W. G. Sebald and the Writing of History by Anne Fuchs, J. J. Long, W. G. Sebald

Abstract

MLR, 103.4, 2oo8 117I When the filmwas eventually made in the I970s, continued Polish obstructionism meant itwas shot in Czechoslovakia. And even the one novel by Becker thatwas banned in theGDR, Schlaflose Tage, received amixed reception from his readers, with Dieter Schlenstedt recommending itspublication. The Stasi,Muller shows, not only played no significantpart inpublishing decisions but seemed largelyuninterested in them unless action was required. Itsmain opera tionagainst Becker, unimaginatively entitled 'OV Liigner', began in I976 afterhe had been one of the firstsignatories of thepetition against theexpulsion ofBiermann. The reportswritten are full of repetition, inaccuracies, and banalities, including endless recounting of his core biography,with his childhood spent either in theLodz Ghetto (correct) or theWarsaw Ghetto (incorrect). This operation ceased in I982, though another section of the Stasi was already following his activities in West Berlin. One agent, who had attended a reading by Becker in a bookshop in I978, reported to his superiors theby then hardly secret plot of Schlaflose Tage! Becker was, of course, in a privileged position after the publication of Jakob der Liigner, and this allowed him freedoms thatwere not accorded tomany lesser-known GDR writers. When he expressed a desire to live outside theGDR but remain a citizen with the right to travel regularly to and fromEast Berlin, Hermann Kant and others intervened on his behalf, and it seems that itwas Honecker himself who approved the visa. Stasi activitywas potentially farmore harmful to the average ci tizen than toBecker, though theStasi boss Erich Mielke once complained about the high percentage of investigations that led to suspicions notbeing confirmed. Becker's difficulties in theGDR arose almost always from conscious political acts, not from hiswriting as such. Yet the time and effortinvested in following Becker seems insane. Using a combination of thorough archival research and a sound critical apparatus, Beate Muller has written a convincing case foramore differentiated approach to the analysis of literatureand censorship in theGDR thanhas generally been offeredhith erto, one inwhich the Stasi was just one factor in a landscape of changing coalitions. UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER P6L 0 DOCHARTAIGH W G. Sebald and theWriting ofHistory. Ed. by ANNE FUCHS and J. J. LONG. Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. 2007. 220 pp. E29. ISBN 978-3 8260-3437-4. It is ironic that themethodology of a book with the above title should be, to a sig nificant extent, ahistorical, foralthough most of the contributions bear, as promised, on Sebald's conception of history, especially inhis work of the I990s, the discussion itself tends tobe deficient indiachronic terms. Thus, Jonathan Long's comprehensive and ground-breaking 'overview of current trends inSebald scholarship' (p. 7, emphasis added) keeps 'evaluative comments to a minimum' (p. i i) and so presents recent critical textsas though theywere synchronic components of a simultaneist collage. Something similar applies tomost of the other essays. Although the authors have familiarized themselves extensively with recent secondary literature,one rarelyhas the sense, except where the subject is completely novel (e.g. Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa's essay on humans and animals in Se bald's work and Helen Finch's subtle and perceptive piece on Sebald and Handke), that they are trying to position their arguments within a continuing debate. Anne Fuchs's authoritative chapter on representations ofNature inDie Ringe des Saturn and Carolin Duttlinger's sophisticated discussion of photography and Luftkrieg und Literatur formnotable exceptions. Moreover, the 'Sebald' who forms the centre of thisvolume comes, on thewhole, I I72 Reviews from nowhere and tends to be themouthpiece for ametaphysics of history that re mains static between I988 and 2ooI. True, Duttlinger devotes some space toSebald's childhood, but following Sebald's retrospective dicta, she probably overestimates the extent towhich theAllgiu paradise was just an 'ideological smokescreen' (p. 164). Talk toSebald's contemporaries and one realizes that they find ithard tounderstand how their tiggerish friend 'Sebe', who enjoyed all the usual activities of a normal adolescent growing up in a remote, carefree environment in the 1950S, could have become the troubled Bundesmelancholiker of the I990s. It is also worth noting that Sebald's family,plus widowed maternal grandfather (JosefEgelhofer), moved from the tiny Alpine village of Wertach to the only slightly less idyllic town of Sonthofen on i6December...