A Scottish enlightenment
Took delivery today of WG Sebald - A Critical Companion from the literarily-enterprising Edinburgh University Press. It’s co-edited by JJ Long who wrote a superb, scholarly book on Thomas Bernhard’s narratives.
Early on in the editors’ introduction, Sebald’s ‘generic hybridity’ is mentioned. It got me thinking about why Sebald felt the need to do something other than write the kind of essays we see in On the Natural History of Destruction and Campo Santo. It’s a question I might pursue in a dual review. I got a sense of an answer when, unable to move the mouse wheel out of total inertia, I started reading footnotes to an essay (unconnected to Sebald, if such a thing is possible) without having read the essay. It was a wonderfully odd experience. Admittedly not as odd as odd things go, but odd nonetheless.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- WG Sebald If anyone’s reading this anymore, her…
- WG Sebald killed in car crash Terrible news fr…
- He’s not often right, and he’s wrong again
- Payback
- At the Mind’s Limits
