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, oftheANSItoensurepermanenceanddurability. 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 ISSN 1861-8030 BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutscheNationalbibliografie; detailedbibliographicdataareavailableintheInternetathttp://dnb.d-nb.de. ”Copyright2006byWalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,10785Berlin Allrightsreserved,includingthoseoftranslationintoforeignlanguages.Nopartofthisbook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includingphotocopy,recordingoranyinformationstorageandretrievalsystem,withoutpermis- sioninwritingfromthepublisher. PrintedinGermany Coverdesign:ChristopherSchneider,Berlin Typesetting:DörlemannSatzGmbH&Co.KG,Lemförde Printingandbinding:Hubert&Co.GmbH&Co.KG,Göttingen 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?”