Dexter – sinister

Abstract

This essay, written by a former colleague and friend of the late W. G. Sebald, was conceived initially as a short review of a collection of essays –W. G. Sebald: A Critical Companion, edited by Jonathan Long and Anne Whitehead – that appeared in 2004. As such it involves no single argument. Rather, it is a series of responses to the essays that constitute the book. The essay also draws on the annotated books in Sebald's library (now in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach/Neckar), personal reminiscence and extensive familiarity with all aspects of Sebald's work (including forgotten reviews from the 1970s and 1980s, academic articles, polemical pieces, variant versions of literary works that were published in the 1980s, and the 30 or so interviews that Sebald gave in the 1990s). By doing this, I wish to suggest three things: (1) that a good understand of Sebald the academic and critic can help us better understand his literary work; (2) that a diachronic understanding of the way Sebald's mind develops from 1963 onwards can help us appreciate more fully the central concerns of his literary work; (3) that the reader should approach Sebald's narratives and assertions in interviews with a benign scepticism.