Will Self to Talk on Sebald Dec. 20, 2022

https://mobile.twitter.com/wself

The online platform The Article, which refers to itself as “a troll-free zone. Entertaining exchanges. Civilised conversation,” has announced that the writer Will Self will deliver a talk called “The Ghost of Future Past: W.G. Sebald and the Trauma of Modernity” at 7 PM on Tuesday, December 20, 2022, at St George’s German Lutheran Church, Whitechapel, London E1 8EB. Rick Jones hosts the event. Tickets are £5. The Article says the event is both live and on zoom. But the church’s website says the event is by Zoom only. On December 4, Rick Jones clarified via email that tickets are to attend the talk in person in St George’s German Lutheran Church. Anyone wishing to watch via Zoom may request to do so via the Eventbrite ticket site.

St. George’s German Lutheran Church is the oldest surviving German Church in Britain. The church closed for regular worship in 1996 when it was taken into care by The Historic Chapels Trust. Although it is still occasionally used for church services by the German community from London and the surrounding area, it is now principally used for concerts, lectures, meetings, and a place of historical study. St George’s German Lutheran Church is a unique testament to common heritage shared by two nations, both in the past and in the present.

Will Self has a long history of writing and speaking about Sebald. He gave the 2009 Sebald Lecture, organized by the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, titled “Absent Jews and Invisible Executioners: W G Sebald and the Holocaust.” (That lecture can be heard here on SoundCloud.) More recently, he led a segment of BBC Radio’s Channel 4 Archive on 4 progam. “In the company of Sebald biographer Carole Angier and former friend, poet Stephen Wells, Self moves through the Sebaldian landscape of Southwold, Liverpool Street and the East End whilst exploring the archive devoted to one of the truly great writers of the late 20th Century.” (That program can be heard here.)

Self’s forthcoming book from Grove Press/Grove Atlantic, Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021, contains “a lengthy, dark, autobiographical piece on W.G. Sebald and the role of the Holocaust.”