I just finished reading "The Rings of Saturn" by W. G. Sebald. It held me entranced from beginning to end just like "The Emigrants" did. I have ordered three more books of his. I didn't research him until now and was so disheartened to read he died an untimely death from an aneurism while driving his car in England in 2001. He was fifty seven years old.
Here's an article about him in the New Yorker
It is all too rare to find a writer who is so flawless in his/her execution of words and inspires one to ponder on both memory and history and all in between. The title of this blog post is a direct quote from his writing.
And this gave me much pause:
We are able to maintain ourselves on this earth only by being harnessed to the machines we have invented.
