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Austerlitz.

Austerlitz. By W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell. Random House; 420 pages; $25.95. Hamish Hamilton; £16.99 THE hybrid literary form developed by W.G. Sebald, a German-born author who lives in England, is both ancient and modishly modern. Like a chic post-modernist, but also like a classical poet, he mixes fiction with history and meditation, endlessly digressing into new stories. He writes about how grand events echo in the lives of individuals, and of the corrosive effects of time and memory. The eponymous subject of “Austerlitz”, his fourth book, is a veteran of one of the Kindertransport that came to Britain just before the second world war. An unnamed narrator recalls how he met the mysterious Jacques Austerlitz in Belgium, where they talk about architecture—in particular the hubristic grandiosity of public buildings, and the extravagant but useless defensive fortifications once beloved of European rulers. These conversations announce the themes of the conversations they will...
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Donald Barthelme, The Art of Fiction No. 66

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  The Paris Review Subscribe Donald Barthelme , The Art of Fiction No. 66 Interviewed by J. D. O’Hara Issue 80, Summer 1981 Donald Barthelme, Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Library Asked for his biography, Donald Barthelme said, “I don’t think it would sustain a person’s attention for a moment.” He was born, in Philadelphia, deep in the deep Depression (1931) and raised from it in Houston, Texas. There he endured a normal childhood, attended the University of Houston, studied philosophy under Maurice Natanson, and worked on a local newspaper. Then he was drafted, served in Korea, and returned to Houston, which he later left for New York City. There he did editorial work, especially for Location , and his odd short fictions made themselves known. Soon he became the most startling of the staid New Yorker ’s regular contributors, and he still is. He lives in New York City—“I move around quite happily. Alertly, but happily”—in a second-floor apartment in the Wes...
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