"I would have said you displayed a great skill in composing the novel, had I not known our customary content toward the term. It's usually used for genre writers. Or, it is as if you call someone a postmodernist. It's like you called him a scumbag. It's better to recognize Kosovo or to be a gay or to have Mrs. Albright as father and Bill Clinton as mother and Tony Blair as an uncle, only being officially crazy is worse than being a postmodernist."
"What genre am I writing in? Well, it's a NIN-fiction, an indigenous Serbian genre, a novel written with a purpose to win weekly NIN's novel prize. Normally NIN-fiction novels are boring and incomprehensible."
"Is he good? You mean that guy next to this guy? Oh, don't ask me that, please. When you ask a Serbian writer what he thinks about other writer, it is like you asked local tribes' chiefs what they think of others. Like you are a colonist, a new governor, and tribes under your command compete to prove who is better and more loyal. Ten Serbian writers in one place together is like ten lawyers in a barrel thrown down the Niagara, said Sinatra once. In Serbia there is a phenomenon caller cornerism, that is ћошкарство, which means that everyone means and claims that his neighborhood is more noble and in every sense better than all others, especially certain ones. The similar applies to literary clans, who look like street bands in Walter Hill's movie 'Warriors'. It is not possible to translate this word, ћошкарство, and many others neither, into English, since it's common knowledge that Americans are illiterate, because they didn't have Vuk Karadžić who had invented most perfest language in the world, although he was limping and didn't have pencils and notebooks until he was 18. At the same time, there is a consensus that Serbs are the smartest and oldest nation in the World, which according some historians became apparent first in VII century, when Serbs outsmarted evil Turks by breathing under the Balkan rivers by means of straws, so that they had managed to be under the Turkish reign only 500-600 years, unlike the rest of Europe who had spent 1000 years or so under them. The consequence of our excellency was, before all, that all our national dishes are from Middle East and Little Asia. The main feature in Serbian everyday life is relaxed view on life and problems, it's so-called Belgrade spirit or Serbian soul. That's why some rich people convert into Orthodoxy and move to Mount Athos, where they park their expensive limousines and jeeps, and live in seclusion, meditating, swimming and preparing for new meetings of executive boards. To be a literary translator is like being a writer, it takes capability to be alone in a significant period of time, whilst consecutive translators can't keep their buts on the chair longer than 40 minutes. I considered myself to take a trip to Mount Athos under the pretense of being converted as SAMOŽITELJ, so that I can get a kind of a literary residency and work in peace, I wouldn't mind fasting, but people in that period only eat sesame with honey and drink strong self-made ale on empty stomach so they become aroused and run around naked... So I choose city noise and bad neighborhood for the time being...."
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