W. G. Sebald - C or D?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

I'm trying to read 'The Emigrants'. What do people think of Sebald? Subtle, understated and inifinitely sad? Or just lacking in pace and drama?

I'm just asking because I've never read anything quite like it. Maybe someone will offer me a way of looking at it that will illuminate the experience.

― Will McKenzie, Monday, 1 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Can eggs alone sustain a desert population?

― Mike Hanle y, Monday, 1 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I tried to buy "The Rings Of Saturn" at the weekend but couldn't find it anywhere. Not very helpful, sorry.

― Tom, Tuesday, 2 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Will. I know what you mean. I haven't read The Emigrants, but I found The Rings Of Saturn to be a very unusual sort of book. I do want to write something about it, but my thoughts about it are rather confused and I think I need to re-read it if I'm going to have any chance of getting anything coherent down on paper. I did think it was brilliant, though, and it absorbed me utterly (to the extent of taking it to a Magnetic Fields gig and reading it between sets). I just find it hard to explain why.

Tom, you can borrow my copy when i've finished re-reading it if you like.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Tuesday, 2 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

four weeks pass...

I think Sebald is very much in touch with the way that time, though linear, pervades the human consciousness through our intimate and heartbreaking relationship with our surroundings. The structure of his books is faithful to this, and I personally find a tremendous honesty in his work which differentiates it from the contrived narratives of almost all fiction. Although we perish, the signs of our occupation and passionate conflicts are all around us. I have heard this called 'psycho-geography'; another exponent is Iain Sinclair, but I find his books over-concerned with dense theory. With Sebald, it just seems to happen, it is anavoidable and does not require intervening thought. I think that's why it's disturbing, because it suggests the extinction of thought itself.

― Peter Archer, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

three weeks pass...

Rings of Saturn was just satisfying, he wrote, and had me mesmerised; Vertigo I abandoned to be completed with an Italian Dicitionary and Atlas; The Emigrants fascinated me. The tension of try to understand the author through his descriptions of other people and places can be excruciating, but in a sense of horror or tight mystery sense of excruciating: we never know if the stories related are just a pre-cursor into a world of madness.

Mind you, some bits remind me of "Just a Minute" and I hear clement Freud trying to get through a minute without hesitation, repitition..."

― makr berman, Saturday, 24 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

one year passes...

I just read "The Emigrants" in a two-night session. Was completely blown away. What a shame about his death--I haven't been this amazed by a contemporary writer in a long while. Any other fans? And which should I read next?

― slutsky (slutsky), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 16:52 (twenty-one years ago) link

i really liked the rings of saturn,haven't got around to anything else by him yet

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 17:11 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yeah, I think it's between that and Austerlitz, the first thirty pages of which I read in a bookstore and dug highly.

― slutsky (slutsky), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 18:21 (twenty-one years ago) link

It's all quite good--Vertigo is the last one I read, liked it a lot. New one is called A Natural History of Destruction, mainly about German cities' being bomed in WW2.

― chicxulub (chicxulub), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

Being bombed, being bombed.

― chicxulub (chicxulub), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

Is it unfinished, the new one?

― slutsky (slutsky), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:58 (twenty-one years ago) link

I don't think it's unfinished, it's based on some lectures that he gave. It's all non-fiction by the way. Another posthumous Sebald release was the English translation of "After Nature" which is a prose poem which was actually the first thing he published.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:05 (twenty-one years ago) link

I find Sebald's works to be fascinating, readable, and excellent for making me think about things in new ways. (Which is saying a lot because I am not a great lover of modern fiction.) But I have to be in the mood to open one of his texts - they're not something I read on a whim.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 22:09 (twenty-one years ago) link

one year passes...

Vertigo I abandoned to be completed with an Italian Dicitionary and Atlas

I've been trying to read this for the past week or so, and I'm starting to agree with this sentiment. It also seems a lot more diffuse and non-linear than Austerlitz, which was one of my favorite books that I read last year.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 12 January 2005 19:13 (nineteen years ago) link

i don't remember vertigo being any more difficult than the others i'd read

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 12 January 2005 20:13 (nineteen years ago) link

i read maybe four of his books in the space of two or three months, and i enjoyed them, but i wasn't overwhelmed by them

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 12 January 2005 20:17 (nineteen years ago) link

I thought Austerlitz was quite moving and powerful and unlike any other writer I can think of. He has a very poetic way of describing mental states and processes - reminds us that the mind can be a mysterious landscape all on its own. But so far, Vertigo seems like an early attempt at the same effect - where he hadn't quite polished his style to perfection. Many of the same stylistic tics are present, but where in Austerlitz they seem to flow naturally, in Vertigo they seem to stick out - almost like a cookie dough which hasn't been mixed thoroughly enough and still has clumps of baking soda in it. Also, in Vertigo, the geographic names and Italian quotations come fast and thick - a map and maybe footnotes with translations would be quite helpful.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 12 January 2005 20:26 (nineteen years ago) link

i don't remember quotations in italian--i wonder if they were translated for different editions? i do recall very brief quotes in french and latin and german in one or another of his books.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 12 January 2005 21:50 (nineteen years ago) link

I think "Vertigo" was prob intended to be a bit discontinuous/orienting, it's good "tho"

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Friday, 14 January 2005 05:36 (nineteen years ago) link

rings of saturn is something i can return to any time. any page.

― noizem duke (noize duke), Friday, 14 January 2005 09:59 (nineteen years ago) link

I've only read The Emigrants. I really enjoyed the first two sections; the third, a bit less; the fourth dragged. This may say more about my reading habits than the work. I think Sebald has a unique voice - remote but affecting - I wouldn't say intimate because the reader isn't a party to the intimacy, only knows it's there. What's unique, I think, is in his re-imagining life - making life into a documentary, which is a work of art. I complained about the photographs before, but the truth-telling approach is wrong. Even photos in family albums have passed on to legend. The first section makes me want to live in Norfolk and find apple trees and sit in a chair in a garden. Or snow, snow! Think of all the drama in Shelley, but recreate that in a murmur.

― youn, Friday, 14 January 2005 10:13 (nineteen years ago) link

I found Austerlitz desperately dull. Sorry.

― Mog, Friday, 14 January 2005 11:00 (nineteen years ago) link

It wasn't really a cat's book, I guess.

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Friday, 14 January 2005 12:29 (nineteen years ago) link

three years pass...

the emigrants is so good

― max, Saturday, 24 May 2008 15:53 (sixteen years ago) link

the best

― s1ocki, Saturday, 24 May 2008 16:11 (sixteen years ago) link

It's all great. He was damn fine.

― Ned Trifle II, Saturday, 24 May 2008 17:20 (sixteen years ago) link

one year passes...

i'm trying to dig up susan sontag's quote about the tragedy of his early death. does anyone recall it? having a hard time with google.

― canks: for the memories (s1ocki), Tuesday, 14 July 2009 15:37 (fourteen years ago) link

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/sebaldsympos_sp02.html.
Don't know if this is what you're looking for, but Sontag is the second one down.

― Dr. Johnson (askance johnson), Tuesday, 14 July 2009 15:51 (fourteen years ago) link

yes that's it, thank you

― canks: for the memories (s1ocki), Tuesday, 14 July 2009 16:07 (fourteen years ago) link

two years pass...

has anyone seen Grant Gee's Patience (After Sebald) yet? Thinking about going to a screening of it tomorrow.

― michael nyman cat (Merdeyeux), Monday, 16 April 2012 03:24 (twelve years ago) link

six years pass...

earlier this year visited the site of the verona pizza place where, overtaken by misery, the narrator of vertigo fails to finish a bad pizza. is now an asian fusion restaurant and the greeter was very confused by me taking photos.

― devvvine, Sunday, 28 October 2018 12:07 (five years ago) link

nine months pass...

https://biblioklept.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/wgs.jpg

― jmm, Sunday, 28 July 2019 15:25 (four years ago) link

classic

― american bradass (BradNelson), Sunday, 28 July 2019 15:46 (four years ago) link

eight months pass...

is now an asian fusion restaurant and the greeter was very confused by me taking photos.

― devvvine, Sunday, October 28, 2018 7:07 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

was it still blue and decorated with maritime imagery ?

― budo jeru, Sunday, 29 March 2020 02:19 (four years ago) link

i did not go in but, judging from the exterior, i expect not

https://instagram.flhr6-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.2885-15/e35/34982366_243103512949487_8840548729745309696_n.jpg?_nc_ht=instagram.flhr6-1.fna.fbcdn.net&_nc_cat=111&_nc_ohc=QG9UbbedasAAX9C0Za0&oh=7253a61757c50ff02e64882d624af639&oe=5EA9D351

― devvvine, Sunday, 29 March 2020 13:11 (four years ago) link

three years pass...

i'm almost finished with "the rings of saturn", which i'm finally reading i guess 12 years after my college girlfriend first recommended it to me and made me aware of WGS. it's great.

― budo jeru, Saturday, 10 June 2023 14:57 (eleven months ago) link

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.