The
Rings of Saturn (1995)
W.G. Sebald
It’s
rare to read a novel that is unlike any other book one has read before.
Few things are completely new, and most novels have the elements one would
consider essential to fiction: story, plot, voice, characters, plot, plot,
plot. Such an ugly word, ‘plot’. Onomatopoetic: a turd dropping into an empty
toilet bowl. The Rings of Saturn has
none of those things, especially not a plot. It’s part travelogue, part memoir,
part (global) history, part fiction and while it is all of those things it is
also none of them. Rather, it’s something new, but whether it’s a new form of
fiction or a new form of history, I can’t decide. I do know, however, that it
is one of the most stunningly beautiful books I’ve ever read. Completely unique
and singular. Sebald is a masterful writer, and if history textbooks were this moving and this poetically beautiful maybe the masses would not be so ignorant of their
past and fearful regarding their future. At the very least I don't think it would hurt.
