[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 1.61 MB, 1066x1529, Sebald_W_G_3.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19662775 No.19662775 [Reply] [Original]

Thoughts on Sebald? Was he the greatest author of the last century?

How come he isn't popular here?

>> No.19662847

>>19662775
>How come he isn't popular here?
Everyone reasonably in the know about contemporary lit has heard of him.

>Thoughts on Sebald? Was he the greatest author of the last century?

Other people consider him to be the biggest thing in post-WW2 european literature but I personally can't help but see him as the epitome of everything wrong with post-WW2 european literature. The whole scene is just intellectually and creatively bankrupt, it's all just technical fireworks, narcissistic middle class angst and toothless bourgeois moralism, and a complete inability to write about anything besides the nazis and the holocaust, the two lowest hanging fruit that I would expect anyone reasonably creative and talented to know better than to retread the ground of decades after both of those topics stopped being interesting or edgy and became kitsch. Even those who somehow do avoid the nazicaust, or are subtler about it, just double down on the middle class angst aspect even harder which is probably the only thing in existence that is even less interesting.

God knows maybe I was just born in the wrong social class and environment to find these works interesting.

>> No.19662884

>>19662775
He is or was very well-known on /lit/. Back when /lit/ was made up of people who were interested in literature Sebald's Rings of Saturn would frequently appear in favorite book threads.

>> No.19662893

>>19662775
Rings of Saturn was supernally comfy. I haven't yet started on Austerlitz but know the tricks now, so I will like it reasonably enough.
One thing that bothers me is that he is put on a pedestal for bringing forth a new genre of writing, but the act of reading doesn't make him seem nearly as important and revolutionary as some blurbs suggest. He is combining memoir, fiction and travelogue and the habit, as it will be eventually turned into, sounds really bad for modern literature.
Imagine new styles of writing just being a mish mash of 2 or 3 disparate genres that we are forced to call original because literati is too bereft of serious writers.

>> No.19662901

>>19662884
It still does. It was on bookie's lists.

>> No.19663065

>>19662775
Gotta agree with >>19662847

>>19662893
Rings is the most overhyped book I have read. Sure, it can be comfy and it's not even bad, just boring. I liked the idea of a narrator describing his travel while rambling about history, but the execution is mediocre... he just namedrops historical figures with a Wikipedia-tier erudition, just ennumerating badly connected facts without reflection or novelty.
I think the root of the problem is that Sebald was a boring midwit without original thoughts: a high level NPC, possesing an above average intellect but ultimately lacking a soul.

>> No.19663160

>>19663065

So a bit like Murakami (given the meaningless namedropping)
, but maybe somewhat more high-tier?

>> No.19663203

>>19663160
I haven't read Murakami so I couldn't compare them. Seems that Murakami has pop-like sensibilities, while Sebald belongs perfectly to the 90s-00s European zeitgeist (proto-EU globohomo), where you get all these just above-mediocre authors shilled by the establishment with bland views that seem to be perfectly in line with the liberal status quo. I would add Eco, since his opinions seem to be composed mainly of 100% press friendly secular ethics, but he wass actually a good writer.

>> No.19663210

>>19663203
forgot to add, Vonnegut is like an American version of this kind of author

>> No.19663327

>>19662775
Austerlitz was one of the better books I've read this year, but judging from the other posts I've read about Sebald, he has a certain schtick (as >>19662847 describes), so I'm afraid that reading his other works will just be more of the same.

>> No.19663344

>>19662775
Love The Rings of Saturn. Austerlitz was solid but unspectacular