[Sunday Salon] : A little something for the Sebaldian worshipper

Rather than using it as an opportunity to spread the intimate details of my dreary bibliophilic life, I’m using the vehicle of the Sunday Salon this week to once again point you to something which I hope is of greater value.

I’ve noticed a fair bit of discussion on German author W G Sebald lately (the man behind such modern classics as Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn), and although Sebald is a writer I’m still embarrassingly largely unfamiliar with, two sources of Sebaldian chatter have enlightened me on the man somewhat.

The first ‘hit’ of enlightenment came courtesy of Will Self, in a feature written for The Guardian. Adopting his usual inimitable (not to mention intimidating), style of prose, Will Self not only explores the reasons for his growing affinity with the works of the German author, but being wholly familiar with having lived there, Self, long imbued with a profound craving for bipedal wanderlust himself, also explores the same Suffolk coastline described by Sebald’s alter ego in The Rings of Saturn. It’s a nice article although I would have wished Self – the ‘king’ of Psychogeography, to have spent more time in describing his Sebaldian wanderings, and rather less in establishing the reasons for his affinity for Sebald’s works.

The largest ‘blast’ of Sebaldian enlightenment though, undoubtedly came to me via the latest edition of Five Dials (direct link to PDF file), the free electronically distributed magazine from publisher Hamish Hamilton (an imprint of Penguin). I’ve spoken about Hamish Hamilton’s incredible free literary publication before, and this latest edition, which is primarily themed on the subject of literary translation, has a particular focus on W G Sebald. From the sprawling and often intimate ‘A to Z of Sebald’ compiled by his former English publisher, the ‘head honcho’ of Hamish Hamilton – Simon Prosser, to a previously unseen maxim of tips collated from the lecture notes of two former students, this new edition of Five Dials magazine is a real ‘must read’ for all Sebaldian worshippers. Further Sebaldian-flavoured ‘nuggets’ include a delightful little essay from Joe Dunthorne on the physical remnants of the geographical references in Sebald’s Austerlitz, and a collection of thoughts on Sebald from the late Roger Deakin, penned in a letter to Simon Prosser after Sebald’s death.

So thanks to Will Self and Hamish Hamilton’s Five Dials magazine a new unexplored author, in the shape of W G Sebald, has entered my ‘radar screen’ (and now hopefully yours too), and I’m excited about exploring his authorship further; not least because I’m so intrigued with his apparent ability to successfully weave historical fact into fictional narrative. The best example of this literary technique from what I can determine, can be gleaned from reading Sebald’s final novel Austerlitz (published in 2001), and so this is the novel that will mark my starting point into the world of the German author.

In all honesty I’m not sure when exactly my Sebaldian journey will begin, only that it will at some point. In the meantime I’d love to hear from those who may have already trekked through the wonderful world of W G Sebald and have discovered his greatness. So if you could grace me with a comment or two on your Sebaldian experiences then I’d be eternally grateful.

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