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Title: After Nature by W.G. Sebald ISBN: 0-375-50485-0 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 03 September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Profound
Comment: I really don't feel I can do this beautiful book justice but I loved it so much I feel compelled to try.
"After Nature" is written even less conventionally than are Sebald's other books. "After Nature" is a rather longish prose poem that details the unique relationship between three very different men and nature, herself. The three men are Matthias Grunewald, the German Renaissance painter, Georg Steller, the scientist and Arctic explorer and Sebald, himself.
Each one of the men named above begins life with a vision of Nature that is placid and benevolent but come to realize that Nature can often be cruel and can even destroy her own creations. Each man was changed by his experience with Nature; whether for better or worse is something each reader will have to judge for himself.
Sebald was an enormously creative and original writer and he defined himself as a "writer" rather than a novelist. While "After Nature" certainly isn't conventionally plotted there are remnants of stories contained within the poetry. Sebald, however, makes the reader work a little in order to obtain a full understanding of "After Nature." The book may look "easy" but believe me, it's not.
"After Nature" is a beautiful book and, like the ones that followed, its beauty is melacholic. If you need a conventionally plotted work or a page turning storyline, however, "After Nature" wouldn't be the right choice for you. This is a very introspective work and the more you read, the more inward looking the book becomes.
I loved "After Nature." I think I loved it even more than Sebald's other books. "After Nature" made me think more and reflect more and it stayed with me far longer.
If a very reflective, introspective and melancholic prose poem is something you think you'd enjoy, I don't think you could find anything lovlier than "After Nature."
Rating: 5
Summary: DNA for Sebald's Prose Works
Comment: This triptych prose poem actually was published before Sebald's prose books. The word 'poem' is a loose word here, as words like 'fiction' and 'novel' were in "Austerlitz", "Vertigo", "Rings of Saturn" and "The Emigrants". This poem is a progenitor of the later work, and has much of the same agenda as the books.
"After Nature" follows three characters: Grunewald, a Renaissance painter, Steller, an 18th century botanist-explorer, and finally the author himself. The book is preoccupied and troubled by the slow devastation of nature and innocence by history and man, and the book's end, as Sebald himself imagines looking onto the virgin continent of Africa in the times of Alexander the Great, is eloquent and beautifully melancholy as only a Sebald work can be.
This is as luminous and hypnotic as writing can be, and literature will sorely miss the genius of W.G. Sebald, who passed away far too early, at the height of his literary powers, in December of 2001.
Rating: 4
Summary: After Nature
Comment: W.G. Sebald's first literary work is a prose poem divided into three distinct sections. The first is about Renaissance painter Matthias Grunewald, and to me, is the least artful in this triptych. The last is author Sebald's own musings ranging from his parentage, the destruction of Nuremburg, and modern day Manchester. In a stunningly masterful moment, Sebald paints a horrific portrait of Nuremburg in flames by comparing it to a painting of Lot and his daughters, "on the horizon | a terrible conflagration blazes | devouring a large city."
It is the second part about explorer and botanist Georg Wilhelm Steller and his trip with Bering to the Arctic that presents the reader with a watershed moment, an example of the very finest of writing. Steller sees for the first time the weary, depressed Bering seated over a table, compass in hand, practically catatonic. It is such a vivid scene, so powerful, that this slim volume is worth reading for those two pages alone. (Admirers of Beryl Bainbridge's "The Birthday Boys" will especially appreciate this chilling scene.)
"After Nature" is a terrific start to what would be a distinguished and too soon extinguished career on the part of the now deceased Sebald.
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Title: On the Natural History of Destruction by W.G. Sebald, Anthea Bell ISBN: 0375504842 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 11 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, Michael Hulse ISBN: 0811214133 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Vertigo by Winfried Georg Sebald, W. G. Sebald, Michael Hulse ISBN: 0811214850 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald, Michael Hulse ISBN: 0811213668 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Austerlitz by Winfried Georg Sebald, Anthea Bell ISBN: 0375756566 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 03 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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