The Sebald Fiction Poll

He doesn't dwell on Suffolk for very long at a time, but it really is above all a framing device

it's a tapestry, one observation ends up being part of a warp and weft of memory and history, which... idk, i don't know who reads these books expecting them to be actual travelogue, sounds like some imposed shit

also fake accounts is such an awful book that i think oyler has no business parodying sebald, admittedly i am in my feelings here

I don't understand either. It's hilarious how Fisher compares Sebald's walking tours with James' when James noticed a lot of decline too.

Perhaps the transitions between the Suffolk-walk frame and the discursions on hubris and impermanence are the weaker parts of his conceit, and they do at times distract (the bit about the sandstorm near the end was fairly ludicrous and frankly unbelievable) but hey, it got him writing

It also amuses me that it came out at around the same time as Bill Bryson's Notes From A Small Island

I am uninterested in Oyler's fiction though I like some of her essays. Admittedly, this is one of her weaker ones.

It’s often said that Sebald’s work haunts, and is haunted. Do I like this? Not really, no. At times the gloom approaches parody—towns tend to be eerily abandoned, landscapes are shrouded in fog; even a passing car can’t escape without becoming “the last of an amphibian species close to extinction, retreating now to the deeper waters.” In projecting a ridiculous gravitas onto modern life, he might effectively emphasize its absence, but he often literalizes the metaphor in a way that diminishes its poignancy; reading Sebald, one can forget that death entails loss as well as the memory of what is gone. I wonder if I could somehow blame him for the number of people who seem to actually believe in ghosts.

god what the fuck is this

her essays are structured like fucking tweet threads

Yeah that's completely wrong. TROS is full of the idea of things being lost forever

And while he may sometimes slightly overplay his gloomy hand, as with the sandstorm, that his visions lead directly to (at times artfully embellished) lessons from history mean they don't overwhelm. It's not like you're wading through similes for 200 pages (hello, Housekeeping)

reading Sebald, one can forget that death entails loss as well as the memory of what is gone. I wonder if I could somehow blame him for the number of people who seem to actually believe in ghosts.

I guess I read the story of Henry Selwyn wrong.

"even a passing car can’t escape without becoming “the last of an amphibian species close to extinction, retreating now to the deeper waters.”"

Ok..

See, I don't find Sebald gloomy. The tone reminds me of Isherwood's of all people: he places himself in situations where he can watch people and things or recount events with poignantly ironic engagement.

Oyler is complaining about the gloom approaching parody.

i mean, i did visit berlin a few years ago and read vertigo the entire time so i am not beyond self-parody here

He's consciously working in a gothic tradition, right? It seems like that involves keeping gravitas and parody in tension.

i did find tros to be a little too sadboi for me. since i'm already a sadboi, i like my sadboi to be a bit less generalized and amorphous? less radiohead, more robert wyatt. the sadboi in austerlitz is attached to a more concrete idea of cultural trauma so i find it more convincing. i'm losing some of my memory of tros though, it's been a year.

for sure Austerlitz is his most fully realized book. I was afraid I'd think of it otherwise when I read it during lockdown in 2020 but -- nope.

i've been meaning to read the emigrants or vertigo next but i'm not sure which one to go with first.

emigrants!!! vertigo feels def like the first book he wrote in this style but emigrants refines it in every way

thanks for the tip

I'd go Emigrants -> Austerlitz -> ROS in that order

The Rings of Saturn is such a singular book, that essay was pretty badly written and misses the point completely. It is very funny to start it with an Americanized bad parody though, what an idiot. I remember being like 19 or 20 and having to finish a college essay very quickly and doing the same thing (writing the essay in the voice of Rings of Saturn probably mixed with Gaddis' Agape Agape). Years ago a friend and I were at a bar talking about how it's probably impossible for Americans to write in certain styles, like, in an American version of Austerlitz where would the characters meet, in Albertsons?

at a hilton in austin - work conference

spend every sentence inserting "like" and "y'know" and "the Dolphins suck"

i'm trying to read rings of saturn and i really don't get it. the writing and observations don't seem interesting enough to carry the peripatetic structure. i find it very dull and impossible to focus on (it should be noted that i get dumber with each passing year). what am i missing?

Maybe try Austerlitz.

austerlitz is better and much more memorable imo

thirding Austerlitz. I had the same trouble you did, n/a.

Austerlitz is a better book imo

you gotta kinda be losing your mind or going through a divorce to get in the rings of saturn zone, then it's pretty funny

I was about to type this out again lol

Years ago a friend and I were at a bar talking about how it's probably impossible for Americans to write in certain styles, like, in an American version of Austerlitz where would the characters meet, in Albertsons?

― Bongo Jongus, Wednesday, November 17, 2021 7:48 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol at rings of saturn behing a divorced guy book

It took me so long to read and finish Rings Of Saturn. It wasn't until towards the end that I realised why it was so slow going. I hadn't noticed how idiosyncratic and exhausting a lot of the sentences were for a start. And yeah, often the subject matter veers strongly into "Why should I care? Why is this important?" or simply "Where are you going with this?" And yet somehow I'm glad I did read it. I don't think I'll forget it in a hurry.

Austerlitz definitely the better book but Rings of Saturn is still extraordinary. Twinned with Last Year at Marienbad in my head.

I like the whole cult that's grown up around Rings of Saturn 'walks' and, despite the intimate knowledge he had of the landscape, the number of odd elisions and outright geographical falsifications Sebald included in the book.

there’s a whole fucking biography of joseph conrad in the middle of this thing

hell yeah there is

otm

that's the grandest part

the passages about the now-lost North Sea fisheries are peculiarly affecting

i made myself finish rings of saturn. there were some chunks in the middle that i got into just as interesting as historical anecdotes. but i found the book as a whole very tedious and i'm still in the woods re: the point

the segment i liked was joseph conrad/roger casement/the chinese dowager princess/the old english manor that is crumbling with the old family still living in it. but i still feel like i would have gotten just as much out of reading the wikipedia page on casement e.g.

Also I had to order a Borges anthology and break to read some of that halfway through

I have read it convincingly argued that the concluding section of TROS is all holocaust-related, but I can't find the article

Almost all of it seems to be atrocity-related at least