Patrick Cox

Electrified to come upon this by chance as I have not before come across this subject in a political context & have since read it with pleasure & a kind of relief; & gratitude. And felt a new sense of agency & mobilisation. Iwas brought up short a v few times, which is why I give this less than the total approbation which more closely represents my feelings. I know this book & its ideas will continue to grow in me for my remaining years...am being constantly interrupted while writing this, illustrating 1 of the book's theses too well & maiming this attempt @ a puff...

This is perhaps my favourite of Sebald's books. 'Haunting' is overused to describe him but there is no other word to describe the way it has dogged my mind for years, in part for personal reasons; his life & mine have rhymed & overlapped in too many ways to set down here but also, more universally, there is the note of ambiguity, doubt, tentativeness which characterises these strange 'biographies' which encompass the tragedies of European history in the C20 which S barely survived. It is this High European tone also which I find so bracing, right now, in Little England with its vulgarity, its opinions untethered to reason or sensibility...