<![CDATA[Vertigo]]>

false <![CDATA[Vertigo]]>

730376

It is not often that books receive the universal critical acclaim with which W.G. Sebald's work in English translation has been met. Both The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn won the sort of plaudits that would enable most writers to die happy. Sebald first employed his limpid, literally entrancing style in Vertigo, which appeared in German in 1990 and then waited a decade for its English-language debut. Like The Emigrants, this earlier novel interweaves four different narratives, which cumulatively sound a single, transcendent note--in this case, that of memory. Sebald begins with Marie Henri Beyle (better known as Stendhal), cruising through the French author's painful and unreliable recollections of his military career. Then he splices in his own voyage through Italy, allowing these historical and personal perspectives to intersect when we least expect them to. As the book develops, it returns to the same locations: Milan, Verona, Venice, and the Alps. And in the course of this fractured meandering, the reader cohabits with a haunted Franz Kafka, admires the serene beauty of the stars above Lake Garda, and ultimately returns to Sebald's home in Bavaria, where the author confronts his childhood memories. For Sebald, a straight line is never the shortest distance between two points: he more often travels in concentric circles, or cuts wild capers from past to present. Yet the stumbling journey in Vertigo seeks to replicate the distorted and unfathomable workings of memory itself. And it succeeds to an astonishing extent, so that the acts of traveling, recalling, and writing are impossible to tell apart: <blockquote> On this occasion in the midst of the holiday season, the night train from Vienna to Venice, on which in the late October of 1980 I had seen nobody except a pale-faced schoolmistress from New Zealand, was so overcrowded that I had to stand in the corridor all the way or crouch uncomfortably among suitcases and rucksacks, so that instead of drifting into sleep I slid into my memories. Or rather, the memories (at least so it seemed to me) rose higher and higher in some space outside of myself, until, having reached a certain level, they overflowed from that space into me, like water over the top of a weir. </blockquote> Thus is the writer inundated. And so, happily, are his readers--those lucky enough to take the plunge. --Toby Green

77395

book

1990

Vertigo

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383

1565

648

1 0 false false Fri Jan 16 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 20 19:01:49 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 20 19:02:45 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Nov 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 08 10:54:50 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 08 12:18:19 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon May 05 10:45:53 -0700 2008 Mon May 05 10:56:52 -0700 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 08 21:47:03 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 08 21:49:46 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Nov 17 10:41:41 -0800 2008 Mon Nov 17 11:31:00 -0800 2008 The Rings of Saturn first, Vertigo seemed to me to be an exploration of the narrative techniques that would make that later book so marvelous. The prose is lush, the pictures intriguing, the historical facts interesting, and the atmosphere very disquieting. Nevertheless, the work lacks t...more...]]> 0 0 false false Sat Feb 21 17:09:33 -0800 2009 Thu Oct 29 01:12:07 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Sun Nov 08 10:16:49 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 08 10:18:10 -0800 2009 http://greeninteger.blogspot.com/2009/07...]]> 0 0 false false Tue Feb 03 12:30:13 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 10 05:08:59 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu May 24 15:14:07 -0700 2007 Thu May 24 15:14:14 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Mar 30 07:20:04 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 30 07:20:04 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Thu Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Sat Sep 22 12:19:36 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 22 12:19:36 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun May 17 09:18:05 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 13:47:06 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Wed Jan 07 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri May 02 12:13:19 -0700 2008 Wed Jan 07 19:37:58 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 28 09:32:59 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 28 09:32:59 -0700 2007 Rings of Saturn or Austerlitz - here I don't feel like Sebald had really hit his stride yet.]]> 5 0 false false Mon May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Mon Oct 15 17:45:14 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 15 17:49:22 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Tue Apr 03 09:17:09 -0700 2007 Wed Apr 04 12:30:25 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Tue Sep 04 01:51:12 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 31 07:37:35 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 04 01:50:57 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Thu Sep 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 17 20:08:17 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 18 22:05:53 -0700 2009 1 0 false false Fri Apr 11 09:53:07 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 18 16:57:51 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 19 10:58:30 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Thu Mar 13 11:34:35 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 13 11:35:51 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=730376