W. G. Sebald is one of my favorite novelists, so is V. S. Naipaul. It’s always nice when you see a writer you love take form in another writer you are meeting for the first time. That’s the way I felt on first reading Naipaul’s Enigma of Arrival (excerpt HERE) right after Sebald’s Rings of Saturn (read the first chapter HERE). I wasn’t prepared to encounter Sebald in Naipaul. And for days, I couldn’t get rid of the thought that the first part of The Enigma, titled “Jack’s Garden,” could as well have been a section in Rings of Saturn. If the connection I make here between Sebald and Naipaul seems forced to readers familiar with their novels, it’s because the connection probably is forced. It’s just that I can’t get out of my head the image of a Sebaldian Naipaul, which, of course is nonsensical. Enigma precedes Rings of Saturn by nearly 20 years.
Did Sebald read Naipaul?
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field January 16, 2017 05:48
Ditto - I'm sure that Sebald read and was influenced by Naipaul after listening to Knaus Ove Knaussgard's New Yorker reading yesterday... http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction/karl-ove-knausgaard-reads-v-s-naipaul