Speak, Silence: In Search of W. G. Sebald

by Carole Angier

The long-awaited first biography of W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald was one of the most extraordinary and influential writers of the twentieth century. Through books including The Emigrants, Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, he pursued an original literary vision that combined fiction, history, autobiography and photography and addressed some of the most profound themes of contemporary literature: the burden of the Holocaust, memory, loss and exile.

The first biography to explore his life and work, Speak, Silence pursues the true Sebald through the memories of those who knew him and through the work he left behind. This quest takes Carole Angier from Sebald's birth as a second-generation German at the end of the Second World War, through his rejection of the poisoned inheritance of the Third Reich, to his emigration to England, exploring the choice of isolation and exile that drove his work. It digs deep into a creative mind on the edge, finding profound empathy and paradoxical ruthlessness, saving humour, and an elusive mix of fact and fiction in his life as well as work. The result is a unique, ferociously original portrait.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Literature, Biography Memoir, Germany, Female Authors, German Literature

640 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 2021

About the author

Carole Angier is the award-winning biographer of Jean Rhys (1985 & 1990). Her biography of the great Italian writer Primo Levi was published in the UK and the US in 2002 to critical acclaim. Carole was a teacher for many years before taking the plunge into full-time writing, teaching all forms of English (literature, creative writing, expository writing) for many institutions, including ten years as a tutor with the Open University. She also speaks Italian, French and German, though Carole says that she would not dare to write in them.

Reviews

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed biography of one of the 20th Century's greatest writers - WG Sebald, whose very work is difficult to categorise but whose influence is vast (both perhaps shown by the now common use of the term Sebaldian to describe a certain type of writing as well as - more lazily - the use of slightly out of focus black and white photographs).

The book concentrates on Sebald's prose books and less on his academic writing or poetry - which I have to say suited me (I have little interest in academia)

It is a lengthy book - over 650 pages - but around 200 pages are Acknowledgments/Links /Abbreviations/Notes and an Index (not completed in the Proof I read).

There is always a tension in biographies between official ones and unofficial ones. Official ones have access to inside information and privileged insights. But sometimes as a result are constrained in what they can present and in the gloss they need to put on incidents..

The author makes it clear up front that this is more of an unauthorised biography and that particularly: she was not able to speak to either Sebald's widow (and so could not quote from many private letters etc); did not have official agreement to quote from his published works or interviews (other than the "limits laid down by [copyright] law); that two other key sources (a friend and Simon Prosser - Sebald's editor for his last books – who I know best as Ali Smith’s editor) also declined to talk to her.

She also identifies up front that she never really gets to the bottom of the solitude and pessimism which permeates not just his work but seemingly his life.

The advantage of being unauthorised is that she is able to present an unvarnished picture of him. Starting of course with the comment about his aloneness “the people he loved must have felt alone too”.

Later she is fairly explicit about the hurt felt by his first English language publisher Harvill (who supported him when he was completely unknown) when after some initial success he deserted them and allowed his agent Andrew Wiley to turn their “offer into the opening bid in an auction and invited the biggest publishers in London and New York to take part” (a repeat of a similar falling out with his first German publisher). She makes it clear that for all his torn loyalty Sebald’s real focus was on earning enough to escape academia and be an independent writer.

The incident in which he comes out worst is in his difficult relationship with his first English translator Michael Hulse – which continued to be extremely difficult through a number of translations. This is a fascinating part of the book as the author actually includes some pages of “The Rings of Saturn” with Hulse’s translation and Sebald’s edits (as well as those of his trusted secretary). The biographer puts the bulk of the blame for the difficult relationship on Sebald both in not communicating his issues ot Hulse directly “silence began in kindness, but soon became cowardice and finally betrayal” and in his motivations – but she does conclude in an interesting paragraph

There are to simplify horribly – two poles of thought about translation. One holds that the job is to render the work as beautifully as possible in the new language. The other holds that the job is rather to convey the original as closely as possible. (The ideal is to do both, of course, but like most ideals it’s not always achievable.) Max was strongly of the second school, while Michael’s gift lay in the first. The result was that Michael wholly Englished – and Hulse’d – Max’s language, and Max furiously re-Germanised and re-Sebaldised it again. He worked almost as long and hard on Michael’s translations as he’d done on his own originals, rewriting almost every line. And the result of that, in my view, was remarkable, and the best of both worlds. He had a poet’s flowing English version before him, to which he restored his own unique sound, to make a whole new work of art. In my view, in that of everyone at Harvill, and in that of most English reviewers and readers, Max’s books as translated by Michael Hulse, then rewritten by Max himself, are great works of English literature, different from but equal to Austerlitz.

Some other Norfolk/Suffolk related tidbits I found of interest were:

Sebald’s notoriously bad driving as seen for years by his neighbour when they lift shared on the Wymondham-Norwich roads (ones I drive parallel to on the A11 when driving between my Surrey and Norfolk homes) and which of course ultimately cost him his life years later;

The solution to the mystery (to me) of how someone on an academic salary purchased a fabulous Old Rectory – the Rectory was completely derelict and he spent years doing it up.

That “Rings of Saturn” actually started life conceived by Sebald as an easy way to get paid for his writing – as a walking holiday which he would then turn into “a piece about remote Suffolk for German tourists” – “ten short pieces” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine magazine

Now of course much of his walk took place at different times and in different places than he says in his writing

This deliberate duplicity of course permeates much of Sebald’s writing – hence why it is fiction, as well as his photographs and even his interviews – the author reveals that there is a well-known Sebald tale about the Emigrants which he told to her, which she included in her interview and which was been by others repeated often as a fact ever since but which she discovered in her researches for this book was entirely made up)

Those photographs and documents that made them all so real to us – what are we to make of them now? If the characters are fictions, who are the photographs of? And suddenly they flip. Where first they created an extraordinary closeness, now they create distance; instead of feeling intensely with the people pictured, we’re asking, Who are you? Precisely the technique Sebald adopted to make his creations real to us now makes us more aware they’re not real than if we had simply been left to imagine them, as in a normal novel. This is a circle he cannot escape from, like several others in his life. And my book traps him in it. If you read him without questioning, and are moved – that is his main aim. I remind you of the truth. That is the job of the biographer. It’s why writers don’t want biographers, and I know Sebald wouldn’t want me. But I would say to him, You’re wrong. You always wanted people to believe your stories. But they will believe them more, not less, when they know the truth.

But perhaps the enduring strength in the book are the closing chapters on each of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz and then on Sebald’s overall literary legacy. These function (particularly when set in the context of the previous chapters) as invaluable companions to Sebald’s writing – and for any fan of his writing I would suggest to get this biography (in hard copy rather than electronic) as a reference volume for your bookshelf alongside his great works.

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC via NetGalley

[Matthew Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

1st book of 2022.

Sebald being one of my favourite writers (and I believe also one of the most important writers in the last 50 or so years, perhaps more), I proceeded here with caution. Angier's biography, the first to be written about the enigmatic writer who died in 2001, brought many things to light which all seemed to be damning. Suddenly I was seeing articles about Sebald's 'lies', 'stealing', and 'ruthlessness'. Angier covers all of these and she does so in an alarming way: without accusation. Sebald did lie, he stole people's life stories and put them in his novels, he warped the truth to fit his grand designs and he took images, ideas, even lines, from the writers he admired. Another portrait is beginning to be drawn of him, but Angier tackles it all, as well as his life, as well as exploring his novels and analysing them, in a surprisingly compelling biography.

Before we even get started Angier presents us with a giant setback and flaw. Sadly, Sebald's widow didn't allow Angier to quote from his private letters or massively from his novels either. As I read this, I wondered what was the point of reading it? I recalled the Bowie movie that was being made (has been made? I've heard no more about it) despite not having the rights to any of his songs. A Bowie movie without Bowie music. A Sebald biography without Sebald's words. Angier was allowed to paraphrase, so we get, in almost Sebaldian fashion, the emotional heart of things but nothing exactly verbatim save a few words here and there. So already we, as readers, are dealing with truth/untruth, Angier's paraphrasing against Sebald's own true words. This hardly distracted from the biography as one might imagine it would. Despite the setbacks, Angier draws a seemingly whole portrait of Sebald's life as a boy, through his teenage years and into his 20s, 30s, and eventually through his 40s as a famous writer at last. Beautiful bits of the biography are the memories people have of him that Angier uses, him as a 20-year-old man, him as a teacher, him as a friend.

He was, surprisingly, rebellious, he was also kind, but could also be cruel, he was a nervous driver and had many crashes before the final crash that killed him in 2001 (though the coroner ruled that it was a heart-attack and he was dead before impact), a depressive man but also very charming, funny, ironic, with a German (or perhaps Kafka-like?) sense of humour. Angier's biography, especially near the end, reeks of her adoration of him, but I didn't dislike that. At one point she becomes too maudlin about him and dismisses some common criticisms of his work as if stating fact but I was touched by her passion. She also met Sebald several times and interviewed him, so she was already at a good starting point, and the biography is clearly a product of great time, resources and love.

Once I've organised my notes I'll add some quotes and distinct examples, but for now, a solid biography of a genius.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, it's worth saying that anyone put off by the page count should know that the text finishes at 70% and the rest is notes, references and bibliography.

Secondly, this is far from an objective biography - Angier writes herself into her quest for Sebald and almost mimics his texts with the inset black and white photos and the merging of genres: this is part conventional biography, part memoir, part literary commentary on Sebald's work.

My one question is a methodological one: Angier reaches a conclusion that Sebald's life informed his books, but I wondered to what extent she might have constructed his life from his books, drawing parallels backwards, as it were, from his narrators to the author? She uncovers how Sebald lied about his 'real' life, fictionalising it; but also how he got frustrated with the rigour of scholarly writing and so made up references and sources. She finds the latter forgivable since it is a Sebaldian way of merging invention, imagination and truth - but something that is a creative possibility in fiction becomes more like deception, even unprofessionalism, in academic writing.

It's striking, too, how Angier unpicks themes such as coincidence and unexpected connections which drive Sebald's fiction and finds them in his life, not least in terms of his final accident (or was it?) and death.

I don't know enough about Sebald to quantify these misgivings so they're really just methodological questions that I couldn't help asking myself. But Angier is a sensitive reader, for sure, and it's as a commentary on Sebald's literary works that I found this most rich and productive.

Thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC via NetGalley

[Andrew H · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a deeply problematical biography of Sebald. I read it hoping to learn more about Sebald and increase my appreciation of his works. I ended up frustrated and feeling I never wanted to return to Sebald.

The initial problem relates to access: Ute Sebald insisted that letters might not be quoted by Angier. Consequently, a veil occurs between biographer and reader. Without Sebald's actual words, Sebald is met at one remove. And this is amplified throughout the biography. Sebald is infamous for sending people down wrong paths as regards his life: Angier is prepared to wander off into the woods until readers lose their bearings. Often, Angier relies on testimony from friends and ends up telling their stories. A reader is led a merry dance up the garden path until reason steps in and says, "What has this to do with Sebald?"

In some ways, Angier plays Sebald at his own game. Stories within stories. The result is a meta-biography that stands between fact and non-fiction in the same way that a Sebald novel stands between history and make believe.

Angier tracks Sebald through various personae: Winfried, Sebe, Cocky, W.G., from childhood to adult author. But for every significant detail (such as the way in which the teenage Sebald mocked his Nazi father by imitating Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator) there are masses of insignificant gossip. At one point, Angier records one of Sebald's friends speaking to another friend who was writing an impossibly long Ph.D: you are supposed to be getting your Ph.D, not exploring the truth. That remark is relevant to Speak, Silence: In search of W.G.Sebald . You are supposed to be writing a biography, not trying to establish philosophical truths.

There are some shocking revelations. Sebald's MA was filled with fake footnotes. His Ph.D, in part, rested upon a crucial letter from Adorno -- a letter that Sebald created. And this fakery enters the major works. Sebald is recognised as a vital recorder of the Holocaust. But his characters were lifted from real life and then their Jewish heritage was added. In The Boy with Striped Pyjamas there are events that were impossible. How far can historical fiction stray from historical fact and still be relevant? A major scandal broke our in 2008 when a Holocaust memoir for children, Angel at the Fence , was proved to be a fiction. The verdict was simple: literary hoax, a hoax that actually devalued the Holocaust because it was not a true witness. Sebald strays into this dangerous territory. Angier's discoveries make interesting reading in the light of how Aciman has recently praised Sebald as a vital contributor to the Jewish experience. Put simply, fictional stories have been passed off as testimony. Angier tries to walk a wobbly tightrope, not exactly happy about Sebald's exploits, yet not wishing to damn her hero. The reader ends up in vague territory where Sebald is inventing a new type of fiction. Post-truth.

Because of the limited access to Sebald's family life, this biography ends up being a literary biography. And there another problem enters. Angier is prepared to read Sebald's fiction back into reality. For example, at one point Sebald writes fictionally about homosexual fear, with a level of paranoia; and this is taken as Sebald being afraid in real life that he was homosexual. In one brief sentence, Angier dispels this. Too often, she sets up targets to shoot them down easily. She also seems incapable of winnowing the wheat from the chaff and treats every little fact gleaned from Sebald's friends as vital. This makes Speak, Silence: In search of W.G.Sebald a tedious read.

If the biography had been reduced and major rings identified then a much stronger work would have resulted.

The sub-title "In Search" becomes an elaborate game: Sebald is like a drifting ring of Saturn. And this is the metaphor behind the biography. Saturn was the god of melancholy and this biography is a study of Sebald's melancholia -- but there is no core to Sebald, like the planet Saturn: the visual, solid object is a gaseous mass. Ultimately, this biography is a search for a ghost.

[Mark George · Rating 5 out of 5]

"He always said that he started his literary writing as a way out of the frustrations of academic life. It was his biggest lie. Only once, to an interviewer in far away Madrid, did he say something closer to the truth: that he began "Out of fatigue. Out of illness. I don't know how to put it. I went through an important crisis. " With the script of Now the Night Descends, the poetry of After Nature, and finally the prose of Vertigo, he began writing in order to explore and perhaps save himself from the times in which he had crossed the line from melancholy to madness" (page 334)

[Aggrey Odera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the fact that nearly all his output came in the years between 1990 and 2001, Max Sebald was one of the most significant writers of the last sixty or so years, possibly the most original one (with his only competition being Gabriel Garcia Marquez). While other great writers spawned imitators and were credited as "influences" to those who came after them, it's only Sebald who's been adjectivized. "Sebaldian" now stands for the kind of propulsive prose (often interspersed with black-and-white photographs) that carries the reader forward in a heady stream, eventuating in that affective state for which Sebald's first significant work was named: vertigo.

Susan Sonntag, describing Sebald, spoke of him in words that are perhaps only apt for one other writer - the short (very short) story writer Lydia Davis: as a master of a genre entirely his own. Looking at his supposed literary heirs, it doesn't take much to acknowledge that she was probably right. Ben Lerner, Jenny Erpenbeck, Teju Cole, (later) Patrick Modiano, Dušan Šarotar, Zia Haider Rahman, Rachel Cusk - all these are authors who, for better or worse, have been stamped with Sebaldian-ism. They write Sebald. Even Sebald's (unauthorized) biographer can't escape: In her attempt to write about him, she writes like him.

The period in which Sebald did all of his writing, temporally sandwiched between the Trente Glorieuses and the dot-com boom, was a supposedly happy, future-looking time for the western world. Yet, Sebald's abiding melancholia, his insistence on writing about the holocaust and its effects, about memory in its most granular detail, demanded that we recall all that had been lost. He asked that we let neither the vapidness of materiality nor the song of "progress", in their triumphalism, anesthetize us from remembering the horrors of the last century. It might have been that Sebald wrote this way because he was, by nature, an unhappy person, one given to brooding. But it is just as likely that he saw the world as it was. Restitutions had not been made for the crimes of the European twentieth century, and we risked reliving them.

If the events of the last twenty or so years - among them the union of neoliberal capitalism and neofascism that has swept through most of the western world, combined with (or contributing to) a climate crisis that has made the world a dangerous place for most of its inhabitants - are anything to go by, then Sebald was our canary. Absent a true reckoning with the evil we mete out to others - or with our own Little Eichmanning, we cannot truly move forward. Fukuyama's end of history was a terrible joke. We had no right to be so happy, and now we're living in both tragedy and farce.

The news that a biography of Sebald was coming out was thus excellent news for some sections of the literati. What could we learn from the life of this man who'd given us so much? The anticipation was heightened because the biographer Carole Angier's previous forays into literary biographies, with works on Jean Rhys and Primo Levi, had been spectacular affairs. But because Sebald's widow Ute did not support the biography, Angier lacked access to much of Sebald's private papers. Those she could access she couldn't make much use of because of copyright concerns. The result, therefore, isn't entirely a success. Having to make do with anecdotes gleaned from old mates, together with various writings lacking a cohesive wholeness to them, Angier's book is clunky. She follows some leads but discovers they are dead, leaving us with information whose intellectual nutritional value is the equivalent of potato crisps, and a book that is twice as long as it needs to be. Sometimes, she downright reads too much - like her supposed take about Sebald's struggle with his purported homosexuality. Arguably, she obscures nearly as much as she illuminates.

Still, what Angier finds is remarkable in many ways and is helpful for many (like me) whose previous engagements with Sebald had approached hagiography.

Let's start with Sebald's plagiarism. Sebald made up a letter from Adorno, which was vastly influential in the Ph.D. he ended up getting. An academic who hated academia, Sebald had no patience for citations. If he couldn't find them, he made them up.

But then there's also the fact that the stories themselves that Sebald so elegantly told were derived from the lives of real people. Many of these people had either told their stories to Sebald in confidence, or had been strangers to him, not seeking to have their identities "taken away from them" in this way. Thus Susi Bechhofer, from whose life Sebald's model for Jacques Austerlitz came, for example, angrily wrote about what Sebald had done to her.

Sometimes, when it struck his fancy, Sebald made up significant parts of his characters' lives. Consider the model for Richard Selwyn, the first character profiled in the Emigrants, for instance, who Angier tells us was not Jewish. Sebald made him Jewish.

Other sources make a note of Sebald's charm, how, with his mordant humor and keen eyes, he could get you to tell him everything about yourself, and he'd then immediately turn around and write about you in a book. As Angier notes, of all Sebald's characters based on real people, only one was happy with Sebald's characterization of them. What to make of this?

What also of his obsession with Jews? On the one hand, it is easy to understand. The entirety of the Sebaldian project is a contention with the German holocaust, a survivor's guilt (even though he was born in 1944, a year before the war ended) that he thought not enough Germans paid attention to. And it went deep: his father, whom he could never forgive, was a Nazi. As soon as he could, Sebald, uncomfortable with the German silence around the holocaust, left Germany and moved to England, where he lived the rest of his life. Though obviously not the only ones, the primary victims of the holocaust were Jews, so reasonably, Sebald was going to write about Jews. But why make Selwyn Jewish? And why steal a Jewish woman's story from her?

Thus the thing that many adore about Sebald's work -its unique combination of travelogue, analysis, family history, literary criticism, reportage - what the Sebald scholar Uwe Schütte called "bricolage," is also what leads us to morally rugged terrain. Sebald is not exactly the "journalist" about whom Janet Malcolm speaks. When really pressed, we will classify his work as fiction. So the inherent idea of per se betrayal that exists in Malcolm's "The Journalist and the Murderer" really is much more complex here. Yet moments like these might perhaps render folk knowledge, "common sense," helpful. We all recognize betrayal and other such states of affect even when we want to elide them with high falutin notions of "complexity."

What also to make of the fact that the man who so violated the trust and privacy of others demanded that for himself? Sebald's numerous lies about himself - both the big ones like the Adorno letter and the small ones about the more quotidian details of his life; the distancing of his personal life from others - to the point of rejecting attempts at biography (we can only assume that Ute was, at the very least, doing what she imagined Max would have wanted)- are we to read these as demands for privacy? If so, are we to respect them? Is it outrageous to suggest that Sebald's violation of the privacy of others means Angier can violate his own too, even if posthumously? Or should we even further say that Sebald has less of a right because 1. He's dead, and 2. He's a public figure, and those are often seen as exchanging their privacy for their renown?

The utility of Angier's biography, for me personally, I think, is that of destroying the cult of Sebald that has lived in my head for the last three years. Able now to see more of his humanity, I hope I will learn more from him as a thinker and a person, not just as an excellent master of prose and sentiment.

[Arhondi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first book of Sebald I read was Vertigo. A friend recommended him and gave me all his books to read. I spent the next few days reading all of them compulsively, not leaving my house, almost unable to move and leave these books behind. This was quite a few years ago, still long after Sebald’s death (which made me feel even worse that I had missed him before). I read his books still, between other books, as a palette cleanser of sorts, but mostly as a great consolation, a place of comfort.

Sontag’s characterization of The Emigrants as “perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read”, applies to pretty much everything he’s written. I remember reading Vertigo and actually feeling dizzy, I cried after finishing «Il ritorno in patria» and didn’t even know why, and then I started reading the book all over again. Obviously the relationship we all have with our favourite writers is very personal and cannot necessarily be explained or justified in anything else but idiosyncratic arguments – all I can say for Sebald is that he changed my life when I read him and opened the door to a whole new world.

Angier does not hide that she is probably in love with Sebald – as much as the next of us (I know I was). And it does take some sort of infatuation to do the level of research and investigation she does on him. Her work is thorough and compulsive, despite the many things that have held back the range of material in the book, notably anything pertaining in his personal (i.e. family) life.
The thing that drew me mostly to Sebald was my own inability to distinguish between fact and fiction. I already knew enough about him to understand the link between his own life and a lot of his themes – the main one being the collective German guilt he seems to have assumed on his shoulders and bore for everyone for the Holocaust.

For Sebald, humanity is a long record of annihilation – we are living on top of ruins and no amount of supposed progress can change that. We are also headed for destruction and we are only stalling the inevitable.

Angier’s work focuses to a great extent on linking the facts with fiction - in a way similar to the mapping of the route taken in Rings of Saturn, as shown in Patience (after Sebald)- pointing out what is based on reality, on real people in Sebald’s life that he met while living in both Germany and England. The intricacy of her research is admirable (albeit a bit confusing and perhaps excessively detailed even for the most well-versed of Sebald’s readership).

The first part of the book is mostly based on research and discovery of all the connections in Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants and Austerlitz – distant family, friends, acquaintances, characters from stories he found, no one was out of bounds or safe from Sebald’s tape recorder of a mind, that kept notes for everything and could find a place to use each detail that would have been important to him. In that part of the biography, I got the feeling that Angier was doing a bit of reverse engineering – trying to make the information fit in with his work in an effort to make everything hold together.

When we move to Sebald’s life in England, the text becomes a bit more flowing and less stuck on painstaking details. We see him trying to build his life in a foreign country, navigating the bureaucracy at Uni and also finding his feet as a professor. He was a stranger in a strange land and as a reader, I always felt his insistence (bordering on obsession) with rootlessness and immigrants, was very much based on his own experiences of never feeling like he belonged – even in his own country.

Angier does not shy away from one of the main questions in Sebald’s life and work: to what extent could he or was he allowed to use or flat out steal from people’s lives? How far can a writer go in the end? And even if this might be debatable in writing fiction, it is not the same in academic writing, where Sebald seems to have also applied his method of bricolage or an "innocent" lie here and there in order to complete his dissertations. He did get away with it but only by pure luck. This is a sort of Sebald-isation of academic work which is risky.

There is no simple answer to that question – as Sebald’s work is part fiction, part essay, part dream or wish (I dare to say). Angier is not necessarily justifying him but more trying to explain his reasons – which will not necessarily make sense for everyone (nor do they have to). It feels that Sebald might have Sebald-ized his own life in the end - or that he had managed to preserve a part of it very deeply rooted in reality and completely sheltered from anything else. I guess we won't know as his immediate family have not contributed to this biography.

This lack of involvement from them as well as some of his closest friends and associates (such as Jan Peter Tripp) has inevitably left this work - clearly a work of love and devotion- with a lot of potholes. Still, we may ask silence to speak but it doesn’t – despite everything we learn about his method of working, the loving testimonials of his friends and colleagues, Sebald, for me, remains as opaque as ever, hidden among his so carefully chosen words. I am not sure if the intention was to shed light or make seen, but some people are resistant to that. And I am absolutely fine with Sebald being one of them.

In the end, the answer to my main question as a reader – Does it matter what part is fact and what part is fiction? Is every photo in The Rings of Saturn a fake?- remains the same. No, it doesn’t matter. Same way as it doesn’t matter to me, for example, if Elena Ferrante is a woman, a man, a real name, a nickname or whatever else. What are the ethical implications of using someone’s life story to make another story? Literature here is preservation – like a butterfly pinned on a display. It can’t fly anymore, but it’s still there as it once was. As Sebald said in his last speech on November 17, 2001, on the occasion of the official opening of the Literaturhaus in Stuttgart, “there are many forms of writing; only in literature, however, can there be an attempt at restitution over and above the mere recital of facts, and over and above scholarship”.

Angier's book is admirable in depth and breadth (if you are deterred by the volume, please know that about 250 pages are notes). I felt moved by Sebald (but because I know and love him already) but in the end, I just want to read his books again, not caring about whose story he was inspired by/ stole from. And I feel from a methodological point of view, the engineering of putting things together from his books to his life, has left me a bit on the fence.

Roland Barthes said that he is interested in language “because it wounds or seduces me”. Sebald, for me, does both – what matters is his tremendous ability to create his own world, a world in which the perseverance of memory is prevalent and significant, a world where we are not allowed to forget – because if we do, we are doomed to repeat history.

[Sonali V · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this book tentatively because I revere Sebald. I didn't want to read a hagiography nor did I want it to be too censorious. I was happy to see it wasn't. I really liked the easy flowing language, the details of Sebald's background, early life, relationships and all that may have contributed to him becoming the writer that he became. There are copious footnotes detailing the biographer's interviews, mails, readings etc with Sebald 's sisters, childhood friends & acquaintances, later friends and colleagues, which corroborate all that she is writing about him. She did not have access to Sebald' s immediate family who chose not to engage with her but neither did they place impediments in her work. I just feel that I need to re-read all his works once again because this book has given me some insights, which though it doesn't change anything essential, does bring a greater depth to my knowledge about his writing process.

[G M · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2006, I heard a scholar extol the virtues of a new saint I had never heard of before. His name was St. Se-'bald, with the stress on the second syllable (se-'bɒld). Only afterwards, I realized the scholar's talk had been about the writer Sebald (stress on the first syllable). I have always been wary of hagiographical accounts of writers, and especially so of the concerted effort to dress up Sebald as "The Good German". This new biography targets a broad audience, but is rather successful in putting this (unhelpful) myth to rest (if still needed) and in elucidating some of the more peculiar aspects of Sebald's authorship: the acerbic, polemical tone of his writings as an academic, the morose and "hyperliterary" nature of his literary output, his unwillingness to credit sources, his rise to fame due to a review by Susan Sontag etc..

1. Encyclopaedic literature is maddening when one starts source-hunting, as I can tell from my own experiences with Alexander Kluge. At first, I was somewhat taken aback by Angier's plucking apart of Sebald's fiction in order to assess the biographical "truth" behind nearly very morsel of prose. But I decided to read on. In some cases, it's illuminating, in others, it's overdone.
2. Angier's decision to abide by what she gathered from personal encounters seems informed by a similar stance attributed to Sebald. This leads to a very intimate account of Sebald's life and work. The book confirms my long-standing hunch that Sebald remained deeply German in his attempt at freeing himself from his German-ness. There are some heavy chapters on how depression can ravage a person's life, and some details are left untold ... .
3. How on earth did Angier manage to write this biography without using the concept of neurodivergence? I guess it is partly due to the murky notion of trauma (yet ultimately, on the final pages, this 'explanation' is rejected as inconclusive). But possibly, it is also a refusal on principle, as Angier even prefers to coin a questionable notion like "artist's disease" when discussing mirror-touch synaesthesia. Or is it just lack of awareness?

The biography makes me want to (re)read Sebald myself, so that's positive.

BTW: Sebald and Dietrich Schwanitz were long-time friends: who would've thought?

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75, really, but less than four due to the number of "Sebald must have" and its equivalent phrases when Angier speculates on motives. Denied access to some people and texts, she relies on the testimony of those who would speak with her and on other papers she's allowed to quote. Perhaps this prevention of her investigation chimes nicely with the ambiguities in Sebald's own books. His life is a sad one, and his writings are powerful. Angier does her best to respect both things. Recommended, with the caveat that this work isn't definitive.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm sure unauthorized biographies are difficult to research and write. Without access to the subject's private papers and without the cooperation of family and many who knew him, a complete picture can't be drawn. Carole Angier's biography of W. G. Sebald is an example of such limitations. Angier is an experienced biographer--Jean Rhys, Primo Levi--but walls erected to keep others out are difficult to break through. The melancholy, reflective Sebald was a private man. His family has elected to honor his privacy as well as the deliberate obfuscations he threw up during his lifetime (he lied, a lot).

So far I've read only a couple of Sebald's books. I admire them. My reading of The Rings of Saturn several years ago was so breathtaking that ever since I've been particularly attracted to novels--those of Esther Kinsky and Teju Cole are examples--which make me think they're written with the same meditative vision and wish to reveal the truths of natural and human landscapes. So I approached Angier's biography eagerly but had to be satisfied with the incomplete picture given. No doubt she does as well as she could. She knows his work well, has written insightfully of him in the past, but the constrictions show. Some people in Sebald's story cooperated, of course. Most appear to have been associated with his childhood. It's not surprising, then, that his growing up fills almost half the book. The conventional biographical narrative is followed, but as he ages and the biography covers the period of his life I'm most interested in, the last decade of his life when the novels were written, the details become fewer and less weighty.

Angier is good at analysis of the novels. So interwoven are the facts of the life and thought with what he wrote she resorts to literary criticism and to conjecture. The criticism is useful for anyone wanting to dissect Sebald. The conjecture leaves us with a picture of someone seen from a distance. We can observe and learn a little while at the same time being denied access to the depth. The reader becomes entry vehicle whose imprecise trajectory causes it to skip off the atmosphere of a Sebald it's not allowed to penetrate. Some consider him to be the most important writer of postwar Germany. There'll be many biographies of him to come. Before the next I plan to read the rest of his novels.

[Michael Flick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author documents instances and ways Sebald’s books depart from their sources. That’s much less interesting than why he did, but there’s little or no insight into that. The author’s book is pretty much incomprehensible without familiarity with Sebald’s great novels and doesn’t add much of anything to them. Better to read Sebald’s books than this book about him. Start with “Austerlitz,” to me the finest of his remarkable books.

[B. H.]

I have entered a phase of my life where I feel more and more like a middle-aged dad and I can tell this because I love biographies and autobiographies. And while I understand some people's issues with this particular biography (the fact that Angler did not have full access to Sebald's papers, the speculations), I loved it. In fact, I would say that I loved it even more because of what others perceive as the book's flaws.

In terms of content, this was a beautiful weaving of Sebald's life and also a critical interpretation of his work. It is a detailed biography that does not mince its words about Sebald's life and flaws, but also presents him in a way that is so human because of these flaws.

But I think the reason why I find myself so enthralled with this biography is the way it plays directly and perhaps unconsciously at times too with my favorite topics: the fallibility of memory; the pleasures, pains and limits of narrative to make sense of a life; how when we write about others we are often enough writing about ourselves.

The thing with "Speak Silence" is that Sebald's own work plays so beautiful into these very themes, making this a very meta biography that is a pleasure to read not only because of the life it conveys, but also because of the question it raises and how it allows me to play with ideas and language. A book that is also a bit of a puzzle regarding form. I devoured it.

[Karina Samyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5
Ik weet niet meer hoe ik kennismaakte met Sebald. Had ik over hem gelezen of pikte ik in de bib toevallig een van zijn boeken mee ? Ik weet nog wel welk boek mijn eerste was : De Ringen van Saturnus. Ik was onmiddellijk betoverd door de dromerige, melancholische toon. De prachtige taal. De bijgevoegde foto's versterkten mijn leesplezier. Ik besloot alles van hem te lezen.
Ondertussen heb ik de meeste van zijn boeken gelezen. Ik hou er enkele achter de hand. Sebald is als goede wijn, best met mate genieten.
Ik keek dan ook uit zijn biografie te lezen. Voldeed ze aan de verwachtingen? Niet helemaal. Omdat de vrouw en dochter van Sebald heel discreet zijn en weigeren te praten, mist dit boek een groot deel. Hun afwezigheid is totaal, net of de schrijfster hen rancuneus uit haar boek bande. Maar er is nog iets. Heel het boek door had ik het gevoel dat ze zaken interpreteerde, veronderstelde zoals haar best uitkwam. Maar natuurlijk, Sebald's leven was, net als zijn literatuur, geheimzinnig en met vele lagen. Misschien mag er nog een sluier liggen over deze bijzondere man.

[Andrew]

Ok, I get it. Angier is referencing Nabokov's famous memoir, but replacing “memory” with “silence.” And yet, we get awfully little of Sebald the human. In fact we get very little substance at all, other than the airing of some rather boring dirty laundry. In other words, the silence fails to speak.

Perhaps I was an idiot for reading this at all. Maybe it was the obnoxious title that should have warned me, followed by 500 pages of nothing (cue Seinfeld theme). As I said, Sebald the human is not apparent. Sebald the strawman as Angier constructs him exists in his stead. My own take on Sebald here, click my clickbait:

http://subjectslashobject.blogspot.co...

[Gustavo Racy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not, by far, the best biography I´ve read. But then, again, I haven't read that many. Mostly, I find the author's boldness respectful. And though the critique of her having tried to unveil Sebald's lies and assemblage work may be common, and fair, I find her effort extremely productive, even if not at all consistent throughout the whole book. My suggestion would be for reading this as an essay on Sebald's literature, and not really as a biography. There are rather interesting stories about his life, his childhood in Allgäu and his youth as a literature student, but beyond that, I dealt with the attempts to understand how he thought and worked hi own literature only a detail. Otherwise we´d be falling into the classical problem of understanding an author's work from his own life and, more than that, from an attempt of psychonalysis. Although Sebald himself, according to Angier, worked as a literary critic from the standpoint of merging biography and social history, this happened more from a critical theory, Adornian perspective, which feeds into psychoanalysis from a social dimension, and not from an analytical approach to an author's personality. That said, it seems to me that Angier tries too hard to justify herself and her approach to Sebald. At the same time, I find that quite understandable. I, too, want to understand what Sebald must have thought and felt like, as I identify with his gloom myself.
Every work may be criticised and this is no exception. However, I found some of its passages extremely sensitive, and I was really moved to tears by the robin's appearance at Max's funeral. I think Angier did great justice to Max's work here, and it definetely helped me understand his oeuvre better.

[Marta sans-H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Księga dość długa, więc chcę krótko, a dużo można by powiedzieć. Przejdę od razu do sedna, a jest nim ton, jaki w biografii Sebalda przyjęła autorka Carole Angier w stosunku do postaci pisarza: bałwochwalczy i jednocześnie protekcjonalny, odrzucający i utrudniający przejście przez stronice. Jedną kwestią jest przeprowadzony research, a ten na miarę możliwości i ograniczonego przez rodzinę (żonę) dostępu do źródeł zdaje się bardzo szczegółowy, a zupełnie inną zaś interpretacja zgromadzonego materiału. Największe bowiem (2) kamienie w bucie, jakie będzie trzeba nieść po lekturze, a które trwale mogą zmienić odbiór twórczości W. G. Sebalda, to:

1. kariera akademicka osiągnięta wbrew zasadom sztuki (doktorat pisarza opierał się w części na fałszywym liście do Theodora Adorno; gdy w innych pracach naukowych nie mógł znaleźć cytatu na poparcie swojej tezy, wymyślał je) 2. przedstawienie historii niby prawdziwych, ale de facto fikcyjnych – bo tak przez Sebalda przekształconych – jako świadectwa pamięci o Holokauście, bez zgody zainteresowanych.

Obydwa kamienie naturalnie ciężkie i torujące drogę do pytań o moralność, etykę pisarską i postprawdę, o których można by dyskutować i rozkładać je na czynniki pierwsze. A jednak traci się na to ochotę, gdy Angier choćby problem „niedociągnięć” dorobku akademickiego komentuje, a w ogóle w książce czyni to obficie (liczne arbitralne „mam pogląd w tej sprawie” oraz „jak mogę przypuszczać”), w następujący sposób:

„Jego nonszalancja bibliograficzna wydaje się szczególnie rażąca. Max jako filolog pozwalał sobie na wiele. Był jednak odważnym i twórczym umysłem, który w sprawach wielkiej wagi raczej się nie mylił”.

Studenci, naukowcy, spróbujcie wykorzystać
argumentację odważnego i raczej nieomylnego umysłu w Waszej uniwersyteckiej przygodzie.

Chciałam jak najszybciej z tej książki wyjść i nawet pytania – preparował fakty czy nie preparował, i co z tym zrobić – przestały mnie zajmować. Przyciągnąć nie zdołały mnie plotki. Skoro nie dla faktów, to przynajmniej zostanę tu dla pogaduszek – myślałam. Te jednak również wydały mi się niepotrzebne i w tak zaserwowanej ilości zwyczajnie męczące. Mój stosunek do sebaldowskiego dzieła przepracuję na osobności, z dala od Carole Angier malującej autora „Austerlitza” jako wieczne dziecko melancholii z obowiązkowymi demonami i praktycznie całą jego problematyczność starającą się zamazać stwierdzeniem: ale przecież wielkim pisarzem był. To są piękne książki. Kropka.

[Jente · Rating 4 out of 5]

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

[Fernando · Rating 3 out of 5]

Creo que me ha gustado leer la información detallada de la niñez y de la vida personal adulta del escritor. Pero, está señora le ha hecho un flaco favor a la literatura de Sebald cuando trata de desconstruir y tratar de explicar los personajes y la ficción del escritor. Viene siendo como un spoiler, o quizá sea peor.

[Gorkem · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I can say about this book is that it is beyond a biography!
I highly recommend if Sebald is your one of the favorite writers.

[Asa Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

This monster of a biography had been sitting on my bookshelf for nearly half a year. Last week, I came down with Covid for what feels like the hundredth time and decided that I would spend my time in isolation reading about my favorite author. What a wonderful decision that turned out to be! I truly cannot give enough credit to Carole Angier for creating such a comprehensive and moving account of the life and work of W.G. Sebald.

The biography opens with a note from the author which reveals how Sebald's estate was unwilling to cooperate in the production of this work and restricted the author's use of many important documents such as letters and drafts that Sebald had written. Despite this huge obstacle, Angier is able to construct a beautiful portrait of the late writer through the memories of those who existed on the periphery of his life. Angier leaves seemingly no rock left unturned, interviewing former colleagues, childhood acquaintances, and, most importantly, the subjects of his work.

The W.G. Sebald constructed in this biography is a man "born without skin." He is unable to detach himself from the suffering of others and the trauma of his country's past, so he writes about it. He borrows bits and pieces from the lives of others and grafts them onto his narratives to create works that are neither entirely factual or fictional. It is a wholly unique way to explore history, but it left a trail of destruction in its wake. Sebald's refusal to acknowledge the real people behind his subjects and his tendency to fictionalize their lives often alienated him from the very people he wrote about. Angier, who clearly admires Sebald, makes a noble effort to truly explore and document this damaging side of his writing. The accounts of those whose lives were used in this pursuit of art are as fascinating as they are challenging.

Although Angier is far from an objective biographer, I still believe she has created an essential work for any fans of Sebald. It is wildly impressive that she was able to craft such a detailed and intimate portrayal of a man who was so private and cryptic. If you are a fan of Sebald you should absolutely read this biography. If not, you should absolutely read Sebald.

[Lit Folio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've only read Sebald's work in recent years, at the suggestion of a good friend. I found him quite intriguing and though his penchant for things Holocaust and then some leaves curious questions in me, it's hard not to be impressed with his works.

What we have here is the best effort at attempting to figure out who this mysterious man was, but with limited information. The author here could not get access to Sebald's secrets--and my feeling is: he had many and that's just the juice that makes any biography delectable. But Angier does what she can with what is available to her and plows forward. We learn of his rich associations and friendships, we learn of his odd way of pilfering people's secret pains (actual survivors of the Holocaust) and how he unceremoniously exploited those experiences. Curiously, we learn of his odd and reckless driving escapades--of which there were many--as possible signs for his ultimate departure from this earth! (Sebald died in a car accident of which he was driving--later it was revealed he had had a heart attack which prompted the wreck).

But what of his lack of morals?

We don't see much here and I feel it's because his widow has refused to reveal more intimate information that could have been most revealing and telling of his character. Is Sebald worth all this praise? I believe he was one of the more fascinating writers to come out of Europe in the last fifty years. His works keep the reader engaged as we go down rabbit holes of deep, reflective spaces of which his protagonists painfully and slowly reveal. All in all, a worthy read--but keep in mind what could come out later when the talented Mr. Sebald's secrets may be fully revealed.

[Roseanne Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Vertigo, The Emigrants and Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald, I turned to this biography to understand more about Sebald -- his life and the experiences that culminated in the publication of
these extraordinary literary works. Carole Angier has rigorously researched and interviewed
Sebald, his friends and colleagues and produced a remarkable portrait of the writer.

Born in 1944 in Wertach, Germany, -- his father served in Hitler's army --Sebald was kept in the dark about the shameful history of Germany under the Third Reich until he saw a documentary film about the Holocaust at school when he was 17. The film traumatized him. Nobody would talk about
the War. His parents refused to talk about it, and this led to terrible fights with his father. But the reality was that nobody would talk about what had happened. It often takes many years before
people can face trauma and begin to give it a voice.

For obvious reasons, it wasn't until he left Germany and started his academic career in Manchester,
England that he met any Jews. As he listened to their stories, he became burdened by the truth
of the horrors of the death camps and over time it became his responsibility to create the
characters and the stories he did. The way he succeeded in telling these stories and the toll
it took on him unfolds in Carole Angier's sympathetic and comprehensive biography. Because
she herself is the daughter of Jews who escaped from Vienna, it seems very fitting that she
should be the one who tells Sebald's story. She was absolutely the right person to take on this
job.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

frustrating. angier clearly put the legwork in (boy does she make sure we know it!), and has interviewed a lot of people who'd most likely have died if someone had waited until we had access to sebald's unpublished letters etc until writing his bio (several mentions in the acknowledgement are already posthumous). but angier allows herself to lose sight of sebald a lot and digress. obviously she's trying to do sebald's thing but when sebald did it everything was unified by his consciousness and style, which is what you read him for rather than the subject, and a) we are reading this book for its subject and b) angier is, generously, not a patch on him as a writer, and being a biographer has to stick to the truth rather than being able to get away with blurring things as he did. what makes all these flaws worse is that there is some very good stuff in here which it should have been cut down to emphasise. she defends sebald from sentimentality but mawkishly falls into it herself
i did however find it extremely distasteful that angier continually teased his death in a sort of "was or wasn't it suicide?" manner, when we know that it wasn't, and it would be a cheap trick in a fiction where the answer wasn't widely known bc it was history and thus inevitable

[Patrick O'Rourke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sebald'S life was no more spectacular than most people. After a late rush of long sought success, he dies from a stroke whilst driving.

All through his life he carried a generational anger at the suppression of memory of world war two in Germany both by victims and tormentors. It was interesting that this was a theme in his academic work before he created the Emigrants, (which I think is his best) and from a early age marred his relationship with his father.

His works tap into a collective German amnesical subconscious about the war, initially brilliantly but ultimately indulgentIy. I suspect he would have explored beyond the holocaust into the general German experience as he had started in the 'history of destruction'. I wonder what he would have made of Gunter Grass' revelations. There is no doubt he had exhausted the Jewish theme of repressed victim memory by Austerlitz and may have gone on to explore repressed oppressor memories.

This is a very good biography considering the restrictions the author was under, and let's admit it, the subjects mundane life. It's format of factual, personal and critical reminded me of The Man who Went into the West.

[Andrew Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and devoured its 449 pages in a mere 4 days. I found it to be compelling and gripping.

WG Sebald is a highly original writer whose books are unlike anything I’ve ever read. Beguiling, captivating and enigmatic - words which give a sense of what these books are like but which do not do them justice.

Anyone who enjoyed his 4 major works will find Carole Angier’s biography to be insightful and rewarding.

The WG Sebald who emerges from these pages is likeable. Not flawless, but fiercely intelligent, in love with German culture but utterly haunted by the horrors of twentieth century European history. Highly empathetic and sensitive yet not above launching fierce academic arguments about dead German men of letters.

He was a hard worker and made a success of his academic life in England, which offered him the perspective he needed to write. His literary success came all too late before he died on a road in Norfolk.

Now, I need to learn German to read the great man’s work in his native tongue.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read, expertly researched and full of entertaining anecdotes in addition to being very informative and taking literary criticism about Sebald's writing seriously and treating controversies of his work with great care and sensitivity. Through no fault of the author's, who always leaves it to the reader to draw their own conclusion, I'd find it hard for anyone to enjoy Sebald's work in quite the same way after reading this. His liberal borrowing devastated people who trusted him and infuriated people he admired but never contacted for permission to use their stories, and he also seems to have been unable to tell the truth in interviews. Also, as he comes across as a pretty heavy presence in real life, it's almost impossible now not to recognize the same lack of humor and libido in his artistic creations. A mysteriously tortured man whose work is surely due for a critical reexamination in light of the biographical details this book uncovers.

[Cody]

Well, I'm left with more questions than answers after having finished. Whether or not this is by design, it's certainly fitting considering the subject. But this gets at the core tension for me with Angier's impressive, deeply researched, and delightfully opinionated bio: how do you nail down "facts" about a writer that knowingly played loose with them throughout his oeuvre and life? Angier tries a bit too hard to unearth the "truth" at times, which, while par for the course for a biographer, felt a bit forced. But this text is, ultimately, a laudable endeavor, one that I'm impressed with and very grateful to have read.

[Josep Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biografia o, más bien, ensayo sobre la vida y obra de W. G. (Max) Sebald que se basa en fuentes directas (amigos y algunos familiares) y, sobre todo, en las interpretaciones que hace Carole Angier de los silencios y las contradicciones del escritor alemán. El título ya indica que no se trata de una biografía al uso: la autora busca a Sebald, y será el silencio, no la memoria (en referencia a Nabokov), el principal camino para encontrarlo. Por lo demás, los aficionados a Sebald descubrirán las obsesiones y los engaños en los que se fundamenta una obra realmente original en el panorama literario de finales del siglo XX, una obra cuya fama mundial se debió a los lectores que encontró sobre todo en Estados Unidos, en especial Susan Sontag.

[Ryan Murdock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating glimpse behind the pages of a baffling, compelling, and utterly original writer whose work is a vast palimpsest of digressions into natural history, art, the nature of decline and fall, decay and loss. Angier does an admirable job of tracing Sebald's life, struggles, strengths and shortfalls, and his potential motivations. I found her final chapters on his most important books especially enlightening.