Reading and Collecting Sebald

Shortly after Susan Sontag began writing about W. G. Sebald, I read The Emigrants and subsequently each of Sebald’s works as they appeared in English. I have often found myself drawn to non-American literature, but Sebald’s writings contain a dense pattern of allusions to history, literature, and scores of topics – often as obscure as the history of the silk industry – that reverberated with me and kept me re-reading his books. What Sebald does better than almost anyone is to remind us that life is rich with suggestiveness and mystery, and with seemingly random connections; that a simple tramp down a country road is a walk through history and, often, tragedy. The sense of melancholy that pervades everything he wrote ought to be wearying but is somehow rich and electrifying instead. As a reader, I can’t seem to get enough of it.

As someone who has always collected books, I at first became fascinated by the challenge of building an international collection that would include first editions of his books from the three different countries in which they appeared: his native Germany, his adopted England, and my home, America. As time went on, my collection has expanded to include all sorts of publications by and about Sebald, including ephemeral pieces that range from book marks to publisher’s promotions. Some of the challenges have been finding books and periodicals across Europe and the British Isles (thanks to Abebooks, the various versions of Amazon, and some wonderful booksellers in several countries). Early on, the collection turned into a research project that has kept me occupied on and off for about seven years.

My collection has also branched out into several somewhat unusual directions. Each of Sebald’s four works of fiction have paradoxically included photographs. Without rambling on at length in this post about the relationship between text and image in Sebald’s works, let me just say that I am fascinated by the complex way in which Sebald’s writing and uses of photographic imagery toy with the issues of truth, history, and memory. The popularity of Sebald’s books seems to have led to a minor explosion in the use of photography in fictional works by other authors, including Umberto Eco, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Frederick Reuss, to name a few. It has also led me to explore the long but spotty history of photographs appearing within works of fiction in works by authors such as Ishmael Reed, Wright Morris, and the Surrealists – especially Andre Breton. Accordingly, I am building a collection of fiction that includes photographs as an integral part of the “text”, starting with Georges Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte of 1892 all the way up to the latest example published this year.

I am using this site – Vertigo: Collecting Sebald – to continue my personal exploration of Sebald’s writings, to share information about Sebald’s books and related topics, and to test drive with the blogging version of WordPress before perhaps building a stand-alone website. As time permits, I plan to add pages relating to the first editions of Sebald’s other works, notably his four main books of fiction; the later books of essays Luftkrieg und Literatur and Campo Santo; the various limited editions and proof editions; my collection of fiction containing photographs; something dealing with the powerful impact Sebald has had on contemporary visual artists; and more. Comments and suggestions are always appreciated.

Terry Pitts