Will Self To Give Annual Sebald January 11, 2010
This announcement is quoted from Will Self’s website:
Will Self is going to be giving the annual WG Sebald lecture at Kings Place in London on Monday 11 January at 7pm. Self will analyse Sebald’s Holocaust writing in the light of the evolving historical understanding of the Holocaust and the part the German people took in it. Self asks whether, when it comes to such crimes against humanity, it is possible for their [sic] to be a literature either by, or about, the perpetrators, and what purpose such writings might fulfil.
If anyone goes to hear Self, I’d love it if you would write up a report as a comment to this post.
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Vertigo 
Looks like there is a segment on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast where Will Self is interviewed about Sebald. It starts at about 35 minutes in:
[audio src="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio3/r3arts/r3arts_20100111-1749a.mp3" /]
The text – or perhaps an extract of it, albeit a lengthy extract – of Will Self’s lecture can be found in this week’s TLS, dated Jan 22 2010. (It’s only available online if you subscribe).
It’s interesting; particularly the notion that Sebald is so well regarded in England in part because of the resonant englishnesses he deployed in his writing (the teasmade, the lace curtain, the countryside yomp) which provide reassurance to, as Self puts it, the Mittel Englander, that Sebald is a ‘good German’.
Well worth reading.
Jon, it appears to be online for everyone:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7003221.ece
Agree with Jon, this is one of the most interesting articles on Sebald I have read.
The ‘print friendly’ version is
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7003221.ece?print=yes&randnum=1264721639438
I just found this blog via the Javier Maris connection, and looks like I’ll be spending quite some time here going through the archives!
In a related response to this post, I recently attended the 2013 Sebald Lecture given by Russian author Boris Akunin. If it’s of interest to anyone, I put some impressions of this engaging talk on my blog here:
http://thoughtsatintervals.com/2013/02/10/a-lifetime-of-metamorphosis/
Best wishes, Andrew