Vertigo

The late W.G. Sebald wrote books of uncommon beauty, but, much to his credit, they are books that are extremely difficult to classify. Are they fiction, biography, memoir? Yes, they are all these and much, much more. When reading a book written by W.G. Sebald, one has to remember that what he doesn't write is just as important as what he does; his is truly a "sound of silence" in which the seemingly endless repetitions and comparisons conjure up more variations on theme than anyone could possible catalogue."Vertigo" is a book that consists of four sections that are not completely related to one another and would have made just as much sense (or so it seems) if told in a different order. These various sections tell of journies made to Vienna, Venice, Verona, Riva, and finally to Sebald's childhood home in the mountains of southern Germany. The journies fold and refold themselves into one another, becoming a part of one another until we're not quite sure which is which. The travels of Sebald echo the travels of Kafka, while the travels of Kafka echo those of Stendhal. Sebald, himself, encounters Dante in the Duomo, King Ludwig II on a vaporetto and the daughter of James I at Heidelberg Station. What is real? What is not? Sebald never gives us any clear-cut answers, for that was never the purpose of his journey, nor of this book.The first section of "Vertigo" is a third-person biographical sketch of a nineteenth-century Napoleonic soldier named Beyle and it begins with Napoleon's crossing of the Alps into Austrian Italy. Sebald has, himself, perused Beyle's own journals for the material that make up this sketch. It is to Sebald's credit, at least in my estimation, that he never mentions the fact that Beyle is the birth name of the French novelist, Stendhal. Sebald had far too much respect for our own intelligence to "spell it all out."The important questions raised in this section are: "How reliable is memory?" and, "Are memories, even when they conflict with facts, still reliable indicators of personal experience?" Sebald, of course, is dwelling on his own cultural heritage and the fact that the "official" history of Germany is one that has been written and rewritten in an effort to make it more palatable to those not directly involved.In the second section of the book, Sebald moves to the first-person as a nameless, faceless narrator (who both is and is not, Sebald) travels over the same landscape as did Stendhal: a garden in Verona, the Duomo in Milan, the mist-shrouded Doge's Palace in Venice, the winding alleys of Vienna. Here, the narrator seems to be pursued by ghosts, the ghost of Dante, Casanova and King Ludwig of Bavaria. "Is it possible," he seems to be asking, "to endure that which is totally unendurable?"The third section is one of the most imaginative and, shifting to the third person once again, Sebald narrates Franz Kafka's 1913 journey from Prague to Riva, Italy on the beautiful Lago di Garda. This is a gorgeous,

"Vertigo," the third of W. G. Sebald's works to appear in English translation, is a disorienting narrative that conflates history, memory, dream, and imagination. The result is another literary tour de force from the author of "The Emigrants" and "The Rings of Saturn," a remarkable work that is difficult to classify, but reinforces Sebald's deserved reputation as one of Europe's most original and preeminent contemporary writers. "Vertigo" begins with an historical figure, in this case Marie Henri Beyle, better known to literary history as Stendhal. In the opening section ("Beyle, or Love is a Madness Most Discreet"), our third person narrator relates certain of the amorous adventures of Beyle during his travels in Italy, beginning with his first arrival in that country at the age of seventeen as a soldier in Napoleon's army. The year is 1800 and the historical record is drawn from Beyle's own notes of his experience, written more than three decades later at the age of 53. As if foreshadowing the vertiginous unreliability of the narrative to follow, the narrator (Sebald?) relates as follows: "The notes in which the 53-year-old Beyle, writing during a sojourn at Civitavecchia, attempted to relive the tribulations of those days afford eloquent proof of the various difficulties entailed in the act of recollection."The third person narrative shifts, in the second section, to a first person relation of travels in Austria and Italy by our narrator beginning in the year 1980. It is an unreliable narrative, confounding dream and reality, past and present, in a text that seems to have a mysterious, underlying hermeticism. Thus, while aimlessly wandering the dark streets of Vienna, the narrator often thought he saw someone he knew walking ahead of me. "On one occasion, in Gonzagagasse, I even thought I recognized the poet Dante, banished from his hometown on pain of being burned at the stake." Similarly, in the dark, misty, maze-like streets of Venice, "there sat, and in fact very nearly lay, a man in a worn green loden coat whom I immediately recognized as King Ludwig II of Bavaria." In a remarkable, resonant passage that writes another layer on the palimpsest of literary renderings of Venice, Sebald writes: "As you enter into the heart of that city, you cannot tell what you will see next or indeed who will see you the very next moment. Scarcely has someone made an appearance than he has quit the stage by another exit. These brief exhibitions are of an almost theatrical obscenity and at the same time have an air of conspiracy about them, into which one is drawn against one's will. If you walk behind someone in a deserted alleyway, you have only to quicken your step slightly to instill a little fear into the person you are following. And equally, you can feel like a quarry yourself. Confusion and ice-cold terror alternate."In Venice, too, the narrator muses on the dark history of the Doge's Palace, reflecting, in particular on the early nineteenth century w

"Vertigo," the third of W. G. Sebald's works to appear in English translation, is a disorienting narrative that conflates history, memory, dream, and imagination. The result is another literary tour de force from the author of "The Emigrants" and "The Rings of Saturn," a remarkable work that is difficult to classify, but reinforces Sebald's deserved reputation as one of Europe's most original and preeminent contemporary writers. "Vertigo" begins with an historical figure, in this case Marie Henri Beyle, better known to literary history as Stendhal. In the opening section ("Beyle, or Love is a Madness Most Discreet"), our third person narrator relates certain of the amorous adventures of Beyle during his travels in Italy, beginning with his first arrival in that country at the age of seventeen as a soldier in Napoleon's army. The year is 1800 and the historical record is drawn from Beyle's own notes of his experience, written more than three decades later at the age of 53. As if foreshadowing the vertiginous unreliability of the narrative to follow, the narrator (Sebald?) relates as follows: "The notes in which the 53-year-old Beyle, writing during a sojourn at Civitavecchia, attempted to relive the tribulations of those days afford eloquent proof of the various difficulties entailed in the act of recollection."The third person narrative shifts, in the second section, to a first person relation of travels in Austria and Italy by our narrator beginning in the year 1980. It is an unreliable narrative, confounding dream and reality, past and present, in a text that seems to have a mysterious, underlying hermeticism. Thus, while aimlessly wandering the dark streets of Vienna, the narrator often thought he saw someone he knew walking ahead of me. "On one occasion, in Gonzagagasse, I even thought I recognized the poet Dante, banished from his hometown on pain of being burned at the stake." Similarly, in the dark, misty, maze-like streets of Venice, "there sat, and in fact very nearly lay, a man in a worn green loden coat whom I immediately recognized as King Ludwig II of Bavaria." In a remarkable, resonant passage that writes another layer on the palimpsest of literary renderings of Venice, Sebald writes: "As you enter into the heart of that city, you cannot tell what you will see next or indeed who will see you the very next moment. Scarcely has someone made an appearance than he has quit the stage by another exit. These brief exhibitions are of an almost theatrical obscenity and at the same time have an air of conspiracy about them, into which one is drawn against one's will. If you walk behind someone in a deserted alleyway, you have only to quicken your step slightly to instill a little fear into the person you are following. And equally, you can feel like a quarry yourself. Confusion and ice-cold terror alternate."In Venice, too, the narrator muses on the dark history of the Doge's Palace, reflecting, in particular on the early ninet

Although it as only now come out in English, "Vertigo" preceded "The Emigrants" and "Rings of Saturn", and was the first book in which Sebald developed his unique prose style. There are four sections of varying length. The first is devoted to the French writer Stendhal crossing the Alps with Napoleon; the following one shows us the familiar Sebald persona in Italy; the third is about Kafka's trip to the same country; the last and most moving one has the narrator return to his native Bavaria. To those who know Sebald, no more needs to be said. To the others, one might try to give an idea by saying that Sebald's style could perhaps be explained as a kind of civilized interior monologue; it always implies the awareness that writing cannot imitate the way we really think, yet it uses the associations that come to the narrator's mind to make the texutre of the narrative immensely satisfying and touching.

WG Sebald is proving to be one of the most consistly unique, interesting writers today. This his third translated book (though his actual first novel) will undoubtedly sear his stamp of genius on the minds of serious readers around the world. Simply stated, Sebald writes about the way the mind works - whether retracing synaptical strands that are memories, observing the world thru the windows of trams and trains as though watching an art film, or meandering through the visual stimuli that force us to confront fugitive connections with history or past lives or real but buried tragedies. Reading Sebald is like wandering through early morning or gloaming mists: what we see or hear or think is relative to how our minds process this information. Sebald is obsessed with travel and with any obsession he delivers the fear of strange places as they bear witness to personal history related to actual history. He populates his travels with people so real they almost extend a touching hand while at the same time he places legends such as Stendhal, Kafka, Tiepelo in such vivid form that they seem of our time. The rest of what Sebald does so wondrously is the magic that happens between writer and reader, and to give that away in description would be robbing the new reader of the pleasures of an intensely gratifying affair. This is writing at its best and I think the title "Vertigo" also describes the feeling of closing the final page of this pregnant journey.