For once I am going to start the next Slaves of Golconda read, W.G. Sebald's Vertigo earlier rather than later. I always feel like I am rushing, but maybe I can avoid that this time around. Besides, when reviewers throw around words like genius, greatness, remarkable, thrilling and original I feel like I have my work cut out for me and had better take things slowly and thoughtfully. I've been looking forward to reading Sebald and am glad I'll be doing so in a group situation, as I always appreciate other reader's insights when it comes to challenging books/authors.
Usually I like to go into a new book not knowing too much about the story or style and let it all open up before me, but in this case I feel like it might not be such a bad thing to know a little bit about how Sebald worked. He was born in Germany in 1944 and died in 2001 in England. It's amazing what you can glean from an obituary, but they often touch on the important aspects of a person's life. I'm interested in learning about Sebald the man, as I think his personal life experiences really shaped how he wrote. I think being born in Post-WWII really had an impact on how he viewed the world, and he was interested in how to express himself through literature but not in the conventional ways, which really couldn't work for him and what he wanted to say. "He wanted to find a literary form responsive to the waves and echoes of human tragedy which spread out, across generations and nations, yet which began in his childhood."
As I've not yet read more than the first few pages of the book I don't want assume anything more, but I read this in the obituary and will keep it in mind as I make my way through the book:
"It was necessary, he found, to approach this subject obliquely, and to invent a new literary form, part hybrid novel, part memoir and part travelogue, often involving the experiences of one 'WG Sebald', a German writer long settled in East Anglia. He was reluctant to call his books "novels", because he had little interest in the way contemporary writers seemed to find all meaning in personal relationships, and out of a comic but heartfelt disdain for the "grinding noises" which heavily plotted novels demanded."
So, now that there is a little background I should share my teaser, which is just the first paragraph of the book.
"In mid-May of the year 1800 Napoleon and a force of 36,000 men crossed the Great St Bernard pass, an undertaking that had been regarded until that time as next to impossible. For almost a fortnight, an interminable column of men, animals and equipment proceeded from Martigny via Orsières through the Entremont valley and from there moved, in a seemingly never-ending serpentine, up to the pass two and a half thousand metres above sea level, the heavy barrels of the cannon having to be dragged by the soldiery, in hollowed-out tree trunks, now across snow and ice and now over bare outcrops and rocky escarpments."
I should mention a couple of other things, one which is pertinent and the other just interesting. Sebald's novels aren't really straightforward novels. As noted in the quote above his books tend to defy genre labels. The obituary also mentioned that Sebald was an "inveterate walker", which as a fellow walker I can appreciate!
You are, as always, welcome to join in the discussion, which will be March 31!