Reading the 20th Century discussion
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Austerlitz
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Austerlitz by WG Sebald (June 2021)
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Who is reading this one? I've read about 160 pages and am enjoying it, although the digressive and sometimes dream-like style takes a bit of getting used to.
I’ve just pulled it from the shelf to begin tonight.
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What do you think of the narrative style? Specifically Austerlitz relating his tale to an unnamed narrator via a number of seemingly chance encounters
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First thoughts - enjoying the style and the detail and the way it sends me to Google to research. Like Judy, I normally try to read to the end of a chapter, or at least a paragraph break with a space before setting a book down. It's certainly more of a challenge to find a place that feels 'right' to stop. The dreamlike nature and feeling of all time being present brought to mind a verse from the hymn, O God our help in ages past, a hymn that is often sung in the UK at Remembrance Day services. In particular the 5th verse,
'Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.'
i read around 170 pages and I finally got past the 1st paragraph :)) I got into its rhythm and I begin to understand Austerlitz obsession with train stations. It was hard to get into at first but the writing is surprisingly gripping once you get used to it. About the narrative style, I believe it is fitting. His memories feel distant to the narrator and by being told the story of Austerlitz through another person we are also kept at distance.
What a marvelous book. I'm not sure we're allowing spoilers yet so for now I'll just say how interesting the pictures are. I felt at times that they were not helpful, or were meant to be distracting or meant to interfere with the narrative? There are probably many articles out there about Sebald's use of photos in his work but I don't want to read about it until I think about it some more.
Nigeyb wrote: "Here's a question to consider whilst reading...What do you think of the narrative style? Specifically Austerlitz relating his tale to an unnamed narrator via a number of seemingly chance encounters"
Good question! I thought it was a bit clunky and contrived at times. It adds a level of complexity that I don’t feel is necessary for the story of Austerlitz.
As the book progressed I became more and more irritated by the third party narrator.
Margaret wrote: "for now I'll just say how interesting the pictures are. I felt at times that they were not helpful, or were meant to be distracting or meant to interfere with the narrative?..."I agree with your art description "not helpful".
I have always associated Sebald with the insetting of photographs in his text, and in Austerlitz it starts early on the second page.
My question is : Why does Sebald do this? For me it doesn’t add anything in particular since I’m used to reading fiction as a flight of the personal imagination. Plenty of text books have wonderful pictorial records.
I was aware that Colin McCann employed an identical use of real life pictures in Apeirogon, a book I enjoyed very much but don’t think would have been diminished if you lose the photos.
I checked out this link https://sebald.wordpress.com/photogra.... The site itself is titled: Where literature and art intersect, with an emphasis on W.G. Sebald and literature with embedded photographs
I was surprised at how many works of fiction (228) have this feature.
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Although I did find this a beautiful read, I can't say that I was really inspired to read more by him. For those of you who have read more, how do you think this compares?
Susan wrote: "Thanks for the link, Jonathan. You have reminded me of the photos in Apeirogon - a novel I loved and I thought the pictures were used more powerfully there. I hadn't read any Sebald before, so I ha..."Susan,
I have read Vertigo by him before, and this one is much, much better. You can tell that his style has matured. He is not putting so much thought into methodically splitting up different stories and different narratives and somehow linking them. It's effortless, and I am finding it beautiful. I get lost in the rhythm of his sentences, and sometimes find myself having to track back because I was merely following the cadence of the sentence, not catching its meaning.
Beautiful so far!
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The use of photos is very interesting. Apparently in the old analogue days he would repeatedly photocopy an image to get it to look more stark and degraded.
He seems to drop the photos, architectural plans, paintings etc (always uncaptioned) to suggest further "evidence" or "proof" that he has, say, visited a building. But has he really? Or is this just artifice? Austerlitz is a novel and yet has a photo on the cover and in the text purporting to be Austerlitz as a child.
Apparently the fourth of the four doorways in Terezin (the site of a Jewish ghetto nr Prague in WW2 which Austerlitz visits) is said to suggest a death camp gas chamber despite there being nothing to support that in the text. The images seem to add another level of intrigue and narrative. I am sure Sebald thought long and hard about what to use and where to place it.
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I also like the photos dropped into the text with their puzzling lack of information, so that it's hard to be sure which are real and which not, as you say, Nigeyb.
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I had a somewhat different feeling about the photos, especially in the beginning. I remembered my English oral exams where I was shown some photos and I had to invent stories about them. For me, it felt like Sebald had a collection of photos, chose a bunch at random and then set himself the challenge to create a novel starting from them. Mist likely it wasn’t like that but it is how my imagination worked.
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That was my first Sebald.
I also thought the photo on the cover looks like Sebald but he was such a private man that the last thing he'd have done, I suspect, was publicise himself in that way. Still, the resemblance is there.
I like your idea, Adina! Sebald isn't a random writer but he likes to pretend he is, so that may even be a deliberate effect that he's half creating.
I will be making a start on this book soon.
Adina wrote: "I had a somewhat different feeling about the photos, especially in the beginning. I remembered my English oral exams where I was shown some photos and I had to invent stories about them. For me, it..."Definitely an interesting idea Adina - I do also have the same feeling that was mentioned in the thread, that some of them are beyond random. A random tile, a tree, etc. Obviously not, as Roman said, but it gives you that impression. I'm a fan so far.
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"I'm a fan so far"
Splendid
Looking forward to more reaction as and when
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What is the significance do you think?
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Buildings do create moods and feelings, don't they? I know he had an obsession with stations, which was obviously tied to his childhood memories. I recall, as a child, the way stations were always linked, in my mind, to cold and windy weather, as they seemed to be more open in the Seventies and the wind would howl through the station to the platforms. I know Elizabeth Bowen did a scene in her wartime novel, set in a station and it really took me straight back there...
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I'm literally on the first page but the name Austerlitz immediately made me think of the Paris train station so interesting to see the comments above on architecture. Possible links to the Kindertransport, and in Rings of Saturn there are ghostly images of the network of trains that brought people to the concentration and death camps.
Roman Clodia wrote: "I think we discussed the use of photos on our thread for Rings of Saturn buddy read last June: www.goodreads.com/topic/show/21460570...."Nigeyb wrote: " The photos really enrich the reading experience and a lot of thought has gone into them.
The blurry and imprecise nature is clearly intentional
Sometimes they illustrate a point, sometimes maybe contradict or subvert the narrative, and so on. There's a dissertation to be written about them by an undergraduate with the time and the inclination. ..."
I had a read through the (very interesting, very lively) discussion of Rings of Saturn just now.
The Nigel extract here is copied from that discussion.
For fear of labouring the point, I still remain largely unconvinced that the presence of pictures in a novel is welcome and/or an enhancement. Even if some are "fake", that is surely just a continuation of the sense that the narrative itself is a mixture of truth and invention-a style of writing which has its appeals (I like this element of fantasy myself).
The creation of a grainy feel doesn't, of itself, excite me. Sometimes I prefer watching war footage on TV that is in black/white, and sometimes in restored colour.
Overall though, my reservation (and I did enjoy this book very much), is that the power of the word, over visual imagery, means that I feel a more personal investment in the book via my own interpretation and personal imagination than is possible when pictures are present. Conversely non-fiction histories benefit immensely from the presence of illustrative photographs.
Just a personal opinion. I hope that undergraduate is hard at work right now to convince this dissenter!
I’m interested in the narrator, and whether he might be Austerlitz, given A’s repeated nervous breakdowns and constant movement and the lapse of 20 years when A doesn’t respond to the narrator’s letters but then the narrator will drop everything to meet with A every time he makes contact. I’m particularly struck by A’s comment about fortification and defense in the face of weakness and loss : “It has been forgotten that the largest fortifications will naturally attract the largest enemy forces, and that the more you entrench yourself the more you must remain on the defensive, so that in the end you might find yourself in a place fortified in every possible way, watching helplessly while the enemy troops, moving on to their own choice of terrain elsewhere, simply ignored their adversaries’ fortresses……The frequent results, said Austerlitz, of resorting to measures of fortification marked in general by a tendency towards paranoid elaboration was that you drew attention to your weakest point….not to mention the fact that as architectural plans for fortifications became increasingly complex, the time it took to build them increased as well, and with it the probability that as soon as they were finished, if not before, they would have been overtaken by further developments….which took account of the growing realization that everything was decided in movement, not in a state of rest.”
A talks several times about his sense of separation from himself and from others: “Then I recollected another idea which had obsessed me over a long period: the image of a twin brother who had been with me on that long journey, sitting motionless by the window of the compartment, staring out into the dark. I knew nothing about him, not even his name, and I had never exchanged so much as a word with him, but whenever I thought of him I was tormented by the notion that towards the end of the journey he had died of consumption and was stowed in the baggage net with the rest of our belongings”. “Since my childhood and youth, he finally began…I have never known who I really was. From where I stand now, of course, I can see that my name alone, and the fact that it was kept from me until my fifteenth year, ought to have put me on the track of my origins, but it has also become clear to me of late why an agency greater than or superior to me own capacity for thought, which circumspectly directions operations somewhere in my brain, has always preserved me from my own secret…”
I guess what I’m wondering is whether the narrator is the part of A that serves to “listen” to him when he’s able to surface from his mental illness enough to try to articulate his struggles?
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We can be quite insightful sometimes, can't we?
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For sure :) I greatly enjoyed reading our first Sebald with the group as we were feeling our ways into it with the added insights of other people. It definitely enhanced the experience.
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I like Susan's idea of constructedness, but also Sebald is also already highlighting the immensely topical issue of how our built environment is inextricably bound up with structures of power, wealth, inequalities, exploitation, colonialism and capitalism:
'... it was the personal wish of King Leopold, under whose auspices such apparently inexorable progress was being made, that the money suddenly and abundantly available [from Belgium's African colonies and raw-material exchanges in Brussels] should be used to erect public buildings which would bring international renown to his aspiring state'.
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I also suspect the buildings are the embodiment of the past in the present (and stretching some way into the future).
Psychogeography ahoy
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Nice point, Margaret. I just reached the point when Austerlitz first mentions this sense of an invisible twin when he's speaking of his upbringing in Wales. For me, it's not as literal as a straight switch between narrator and A, but themes of doubleness and identity are clearly crucial to the narrative. The style, too, of reported speech broken up by 'A said' erases some of the difference between narrator and A.
There's also the complicated relationship between narrator and author, as the narrator shares details with Sebald yet is not him in any simple sense.
I'm a bit bogged down in Wales at the moment and want to move on...
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Psychogeography ahoy"
Yes, definitely, and they sometimes hold on to past values like colonialism/empire, and are sometimes repurposed. That question of what is memorialised is important, I feel.
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Going back to the idea of twins and doubles, whatever their similarities the big difference between the narrator and Austerlitz is that one is Jewish and one German, and the narrator's shouldering of a national responsibility with that sense of guilt at the end is very moving.
So 4-stars for me: I find Sebald a writer of profound moral significance.
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I had a very similar reaction. It didn't quite land as satisfyingly as The Rings of Saturn but that could well have been for the same reason you cite
I couldn't agree more about the moral significance - his early demise is a sad loss
The burden of Austerlitz's past is one we all share. Re-experiencing that shared pain and suffering is a powerful aspect of this book. All cleverly revealed through the gradually uncovered repressed memories.
I actually preferred this to Rings of Saturn. I think this may be partly because there is more of a ‘story’ in Austerlitz’s attempts to uncover his life, and partly because I found the sense of the Holocaust and its impact on both victims and survivors very powerful here. I loved it anyway.
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Yes, I can see that this might work better as there's more direction through the book. Part of the issue for me is that perhaps the blurb gives away too much so that we go into the book already knowing what Austerlitz does not. I kept expecting him to find out that he was named Austerlitz because the kindertransport passed through there or he changed trains at Gare Austerlitz or something (which makes him sound a bit like Paddington Bear - sorry to be frivolous!)
I felt that Rings of Saturn forced me to work harder to understand its digressive structure (again, that may have been because it was my first Sebald) which meant that I was deeply engaged.
I also struggled with his Welsh childhood a bit.
I don't want to give the impression that this didn't work for me because it did, and I found it powerful and wrenching.
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Nicely put.
Sebald's (and the narrator's) sense of guilt and blame for being German reminds me of how Plath also struggles with her German heritage, growing up post-war (her father was also a German academic, like Sebald).
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RC, a great review as always...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Roman Clodia wrote: “ I kept expecting him to find out that he was named Austerlitz because the kindertransport passed through there or he changed trains at Gare Austerlitz..."I thought the same! I definitely thought for a while that it was going to be another level of ‘false’ identity like Dafydd Elias.
I completely understand where you’re coming from - maybe my head had to work so hard with Rings of S that my heart didn’t get the chance to join in.
Austerlitz made me feel really sad for Agáta, Maximilian, Vera and Austerlitz himself. The cruelty of the deceptions practised by the Nazis, the loss of identity and a future, the waste of all those lives really came through.
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And isn't that a tremendous achievement to still manage that when we've all heard so many Holocaust stories? And this one doesn't have anything extraordinary about it, it's the frightening ordinariness of it that makes it work so well, I think.
I also liked that image of the drowned town with life continuing underwater, and what it suggests about the subconscious of both Austerlitz and the narrator.
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Yes, it's a wonderful image. I am now about 2/3 of the way through the book, and have just come up to an echo of that idea of life being submerged in a comment by Agata (to Vera) before she is taken away by the Nazis:
"Stromovka Park is over there, would you walk there for me sometimes? I have loved that beautiful place so much. If you look into the dark water of the pools, perhaps one of these days you will see my face."
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Then we get to accounts of what Vera told Austerlitz, and what Agata and others told Vera, so the narrative goes back through further layers. More distance, more encroaching mist.
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Yes, on one hand there is this struggle to unearth the past, but on the other, there's almost a Proustian sense of recall once Austerlitz opens himself up to it.
One of the effects for me of those layers of voices is that sense, discussed at the start, of how time might be or become simultaneous, so that the barriers between past and present can dissolve. When the narrator recalls Austerlitz recalling Vera who is recalling Agata, they all sort of come back into the present and exist on the same time plane. If that makes sense? :)
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Absolutely - I agree the vividness of the memories through sensuous details are Proustian at times, and the recalling of people recalling brings them back. But at the same time there is the huge divide between what he has now and what he had then, and the way that even what is left, like Vera's memories, is slipping away.
I finally managed to read all the comments. I am where Judy was when she wrote her comment about Stromovka Park. I found that section extremely powerful. I got problems breathing at the part where Agata was told what to pack by the Germans before being taken away. I think that part affected me so deeply because I recently visited the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and it reminded me of the horrors I saw there.
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Not sure why, but I’m finding it difficult to concentrate on the story. Perhaps it’s the style of writing. I’m rereading many pages and on the second reading finding it gripping and powerful. 100 pages to go.
Reading the 20th Century
Books mentioned in this topic
The Emigrants (other topics)The Rings of Saturn (other topics)
The Emigrants (other topics)
Austerlitz (other topics)
Vertigo (other topics)
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Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
This discussion thread will open sometime in June 2021
More information about Austerlitz....
Austerlitz , the internationally acclaimed masterpiece by “one of the most gripping writers imaginable” (The New York Review of Books), is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, one Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, the fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, he follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.