The Spouter-Inn

54. The Rings of Saturn.


Listen Later

Months after this experience, which I still cannot explain, I was on Dunwich

Heath once more in a dream, walking the endlessly winding paths again, and
again I could not find my way out of the maze which I was convinced had been
created solely for me. Dead tired and ready to lie down anywhere, as dusk
fell I gained a raised area where a little Chinese pavilion had been built,
as in the middle of the yew maze at Somerleyton. And when I looked down from
this vantage point I saw the labyrinth, the light sandy ground, the sharply
delineated contours of hedge taller than a man and almost pitch-black now –
a pattern simple in comparison with the tortuous trail I had behind me, but
one which I knew in my dream, with absolute certainty, represented a
cross-section of my brain.

W.G. Sebald’s book The Rings of Saturn is hard to pin down — is it a

memoir? an essay? a novel? a prose poem? Whatever it is, it’s a remarkable
reflection of how connected the world is, and how moments and memories and
fragments of history and biography can all echo and resound across time. Chris
and Suzanne trace out some of these paths of connections that Sebald walks,
and think about how the book pulls together story, photography, and time.

Show Notes.

W.G. Sebald: The Rings of Saturn.

[Bookshop.]

Also by Sebald: Austerlitz.

Daniel Mendelsohn on The Rings of

Saturn.

Maps of Sebald’s route (in German).

A video retracing Sebald’s

steps.

Our episode on Moby-Dick.

Thomas Browne: Religio Medici.

Roger Casement.

Our episode on Times Square Red, Times Square

Blue.

Proust: In Search of Lost Time.

Octavia Butler: Kindred.

Herodotus: Histories.

Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project.

H.G. Wells: The Time Machine.

Support The Spouter-Inn and our network, Megaphonic, on

Patreon.

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The Spouter-InnBy Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma

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