Duizelingen

by W.G. Sebald

Other authorsRia Van Hengel (Translator)

Paper Book, 2008

Status

Available

Call number

2.sebald

Genres

Fiction

Publication

Amsterdam De Bezige Bij 2008

User reviews

LibraryThing member missizicks

It's rare that I encounter an author that makes me want to read and read and read because the way they write is so perfect. This is the first W G Sebald book I've read and I will be reading more. Everything about this book is perfect, from its surreal interludes and quirky uncaptioned images to its

reflections on memory and the past. Read it.

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LibraryThing member TRHummer

Brilliant, fascinating, and--in the best sense of the word--odd.

LibraryThing member MSarki

It seemed remarkable to me the ease in which I sped through this book. Not that I understood it all, I did not. Even though the translation I read was in English, the writing still felt foreign to me. The words for people and places, and even things, were unfamiliar, and from time to time I would

skip back a few pages to see if I had missed something important in my understanding of this dream. Reading this felt like a dream. And often I would find myself pages ahead to somewhere I failed to understand how I could have gotten to. There have been enough moments in my life on the road when I have felt the same way. The many miles I drove each day found me in places I knew I needed to be but hadn't a memory of getting there. It was if the car had driven itself. My mind would wander. The experience was similar to reading Max Sebald's Vertigo.

Others have claimed the same dream-experience regarding this book. It could go without saying that I will read this book again, most likely after I have read all four of the major Sebald works. It is comforting to me, the manner in which he writes. The way in which Sebald introduces something almost nonchalantly and then offers a treatise on the subject. But not exactly, because as soon as you get comfortable in this new direction his text has taken he swerves off the road again naturally, as if he meant to, and with such great skill the move feels not frightening at all.

I am envious of the way in which Sebald records his memories. The grace in his athleticism on the page is nothing short of astounding. He is so coordinated in these actions. And the photographs add so much even if they are blurred and out of focus, tired and crumbling from years of being stored on dusty shelves in boxes tied in knots of twine and wire gauged in oil and overuse. A language foreign, but lined in memory, familiar but uncanny, and sounding out the truth he makes believable in my own world today, rife with its own skeptical and judgmental versions of a country's patriotic morals and delusional beliefs of superiority. Sebald instead adds to the growing number of this member group of like-minds against, but holds dear his own position of autonomy. And though the leaders of this memory-movement are mostly all dead, their numbers are expanding, daily, and with a fervor, in my mind, bordering on nothing short of something quite delightful. The insanity of made-time.

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LibraryThing member KrisR

Throughout Vertigo, W.G. Sebald, through deceptively clear prose and photographs, creates a disorienting waking dream for his readers. The novel is divided into four sections, and while there is not a straightforward plot or clear storyline, Sebald weaves thematic connections as well as specific

details revisited from different perspectives to hold the novel together. Some sections read as biographies of historical figures, while others are written from the perspective of neurotic characters, traveling in Venice, Vienna, and the Tyrolean Mountains in dreamlike states.

Nothing is stable in Sebald's world. Although maps, atlases, and sketches of terrain appear throughout the book, discrepancies between these guides and the actual sites, changed by time, development, or the gap between the ideal and reality, make these worlds difficult for the characters to navigate. Sebald uses water as another device to convey the dream-like vertigo suffered by his characters. Waves roll, vaporetti rock on the canals of Venice, the lapping of water acts as a lullaby. Buildings and works of art molder and decay. Characters attempt to find something concrete to hold onto - friends, people on the streets, a walking routine, scraps of paper to decipher - but in the end their dream-states always prevail.

Since finishing Vertigo, I can't shake off the disorienting sense that I was dreaming along with the characters. This novel is recommended for people who don't require traditional plots, but who are interested in traveling with Sebald, witnessing his blurring of genres, and sharing in the disconcerting experience of life with his characters.

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LibraryThing member iansales

If you want to confuse someone, ask them to explain the plot of a Sebald novel. Better yet, ask them if his novels actually are novels. Because I’m not entirely sure they are – and yet I’m pretty sure they’re fictional. Vertigo describes the arrival in Italy of Stendahl in the early 1800s

as part of Napoleon’s army, and then covers his life somewhat swiftly. The next section recounts two visits by the narrator to Venice, and other towns in Italy, as in 1987 he retraces some of his travels of 1980. The third section describes an incident during Franz Kafka’s life, when he was supposed to give a talk in an Italian town in his professional capacity. In the final section, the narrator returns to his childhood village and notes the changes since he left decades before. It’s clear the narrator is Sebald himself, but not clear how much of what he recounts is invention. Certainly Venice, which he visits, is a real place, and the places he mentions in the city are real and the histories he gives them are real; but is the village of W., where the narrator spent his childhood, an actual place? Does it matter? I am, as should be clear from my own writing, interested in that liminal area between true fact and invented fiction – that is, essentially, what the glossary to Adrift on the Sea of Rains is. (And I admit it, Sebald’s Austerlitz was one of the inspirations behind my novella.) Reading Sebald is unlike reading any other author, and it’s for that reason – and the sheer quality of his prose – that I treasure his books. I plan to work my way through his entire oeuvre.

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LibraryThing member jonfaith

I also read this one twice, I recall being disappointed by my initial reading. The subtle sequences it engages were much more palpable upon the second encounter.

LibraryThing member DrFuriosa

I first read this book in grad school but remembered nothing about it. I decided to re-read it and still have no real lasting impression of it. It's about the danger of nostalgia and memory, with two biographies interjected, and a distinctly European aesthetic. It reminded me of Ishiguro's The

Unconsoled--which I remember and appreciated much better. I am happy to send my copy of this book into the world to someone who will appreciate it more than me.

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LibraryThing member curious_squid

I liked the writing style but really feel like I missed something. Like a story, or a plot, or a theme. I also feel that the random pictures included in the book took away rather than enhanced the book.
Great book wrong time? or maybe this book just isn't for me. Definitely didn't hate it though.

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