On the natural history of destruction : with essays on Alfred Andersch, Jean Améry and Peter Weiss / W.G. Sebald ; translated from the German by Anthea Bell.
Language: English Original language: German Publisher: London : Penguin, 2004Description: x, 205 p. : ill., facsims., ports. ; 20 cm001: 43662ISBN: 9780140298000 (pbk.) :Uniform titles: Luftkrieg und Literatur. English Subject(s): World War, 1939-1945 -- Aerial operations, British | World War, 1939-1945 -- Germany | World War, 1939-1945 -- Literature and the war | Warfare and DefenceDDC classification: 940.54 SEB LOC classification: D786Summary: This title explores the strange silence surrounding the destruction of German cities through Allied bombing - a subject which, despite the scale of the devastation, remained almost entirely out of sight in post-war German writing.Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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Book | MAIN LIBRARY Book | 940.54 SEB (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 113359 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
In the last years of World War II, the Allies dropped a million tons of bombs on Germany. Yet the Garman people have been silent about the resulting devastation and loss of life, failing to recognize the terrible shadow that destruction from the air cast over their land. Here W. G. Sebald, one of the most brilliant writers of the twentieth century, asks why it is we turn our backs on the horrors of war, and, in addressing our response to the past, bravely offers insights into how we live now.
This translation originally published: London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references.
This title explores the strange silence surrounding the destruction of German cities through Allied bombing - a subject which, despite the scale of the devastation, remained almost entirely out of sight in post-war German writing.
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Library Journal Review
Sebald's final work, which roused many Germans to anger, investigates the consequences of the huge civilian loss Germany endured during World War II. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly Review
Shortly before his untimely death last year, Sebald had published to great acclaim Austerlitz, the NBCC Prize-winning fourth of his novel-memoirs that appeared in rapid succession. Now comes this slim collection of four essays addressing the same themes that preoccupied Sebald in Austerlitz and his other major works-memory and survival in an era marked by so much wanton cruelty. The four essays gathered here find Sebald turning his luminous intelligence and rich, sometimes caustic prose on major figures of postwar German literature. Sebald can be a devastating critic: he dislikes melodrama and falsehood, is inspired by crisp, serious prose and veracity. In essays on Alfred Andersch, Jean Amery and Peter Weiss, Sebald suggests that great writing is underpinned by moral fortitude. In "Air War and Literature," Sebald criticizes the silence of postwar German literature on the starvation, mutilations and killings caused by Allied bombings. The essay provoked a major controversy when it appeared in Germany in 1999. Some commentators were dismayed that Sebald chose to revisit those difficult times and to attack, with his full ironic and sardonic powers, a number of revered figures in German literature. Sebald was dismayed that his comments provoked an outpouring of support from those who could talk only about German suffering and Jewish conspiracies. But only at the very end, almost as an afterthought, does Sebald place this suffering in historical context, as the consequence of German policies of total war and the Holocaust. "Air War and Literature" is an important but flawed effort by a writer who always demanded unflinching engagement with the past. B&w photos. (On sale Feb. 11) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedBooklist Review
Much has been written about the Allied bombing of Germany during World War II, often focusing on the resilient, rubble-picking survivors or the questionable ethics of leveling Dresden. This book focuses upon the air war's lingering fallout for the German psyche, particularly the awkward silence of German writers on the subject of their nation's destruction. Postwar German writing, Sebald argues, is "looking and looking away at the same time" as writers struggle with their nation's guilt and victimhood, but also with the destruction of their own authority as writers in a morally discredited society. The author explores, among others, novelist Alfred Andersch's egotistical apologies and confessions and Peter Weiss' attempt to "attain absolution in heroic, self-destroying work." Himself a German writer and prolific literary scholar, Sebald approaches his subject with sensitivity, yet avoids neither descriptions of horrible carnage nor criticism of writers too preoccupied with absolving themselves of blame to faithfully portray a destroyed Germany. The result is a balanced explication of devastation and denial, and a beautiful coda for Sebald, who passed away in December 2001. --Brendan DriscollKirkus Book Review
Interconnected essays from the recently deceased German novelist (Austerlitz, 2001, etc.) on his nation's capacity to cause, absorb, and forget suffering. "In spite of strenuous efforts to come to terms with the past," writes Sebald, "it seems to me that we Germans today are a nation strikingly blind to history and lacking in tradition." Born in 1944 in a corner of the Alps comparatively untouched by the war, his mental landscape was nonetheless populated by the ruins and corpses of the Hitler era. In the first portion of this text, he examines the Allied bombing campaigns that virtually leveled Germany's cities and towns but--as the Allied commanders well knew, he asserts--did little damage to the Nazi war-making capability; it was punishment for its own sake. Though hundreds of thousands of civilians died, Sebald writes, the destruction "seems to have left scarcely a trace of pain behind in the collective consciousness, it has largely been obliterated from the retrospective understanding of those affected, and it never played any appreciable part in the discussion of the internal constitution of our country." Sebald lucidly depicts the suffering of his people even as he wonders why contemporaries are unwilling to discuss it. He ventures no apology or claim to victim status; as he carefully notes, "The majority of Germans today know, or so at least it is to be hoped, that we actually provoked the annihilation of the cities in which we once lived." The second half considers the careers of several German writers whose work examines (or fails to examine) the horror of the time. Readers with a background in modern German literature will be at an advantage in following Sebald's arguments, though this is not a prerequisite to understanding his glum conclusion that literature is essentially powerless in the face of evil. Somber and moving: a contribution to the literature of WWII from a perspective that will be new to most American readers.There are no comments on this title.