Great title, but a bit misleading. The book is actually a look at the failure of post-war German literature to come to terms with the massive physical, social and cultural destruction that Germany experienced during WW 2. Each essay looks at a particular aspect of this failure to grasp and reflect upon these experiences, preferring to make as if to walk a way and pick up a new beginning, preferring to leave them forgotten or at least ignored.
The first essay outlines the immense physical destruction of many German cities, and the innumerable deaths during the bombing raids. He then discusses how there is very little in German post-war literature that actually reflects this physical destruction just in terms of accurate description.
The second essay discusses an author who was at one time popular, and the false or doubtful assertions about his place in the Nazi debacle that are found in his work. The attempt to shift blame and responsibility, the rewriting of personal history to hide things from the past or cover them over.
The third essay looks at an author, Jean Amery, who survived torture at the hands of the S.S and also Auschwitz, and who is unable or unwilling to forgive, to forget, to pardon, to move beyond resentment against history, against Germany, against the Reich. Sebald looks at the tenability, the justifiability of this stance in spite of the general publics preference for acceptance and moving on.
The fourth essay looks at the war experience as reflected in the work of a painter, Peter Weiss.
Interesting thought and reflections and certainly within the big concerns of Sebald with remembering and the inevitable loss of memory, of the past.
To find:
Peter Weiss works
Jean Amery books
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