An editor’s job functions like a pure political matrix. Difficult decisions are made. Choices are made, as well. An editorial position is determined; choices are made from that position. This, not that. An editor’s name remains forever, it isn’t merely one of. A published book is an editor’s merit, a contribution which will be taken into account later on. A bad editor makes bad decisions; he/she is late, makes wrong estimations, deals with unnecessary texts, is surrounded by half-amateurs. I perform my editorial duties with a lot of anxiety. The name stays with the book; not on the cover, but it still does. Genuine editions can be recognized by their very covers, their editors are stars as much as their authors, but they are not in the author’s field. Creation is common to them both. It is necessary to come up with a decision on publication, to have arguments, to be ready to confront the results of what has been done. This isn’t a job for people who are not prepared, and not prone to stress. At least it didn’t use to be. Nowadays it seems that it’s all the same. What matters is profit: books are colorful, rights are bought uncritically, an editor is considered one who can read titles from the best-seller list of a renowned magazine. Utter bullshit.
In your bowels swallow my mutiny.
My sin abdicates to obey your cruelty
No one must see, hidden
through the modest redness of my hood
My desire of evil.
No one must understand
Your enchantment upsetting my senses
Your wicked soul that will give me my womanhood
I yearn for punishment
I want to be a victim
I am your longing for evil.
I knew it all! About the woods… about the wolf…
And now I am meeting you:
You cannot disappoint me.
Be what you’re not
There is no hope for you
Seduce me slashing through my body with the frenzy of your claws
Scratch me by the sweetness of your lies
Swallow me…do not spew me!
Swallow me.
Swallow my misunderstood loneliness
Swallow my inept nonentity.
Hurt me, really hurt me badly
So badly as to be understood,
So badly as not to be hurt anymore.
So badly as to become someone
In the dark wood of hypocrisy
To be someone
At last.
After coming out of Brooks’ pseudo-mythological world, an old punk, Rodge Glass, waited for me. I remembered an old promise to publish one of his books in Serbian. I am rather rigid when it comes to promises – I am a man with manners from ancient times. If a literature I like is behind this, I am not of two minds. There’s tradition and craftsmanship behind Rodge; now I talk about qualities. Rodge is a disciplined man, any editor’s dream. Loneliness is his story-telling concept, realization is his virtue. Unlike the disjointed mystic Brooks, Glass addresses everyone. It is we, and no one else, who are there, in his prose. At airports, scattered across exotic third-world countries, smoky bars, too-wide boulevards. Not ready to stop, since to stop is to die. Thence the Glassian term “EasyJet generation,” that which too easily covers thousands of kilometers in continual escape from itself.
Tradition, I say. Glass is a true representative of the enormous kingdom of English-language storytelling literature. In each of his stories, we read about consciousness – this is, perhaps, Rodge’s real topic – he knows perfectly well who precedes him, and how the language of his contemporaries functions. This is why there is neither affectation nor pretentiousness in his work, there’s wicked precision. Brooks’ idiosyncrasy is replaced by Glass’s devotion. If Brooks fills an empty place in Serbian bookshops, a place that had been waiting for him, then Glass is there to show how that is done. What we read in Glass’ work is how to write what concerns everybody, what is really important. Told in an important language that will stay. In a good language.
This is how things stand.
What was the subject, then? Oh, yes. I was talking about editing books. David Brooks, Rodge Glass, the like. I would be delighted to know that they are some people’s favorites, I expect something like this to happen, there are some indications, I receive e-mails, people get in touch with me, we talk about particular stories. Being an editor is like being the Lord in the microcosm of literature. I glance at Brooks’ and Glass’ books on the shelf. Gee, it was good.

is a novelist, short-story writer, editor, essayist and creative reading/writing teacher. He has published two novels, two short story collections and a book of essays. From 2008 to 2011 he served as the editor of the international short story festival Kikinda Short. He returned to this position in September 2015.