity running through the volume.

This struck me as fair enough, albeit predictable from my earlier experiences with the marketplace. The structural difference between my Residua and Abbreviations was apparently not sufficient to affect the marketability verdict. The comments form the bulk of the report. They abound with the advertised constructive criticism:

I liked the preface very much. The preface, in fact, raises false expectations which the volume itself fails to deliver. After reading the preface and moving on to the main body of the book, it is hard to see the relevance of what the author is trying to say. Much of the writing is incoherent. There are problems enough from the point of view of marketability in trying to place a volume of short prose pieces, but the problem is intensified when those short pieces appear to read more like disjointed extracts, and even worse, unfinished snippets [quelle horreur!]. “A Simple Fellow” [Vol. III, 1978] is one example of the unfinished nature of these pieces. Some of the extracts are beautifully written at times; there are tempting glimpses of something more, indicating that the author might be capable of writing a good completed [?] novel if he put his mind to it, but most of the material is deliberately [?] obscure, incoherent, and in danger of appearing meaningless and empty—verbose, simply using words for the sake of it without actually saying anything. For example: “The possibility of an error in judgment salvages from the ignoble certainty” [”On Modesty,” Vol. V, 1980].

Most of the report is tough but fair, though. Patrice Gollaglee does not fail to point at my potential, as well:

The author clearly has some potential as a creative writer, but he needs to actually finish something—perhaps a completed [?!] novel, although this would require considerable effort and there would be many inevitable [?] pitfalls to avoid. The novel may be thoughtful, a little introspective [alas!], it may be written in the first person singular with the author as narrator, but it must be a completed [?!!] novel as opposed to short unfinished snippets. It is important to highlight that these pieces do largely read as incomplete—they are unfinished. Realistically speaking [?], from the publisher’s point of view [!], no mater how well-written a collection of prose pieces might be, they still will not necessarily add up to a saleable item unless the author is already well known.

On first reading of the report, the last argument sounded like an echo of so many similar arguments I have heard in the past, but then it occurred to me that it could have been taken from my own biography. At any rate, apparently very exercised about my manuscript, she continues somewhat breathlessly, in the same paragraph:

Bearing this in mind, Abbreviations is, in its present form, a collection of disjointed and unfinished extracts which are, in places, extremely badly written. The author, if he intends to publish [no, I am only kidding], really needs to shape up this volume or else attempt a completed work. It is clear that he has lacked creative discipline in writing this volume. “The Banal Story” [Vol. III, 1978] is an example of the writing at its worst. This is one example of very bad writing. It is uninteresting, laborious, and [in addition to being uninteresting] it does not engage our interest. The author has a tendency to be verbose—”[…] and all the countless parts that you can observe unassembled behind the counters of a hardware store before an idle attendant approaches you and asks politely: ‘What can I do for you today?’” [”A Remote Possibility,” Vol. V, 1980]. “On Modesty” [Vol. V, 1980] is another example of bad writing.

The author’s style is a strange mixture of both good and bad. “Insulated by pride and spite and pain and a glimmer of hope […]” [”Ludvik Vaculik,” Vol. V, 1980]. This is quite good writing, but this is followed by an example like that already [!] quoted: “The possibility of an error in judgment salvages from the ignoble certainty” [”On Modesty,” Vol. V, 1980]. This means nothing, is badly expressed, is using words for the sake of it without clearly expressing any thought or idea, or alternatively without describing anything either visually or in any other sensual form. “Giorgio de Chirico” [Vol. VI, 1981] is good, describing the view from his [mine, not de Chirico’s] window. This is much-improved [improved from what?], enjoyable piece of prose—apart from the sentence, “Death the Mother,” which reads like a meaningless verbose aberration. The following shows the author at his best: “Even an office such as mine—neon-lit, long narrow and barren, overlooking a stark courtyard of an ex-drug factory dominated by a defunct smokestack, which I could perhaps reach from my window on the third floor—even such an office may be blessed with glorious moments and occasional glimpses of unprecedented beauty, however short, rare, and unpredictable” [”Giorgio de Chirico,” Vol. VI, 1981]. “Decorative Illusions” [Vol. VI, 1981] is also good, although the author must beware of the tendency to be too convoluted in his style. He must learn to be more precise and accurate in his use of language. He is at his best when being descriptive, whether he is describing a visual impression or a feeling. He is at his absolute worst when attempting to be philosophical and as the result is usually incoherent, verbose, and badly expressed. “The Truth about Sancho Panza: An Extension” [Vol. VI, 1981] is another example of bad writing. As I have said, the content of this volume is a mixture of both good and very bad [note the asymmetry here!], but [despite the mixture of good and very bad?] there are too many weak unfinished and unpublishable pieces contained in the volume to render it viable [sic].

Several paragraphs later she returns to the distinction between good and bad writing, which appears to excite her to a surprising extent:

The author must curb his tendency to be incoherent. “Apraxia” [Vol. VI, 1981] is one example of this. […] “All this, this ceaseless and unproductive scribbling, ultimately amounts to a blind affirmation (of the existing?), since the resulting text, fragmented and repeatedly aborted text, regardless of all appearances, bears a Nietzschean imprint: ‘Not to pray any longer—to bless’” [”Kiss of Death,” Vol. VI, 1981]. Once again the author is resorting to verbosity here. […] “The Poor Devil” [Vol. VII, 1982] is another example of very bad creative [?] writing. This is a weak narrative, inadequate, and overly contrived. The author appears to be writing for the sake of it, without having clearly felt within himself what he is actually trying to say.

She also remarks that my book is hardly about what used to be Yugoslavia and its many current troubles:

The manuscript does not comment much at all on Yugoslavia, despite the author’s suggestion that the volume may amount to a comment [which is to mean “commentary”?] on Yugoslavia. As someone who has recently witnessed the tragedy and pointlessness of the destruction and corrosion of a world he once knew, it strikes me that the author is perfectly well qualified and in an excellent position to write either a connected series of pieces about Yugoslavia, or else a novel or even a work on non-fiction describing the emotions of seeing that world break down. It seems to me that the author has not even attempted to tackle that in this collection of short pieces. A volume dealing more specifically with the above subject would certainly be easier to place.

Of course, I disagree. Although the proverbial “general reader” is more likely to agree with Patrice Gollaglee than with me in the assessment of my poor manuscript, even the most general of readers would grant me that I have at least “attempted” to tackle the subject of Yugoslavia. Patrice Gollaglee is a tough reader, indeed. The conclusion of the report is also very brief and fair, albeit somewhat repetitive:

This author clearly needs to finish something. I feel that he is attempting to cheat himself [?] by putting together a volume of distinctly [which is to say “obviously”?] unfinished pieces. He does have potential as a creative writer, and I would encourage him to attempt a full-scale narrative; it may contain personal reminiscences, but it must be coherent, clearly and evocatively written, and it must have continuity throughout. There are some good and bad sections in Abbreviations, but even the good ones do not represent any finished or complete volume that could be shown to a publisher. The volume also [in addition to lacking “continuity throughout”?] lacks a common theme and continuity. At present, it seems very ad hoc and disjointed. As it stands, I am afraid I cannot recommend that Alexandra Nye should offer to represent this work.

The report concerns a disappointingly small part of the manuscript, it shows little interest in my stated objectives and ways of working, it is poorly written and structured, and it is full of grammatical boo-boos, from most of which I have spared the reader; nonetheless, it offers much food for thought. Although I feel that the price of this advice is on the high side, the whole exercise is sufficiently entertaining to warrant the expenditure. Were reading fees a bit more reasonable—say, £0.50 per 1,000 words—I would be more than happy to collect and compare the advice of at least three literary agents. This will have to wait for better times, however.

After having gone through the report with me, Lauren suggested this morning that the best thing I could do at this time is offer small collections of my pieces on various topics to literary and other “avantgarde” journals. She felt the pieces themselves should be presented in their raw form, as they appear in my Residua. My readership will form in time and I will ultimately be in better position to publish my “collected works,” as it were. This advice strikes me as worth following for a few years. In addition, it is now more than clear that my Residua, however restructured, is not of interest to the marketplace.

Addendum (April 5, 1998)

In fairness to Patrice Gollaglee, quite a number of my friends who have read this piece agree with her. Although obliquely, they refer to her when they want to both encourage me in what I am doing and help me find the true path as a writer. I am happy for Patrice; however, I am not a writer and I do not wish to become one.