The title of this blog borrows from a phrase used by the British novelist and Catholic convert, Evelyn Waugh: “There is an Easter sense in which all things are made new in the risen Christ. A tiny gleam of this is reflected in all true art.” It is a hopeful and worthwhile idea and aspiration to believe that the human creation of art is a refracting of the truth as expressed in the person of the risen Christ.

This blog serves as a place to comment on and explore literature – or any other mode of art, such as film, poetry, visual art, and the like. Although the explorations and reactions here need not be centered on religious structures or ideas, it is assumed that the foundational core of the responses is a belief in the power and truth of Catholicism. Rather than this having the effect of a narrowing of perspectives, as some may claim, this standpoint is in fact one of freedom, for freedom is found fully only in truth – while a detachment from this bedrock of veracity, even in hopes of finding objectivity, is bound to end in hollow and incomplete untruth.

Thursday, January 20, 2022

(3) "Austerlitz," by W. G. Sebald

A few things to note while it's fresh on mind.  Like the other two Sebald novels I read, this is amazing.  Unlike them, though, there is a focused narrative here.  Yes, it has the meandering plot and prose you can lost in (I did quite a few times), but it generally follows the life of a single person, Austertiz, as he remembers his childhood and relates it to the nameless (often ethereal) narrator during a series of chance encounters over the course of decades.

Additionally, I was bored with this at many points, but the fault lies with me as a reader.  I know Sebald enough to know how you must give your all to your reading, leaving your anxieties & desire for contact via Smartphone or Internet (or work, or family) behind.  It didn't help that I was reading this at the same time as a couple of nonfiction texts.  When I read the only Sebald novel I haven't yet tackled, I will make sure I'm reading nothing else. 

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