Abstract
Those who have followed Richard T. Gray’s previous work on W. G. Sebald will already be familiar with six of Ghostwriting’s nine chapters. Chapters 3–4 and 6–8 are slightly reworked versions of articles or book chapters published (or, in the case of Chapter 6, a lecture delivered) between 2008 and 2010 (p. ix–x). In addition, as indicated on Gray’s faculty website, Chapter 9 is based on a paper delivered in 2012 and an article published in 2013. By contrast, Chapters 1–2 and 5 have no ‘pre-texts’ and were presumably written last, to round out the book. During his work, Gray visited the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach (DLA) twice to examine Sebald’s literary Nachlass (his working library and papers) (p. ix). Gray’s second visit appears to have been the more productive, since the chapters written prior to 2011 (3–4 and 6–8) only make use of Sebald’s working library, whereas those presumably written thereafter (1, 2, 5 and 9) also rely on his papers.
This ‘crescendo’ research effect is also reflected in Ghostwriting’s two-pronged strategy: ‘philological’ (text-based) interpretation combined with an ‘historical-critical’ approach to assess Sebald’s development as a creative writer via materials in his Nachlass (p. 17). Although text-based interpretation is practised throughout, Gray does this most exclusively in the chapters written prior to 2011 and dedicates more time to Sebald’s development as a writer in the chapters presumably written later, most notably Chapters 1–2. Gray’s increasing use of the DLA also allows him to focus on ‘unpublished and largely unknown materials’ (pp. 17–18) in Chapters 1, 2 and 9. However, although one might expect these chapters to be the most valuable, the opposite proves true: Ghostwriting’s strength is the interpretation of published texts, not archival research.
Chapters 3–6 are the most insightful and reliable. Chapter 3 is a masterful comparison of ‘Dr Henry Selwyn’ with its manuskripte ‘pre-text’ that shows how Sebald’s presentation of his narrator, characters and images became more sophisticated between 1988 and 1992. Chapter 4, which focuses on the theme of ‘exile’ in ‘Dr Henry Selwyn’, offers penetrating interpretations, notably regarding the characters Aileen/Elaine and Johannes Naegeli as representatives of exile’s necessary counterpart, Heimat (pp. 173–8). One of Gray’s deepest insights comes in Chapter 5, where he shows that the narrator’s initial failure to ask Max Aurach/Ferber about his Jewish Herkunft (origin) is linked to the strategic inclusion of a reference to Wagner’s Parsifal – in which Parsifal notably fails to ask Amfortas about his Herkunft (pp. 212–16). Finally, in Chapter 6, which reads Austerlitz in the broader context of ‘Holocaust fiction’, Gray reveals that the phrase ‘Austerlitz seine Gedanken beim Reden verfertigte’ (Austerlitz formulated his thoughts while speaking (Austerlitz, p. 22)) is a reference to Kleist’s ‘Über die allmählige Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden’ (pp. 267–8).
Ghostwriting’s remaining chapters continue to offer strong interpretative readings but require qualification. In Chapters 7–8, Gray argues that Die Ringe des Saturn, despite its apparently ‘disconnected and independent episodes’ (p. 275), is the first of Sebald’s books with ‘a pretence to being an organic whole’ (p. 274). His arguments are, however, compromised by heavy reliance on the assumption that Sebald had the title ‘Die Ringe des Saturn’ from the outset and employed structuring principles based on metaphors related to it. This was not the case. In a letter of 17 February 1995 (DLA), Sebald states that he had submitted the typescript to both Carl Hanser Verlag and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and that its title was ‘Unter dem Hundsstern’ (Under the Sign of the Dog Star). More importantly, as Enzensberger informed this author in an email dated 20 January 2013, the publication title was not chosen by Sebald but rather ‘vorgeschlagen’ (suggested) by Enzensberger. Thus, the third epigraph, with its definition of the ‘rings of Saturn’ and reference to the ‘Roche limit’, may also have been added post-composition to provide a minimum of context for Enzensberger’s title. Sebald’s text in fact does not contain a single mention of Saturn’s rings or the Roche limit, whereas, in Chapter 1, strategic references to ‘the dog days’, ‘under the sign of the Dog Star’, and, again, ‘the Dog Star’ still bear witness to his original title. Although these facts do not invalidate Gray’s ultimate point (Sebald was forever at pains to weave his heterogeneous materials together), they suggest that these arguments should be recast.
Gray argues in Chapter 9 that Sebald was forced to abandon his ‘Corsica Project’ because he set himself the task of ‘narrating environmental catastrophe’ and failed at it (pp. 363–4 and 412). This argument has merit as one possibility but becomes problematic when made the only option. Gray accurately translates the project’s subtitle, ‘Zur Natur- & Menschenkunde’, as ‘On Natural History and Anthropology’ but then effectively limits Sebald’s interest in Corsica’s inhabitants to their devastating impact on their natural environment (pp. 365–6). Information provided by Ulrich von Bülow in Wandernde Schatten, however, indicates that Sebald completed only the first three of seven projected chapters, that these were also to address social, political and cultural concerns, and that only Chapter 3 (‘L’intérieur’) clearly regarded ‘natural history’ and unequivocally supports Gray’s thesis (Wandernde Schatten, pp. 216–20). That Chapters 1–2 do not is demonstrated by the fact that Gray’s numerous references to the Corsica Project fragments are concentrated in Wandernde Schatten pp. 192–209. These are precisely the pages that coincide with Chapter 3, and they comprise only 20–25 per cent of the manuscript material reproduced in Wandernde Schatten. Thus, Sebald may well have abandoned the Corsica Project for reasons other than that given by Gray.
Chapters 1–2 must be qualified in that they inaccurately depict Sebald’s early development as a creative writer due to a failure to engage with relevant documents in the Nachlass and secondary literature, most pertinently Uwe Schütte’s Über W. G. Sebald: Beiträge zu einem anderen Bild des Autors (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), specifically the chapters by Schütte on Sebald’s ‘Kant Project’ (Über W. G. Sebald, pp. 65–8) and by Bartsch on Sebald’s ‘Prose Project’ (ibid., pp. 99–134).
Chapter 1 regards ‘Leben Ws’, a sketch for a film script regarding Ludwig Wittgenstein which Sebald wrote in 1986. When orienting ‘Leben Ws’ in Sebald’s production, Gray does not mention any of the creative work Sebald did prior to Nach der Natur (pp. 34–6), rejects consideration of that poem with the claim that Sebald was ‘at best a mediocre poet’ (p. 24), and states that ‘Leben Ws’ was Sebald’s first ‘creative project’ and first ‘fictional biography’ (p. 18). However, as Schütte demonstrates in his essay on Sebald’s true first ‘fictional biography’, a television script on Immanuel Kant’s last years, Sebald did not launch his mature career as a creative writer in 1986 but rather no later than 1981 (Über W. G. Sebald, pp. 65–8). Schütte by no means invalidates Gray’s analysis of the relevance of Wittgenstein to Sebald’s later prose, but he does properly orient ‘Leben Ws’ in Sebald’s creative development – in agreement with Sebald himself, as will be shown below.
Prior to its insightful analysis of Schwindel. Gefühle., Chapter 2 discusses the single most important document in the Nachlass for understanding how and when Sebald launched his mature prose career: an undated ‘Projektbeschreibung’ (project description) he submitted to the Deutscher Literaturfonds (German Literature Fund) (DLF) as part a funding application. However, after failing to find the relevant correspondence and misinterpreting evidence internal to the document, Gray inaccurately dates it to early 1988 (pp. 59–60), whereas it was actually composed in February 1987 (Über W. G. Sebald, p. 101). The relevant correspondence indicates that Sebald sent the project description to the DFL on or about 28 February 1987, and that the DFL confirmed receipt on 6 March 1987 and sent Sebald a rejection notice on 27 October 1987 (DLA). This, Sebald’s first prose project, contained in nuce all of what we now know as Schwindel. Gefühle., plus the future ‘Paul Bereyter’ and ‘Ambros Adelwarth’, but it did not contain either ‘Dr Henry Selwyn’ or ‘Max Aurach/Ferber’ as claimed on p. 67 (Über W. G. Sebald, pp. 101–3). Gray’s misdating makes an accurate understanding of Sebald’s project impossible. By placing it in early 1988, he has the project start when Sebald in fact abandoned it, broke it up into the future Schwindel. Gefühle. and Die Ausgewanderten, and began writing the future ‘Dr Henry Selwyn’ (Über W. G. Sebald, pp. 102–3 and 132–4).
Finally, to tie back into the discussion of Chapter 1 above, in Chapter 2 Gray does not report the following statement by Sebald on page 1 of the February 1987 project description: ‘In den letzten Jahren habe ich nun begonnen, auch literarische Texte zu schreiben, eine Entwicklung, eine Entwicklung, die sich zunächst durch verschiedentliche Mitarbeit an Fernsehskripten ergeben hat’ (In the past few years, I have also begun to write literary texts, a development that first began with various collaborations on scripts for television.) (DLA, emphasis added). This is Sebald’s most accurate statement regarding when his mature literary career began, and the reference is specifically to collaborations with veteran filmmaker Jan Franksen on various television scripts beginning in 1981 (Über W. G. Sebald, pp. 71–9). Thus, despite having much to recommend it, Ghostwriting does not, as claimed on its dust jacket, unqualifiedly ‘treat Sebald with the care that such a great writer deserves’.