(Interior of Holland House library, Kensington, after the blitz. Photo by Central Press)
I’m trying to make sense of the affinity I feel between Markson and Sebald. As I’ve mentioned before, I read their novels within the same timeframe and have never been able to separate one from the other, no matter how different I realize they were (or how strongly I sense that they would not have gotten along, so different were the universes they inhabited/came from). I think both novels, in different ways, have the same ‘spirit’ (or is it aura?) that The Arcades Project had. I’m trying to compile a short list of “Benjaminian novels,” which would be easy if I could include Claude Simon, Jacques Roubaud, or Sebald himself. What makes this a difficult task is that I need to confine it to books written in English, which is much harder. Books where anecdotes are like little talismans, with ruins, where facts are made “sad” as DFW put it. I thought Leaving the Atocha Station had promise, but I was ultimately a little dissatisfied and maybe even a little grossed out. I’m considering Anne Carson’s Nox but I’ve always felt a little distant from her books, if that makes sense; the same goes for Nicholson Baker.
Any suggestions?
