W.G. Sebald

[Nemonymous]

Any lover of Ligotti and other weird fiction should enjoy the work of W.G. Sebald. This is a short description I've found elsewhere;

The novelist, poet, and essayist W. G. Sebald (1944 – 2001) was perhaps the most original German writer of the last decade of the 20th century (“Die Ausgewanderten”, “Austerlitz”, “Luftkrieg und Literatur”). His writing is marked by a unique ‘hybridity’ that combines characteristics of travelogue, cultural criticism, crime story, historical essay, and dream diary, among other genres. He employs layers of literary and motion picture allusions that contribute to a sometimes enigmatic, sometimes intimately familiar mood; his dominant mode is melancholy.

The photographs he sometimes used in his work remind me of the photos Yhaze recently put up on his Stefan Grabinski thread.

 

[paeng]

Thanks for mentioning that. I heard that name when I advised an undergrad for a thesis paper about "the uncanny" in contemporary Third World short stories but I could not find copies of his work locally. So we ended using Freud's essay and Mikhail Bakhtin for the theoretical framework.

 

[Dr. Zirk]

I just recently discovered W. G. Sebald via an article in The Believer, which presented a fascinating analysis of the narrative structure of Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. So of course I had to immediately run the book to ground, and it was certainly a rewarding read. I wouldn't immediately have made a thematic connection between the works of Ligotti and Sebald, but now that connection has been established in this TLO thread, it's starting to make a certain sense to me. In any case, Sebald is well worth reading, even in translation.

 

[MadsPLP]

Sebald is, judging from what little I've read, definitely one of my favourite authors.

Is it worth picking him up in English translations?

I've read Die Ausgewanderten and Austerlitz, since these are the ones that have been translated into Danish, and my German isn't good enough for reading Sebald.

However, Danish comes much closer to German with regards to language structure than English does, and not all translations from German to English seems to have done any good.

I really wouldn't make a Ligottian connection, in spite of the overwhelming melancholy permeating through both's works. Even though there also is a sense of definite "strangerness" in Sebalds work. I haven't read Sebald's poems though, so there might be common ground between the two here?