Sebald, W.G. The Emigrants. Trans. Michael Hulse. New York: New Directions, 1997.

Finished! this book almost two weeks ago and haven't yet figured out what to say about it. It being on my comps list I've got to write something down. But what do you say about a book whose words passed under your eyes over the course of five or six hours and never found a way to stick? Never left a mark?

This, I guess:

A fragmented novel/memoir (Sebald's preferred term is "narrative") about four men, some of them relatives of the first-person narrator, some just acquaintances, who left Germany at one time to another. World War II and the rise of the Third Reich lay in the shadows of the book, referred to obliquely in the many accounts that make up this narrative. In addition to the story as narrated to us by Sebald's stand-in, we're given monologues from other characters, letters, diaries, and even photographs printed right in the middle of the text. What results is a slipping of the idea of narrative—we're often unsure who is claiming authorship of what we're reading—and as a result the book becomes a meditation on the slipperiness of human experience and identity.

I'm not sure I even believe that last line, but it'll have to do.

Here's what Susan Sontag said about this book: "W.G. Sebald has written an astonishing masterpiece: it seems perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read. Bewitching in its subtlety, sublime in its directness and in the grandeur of its subject, The Emigrants is an irresistible book."

Everything I have in me resisted picking the book back up to read. Is (was) Susan Sontag, like, smarter than me or something? People you admire loving books you can't find yourself connecting with feels like being invited to an orgy on a night you have rampant diarrhea.