Monday, November 1, 2010

Grass, Bernhard & Sebald

Kurt Eisner (NY TImes pdf)

Günther Grass interviewed in the Guardian. I didn't realize how much in the Tin Drum was drawn from Grass's life. He really did have a Nazi father and a Slavic uncle who was killed by the Germans at the outset of the war.

Michael Hofmann reviews Thomas Bernhard's Old Masters (trans. Ewald Osers and re-issued in Penguin's Central European Classics series) in the LRB. Here's a podcast in which Hofmann keeps a low voice during a panel discussion of Stefan Zweig.

Jessica A. Sequeira discusses Bernhard's Correction

Stephen Sparks reviews Bernhard's Prose

Shifting Sands identifies a difference between Bernhard and Sebald -- Sebald explores the melancholy mind via its projection onto, or interpretation of, its surroundings (landscapes, cities, etc.) while Bernhard's focus is on the different shapes that melancholy takes (esp. bitterness) in interior monologue

It's old news now, but Conversational Reading noted a while back that three newly translated books by Sebald will be published in the next couple of years.They'll be tranlsated by Jo Catling. Catling will also contribute to this upcoming collection of papers about Sebald. Other contributors include Michael Hulse and Anthea Bell.

Brian Oard wrote a nice series of posts last August about Sebald's Vertigo, Emigrants, Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz (inc. a second, short post on the latter).

Here's a podcast of Will Self's 'Sebald Lecture' from last January.

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