W. G. Sebald: History, Memory, Trauma

393 Pages·2006·1.17 MB·English

by  Scott Denham (Editor)

W. G. Sebald:
History – Memory –
Trauma
Edited by
Scott Denham
Mark McCulloh
Walter de Gruyter
W.G.Sebald
Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies
Edited by
Scott Denham · Irene Kacandes
Jonathan Petropoulos
Volume 1
≥
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
W. G. Sebald
- -
History Memory Trauma
Edited by
Scott Denham
Mark McCulloh
≥
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
(cid:2)(cid:2)Printedonacid-freepaperwhichfallswithintheguidelines,
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
W. G. Sebald : history, memory, trauma / edited by Scott Denham, Mark
McCulloh.
p.cm.-(InterdisciplinaryGermanculturalstudies;v.1)
“This volumehas its rootsin the Third OccasionalDavidson Sympo-
siumonGermanStudiesheldatDavidsonCollegeinMarchof2003”-
Pref.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN-13:978-3-11-018274-3(alk.paper)
ISBN-10:3-11-18274-2(alk.paper)
1. Sebald, Winfried Georg, 1944- - Criticism and interpretation.
I.Denham,ScottD. II.McCulloh,MarkRichard,1955- III.Series.
PT2681.E18Z97 2006
8331.914-dc22
2006017393
ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018274-3
ISBN-10: 3-11-018274-2
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Table of Contents V
Table of Contents
Scott Denham
Foreword: The Sebald Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Mark McCulloh
Introduction: Two Languages, Two Audiences: The Tandem
Literary Œuvres of W. G. Sebald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
W. G. Sebald and Gordon Turner
Introduction and Transcript of an Interview given by Max Sebald
(Interviewer: Michaël Zeeman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Section 1: Contexts & Influences
R. J. A. Kilbourn
Kafka, Nabokov … Sebald: Intertextuality and Narratives of
Redemption in Vertigo and The Emigrants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Martin Klebes
Sebald’s Pathographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Sara Friedrichsmeyer
Sebald’s Elective and Other Affinities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Patrick Lennon
In the Weavers’ Web: An Intertextual Approach to W.G. Sebald
and Laurence Sterne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Brad Prager
Sebald’s Kafka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Ruth Franklin
Sebald’s Amateurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
VI Table of Contents
Section 2: Narrative and Style
Ana-Isabel Aliaga-Buchenau
“A Time He Could Not Bear to Say Any More About”: Presence
and Absence of the Narrator in W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants . . . 141
Katja Garloff
The Task of the Narrator: Moments of Symbolic Investiture in
W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Ben Hutchinson
“Egg boxes stacked in a crate”: Narrative Status and its
Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Wilfried Wilms
Speak no Evil, Write no Evil: In Search of a Usable Language
of Destruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Maya Barzilai
On Exposure: Photography and Uncanny Memory in
W.G. Sebald’s Die Ausgewanderten and Austerlitz . . . . . . . . . . 205
Lilian R. Furst
Realism, Photography, and Degrees of Uncertainty . . . . . . . . 219
Section 3: History and Trauma
Karin Bauer
The Dystopian Entwinement of Histories and Identities in
W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Jan Ceuppens
Transcripts: An Ethics of Representation inThe Emigrants . . . . . 251
David Darby
Landscape and Memory: Sebald’s Redemption of History . . . . 265
Stefan Gunther
The Holocaust as the Still Point of the World in W.G. Sebald’s
The Emigrants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Peter Fritzsche
W.G. Sebald’s Twentieth-Century Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Table of Contents VII
Mark Ilsemann
Going Astray: Melancholy, Natural History, and the Image
of Exile in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Michael Niehaus
No Foothold: Institutions and Buildings in W.G. Sebald’s Prose 315
Susanne Vees-Gulani
The Experience of Destruction: W.G. Sebald, the Airwar, and
Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Christina M.E. Szentivanyi
W.G. Sebald and Structures of Testimony and Trauma:
There are Spots of Mist That No Eye can Dispel . . . . . . . . . . 351
Short Titles and Abbreviations used in this Volume . . . . . . . . 365
Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367

Foreword 1
Foreword
The Sebald Phenomenon
Scott Denham
It is a phenomenon.1 W.G. Sebald, praised among critics as the “most
important” and “most talented” German author of the last generation,
or even since the Second World War, was better known and more cel-
ebrated in the English-language world of letters than in the German,
at least between 1996 and 2003, when his œuvre, following his death,
began to be read more in the German-speaking world. Indeed, American
and British critics read Sebald as if he had single-handedly recreated Ger-
man literature for our time.2 What are the reasons for this two-fold
popularity and double reception? How was Sebald read and understood
in the Anglo-American world?
New Directions, the publisher of Sebald’s first three books in the
USA (Emigrants, 1996; Rings of Saturn, 1999; Vertigo, 1999) sold over
50,000 copies of The Emigrants by the middle of 2002, an exceptional
number given the usual small runs of foreign, highbrow literary works.
Rings of Saturn and Vertigo sold some 35,000 and 25,000 copies respect-
ively in the same time period. These numbers are about twice those of
the German editions, and those had several more years of sales already
behind them. New Directions reported the sales figures were “terrific
from our point of view.” Austerlitz is already in its third printing from
Random House and has been released as an electronic-book and as an
audio book as well. In Germany the sales, exceptingAusterlitz, which of
course appeared eleven years after Sebald’s fiction debut (withSchwindel.
Gefühle in 1990), were by no means so pleasing. While the Hanser Verlag
reports that Austerlitz has sold “extremely well,” Hanser’s other Sebald
1 A different version of this essay appeared in German in Michael Niehaus and
Claudia Öhlschläger, eds., “W.G. Sebald: Politische Archäologie und menalcho-
lische Bastelei.” I would like to thank both of them for their inspiration.
2 On Sebald’s similar reception in France, see Ruth Vogel-Klein, “Avant-propos”
and “Stendhal nach Auschwitz?”