At 1:33 AM +0000 23/10/03, Árni Ibsen wrote:
>Sebald, who? Retorts a hollow eternity sans the lingo!
>
>Sorry ... but ... as ever ...
Like Frederick, I think Sebald is a genius. He was killed (in
2001?), cutting short an increasingly astonishing series of novels.
Or are they novels? Exquisite novel lengths of prose, in which
reality and fiction shimmer together in this hypnotic fabric and
become something else, a portrait of consciousness, an agonised
shoring against the ruins, a collecting of evidence, a tender lament
for humanity (however bleak or horrific the stories they tell, they
are always gentle). Whatever they are, I can't put them down when I
start reading them, although really nothing appears to happen and the
prose appears to be sober, precise, undramatic, and gathers its
climaxes with a craft that is almost untraceable but is in its effect
devastating. Some of the best arguments against the necessity of
plot that I know.
Best
A
--
Alison Croggon
Blog
http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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