"But the fact is that writing is the only way in which I am able to cope with the memories".
SEBALD, W.G. [trans. Michale Hulse]. The Rings of Saturn. London: The Harvill Press. 1998.
8vo. Original bright green wrappers with black lettering to spine; pp. [viii], 3-296; very minimal spotting to front wrapper; otherwise fine copy.
Uncorrected proof of the first UK edition.
Sebald transforms a fictional walk through coastal East Anglia into a moving tangential novel which reads both as literary prose, autobiography and history simultaneously. He writes that his intention of embarking on this journey by foot was initiated, "in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work". Not only does Sebald digress physically but he embarks on long digressions into history and also the history of literature itself, triggered by the landscape around him. These explorations are as varied as the writings of Thomas Browne, silkworm cultivation and the battle of Sole Bay as he walks through Southwold but he is also committed to excavating the dark passages of human destruction such as exploitation in the Congo, as well as predictions of ecological descent: "Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers".
Sebald is instead intent on getting lost; a purpose which mirrors the nature of writing a novel- continuing alone, not necessarily with a strict direction and as of yet without an audience. On a trip to Waterloo, he contemplates the history of place that we have disregarded in our modern pretension to 'reach' somewhere. Cole Swenson writes in the book On Walking On, "What is striking in Sebald is the way in which he used walking-or writing about walking- to release himself from the practice of time".
This uncorrected proof continues to prove itself as a masterpiece in seamless genre blending; a book as elusive as the rings of saturn themselves.
#2121762