Speak, Silence: In Search of W. G. Sebald by Carole Angier

Speak Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald
By Carole Angier
Bloomsbury Circus, 2021

Carole Angier opens Speak Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald by acknowledging the weaknesses of her book. Because Sebald’s widow did not grant permission, Angier's access to information about Sebald’s adult private life and her ability to quote from his work was limited. As a result, the chapters about Sebald’s later life are short on details, and her analysis of his work is without textual evidence. To make up for these deficiencies, Angier tracked down every person who knew Sebald and was willing to share information about him. She followed Sebald’s trail from his boyhood home in Bavaria to the traditional English home near Norwich where he lived at the time of his death. She parsed every interview, letter, photo, and piece written about or by Sebald for insights into the mind of the enigmatic author and his enigmatic works and meticulously documents everything in a long section of endnotes.

It is ironic that Angier, the award-winning author of a book about Jean Rhys and a biography of Primo Levi, was denied access to Sebald's private life, cites her sources, and honestly assesses her book’s shortcomings. Sebald respected no such limits or scruples. He borrowed liberally from other writers without acknowledgement. He pried into the lives of the people he knew, prodding them for their life stories, letters, and photographs which he wove into his books without their permission. And he lied to friends and journalists (including at one point Angier) about his life and work. Not everyone Angier talked to forgave Sebald for these transgressions, and some critics have charged Sebald with, among other things, appropriation and narcissism. Angier addresses these accusations and criticisms but dismisses them on the grounds that Sebald was only doing what writers have always done and that he should be forgiven because he created art from the raw materials of other people's lives. This unconvincing defense is evidence of Angier’s bias in favor of Sebald the artist if not Sebald the person.

Devotees of Sebald’s work will likely forgive Angier because she has structured Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald to appeal specifically to them and to satisfy their curiosity about the man and his books. Amidst chapters chronologically recounting the events of Sebald’s life, she intersperses chapters about characters from his books. In the book's second chapter, readers are introduced to the real Dr. Henry Selwyn, the first character whose story Sebald tells in The Emigrants. Angier explains how Sebald borrowed and altered his life story, thus establishing a pattern he would follow with all his characters in all of his books. Angier also manages to create a sense of dread reminiscent of the foreboding that pervades Sebald’s books by weaving hints about his mental health, poor driving, and suicide ideation throughout the chapters leading up to his death. Even the appearance of the text on the page is like an homage to Sebald: Angier breaks up her text with small black and white photos just as Sebald did in his books.

The best parts of Speak, Silence are the chapters in which Angier dissects Sebald’s books and attempts to explain their origins and meaning. In these chapters, Angier’s research and careful reading provide real insights into Sebald’s methods. Describing the similarity between the techniques of the artist Max Ferber, a character from The Emigrants, and Sebald’s writing technique Angier writes:

Over and over Ferber lays on paint and scrapes it off, draws with charcoal and rubs it off, so that his studio floor is covered with the rising detritus of his work. Just so does the narrator continually score out what he has written, leaving a debris of hundreds of pages covered with his scribble; and just so did the author cover thousands of pages with notes and drafts and endless corrections.

Even with all her research, Angier recognizes that some elements of Sebald’s work remain a mystery. In a passage that will resonate with Sebald fans, she writes, “It is the spell of these signs that pulls us through a book by W.G. Sebald, as plot pulls us through an ordinary story. But like the signs on Dunwich Heath, they point to somewhere we never reach.”

In her preface, Angier compares writing a biography to making a net, in that both involve sewing holes together. The holes Angier sews together to create the story of Sebald may fail to catch all of the details of his story, and her bias may allow his reputation to escape unblemished, but Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald captures the essence of Sebald’s life and work in a highly satisfying and enlightening way.

—Brian Bruce is the author of Thomas Boyd: Lost Author of the Lost Generation and a retired teacher who talks about books at Bookish: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrrFo3tDRDVbX7PZjWx1qYA