Unrecounted (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Sebald, W. G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811217264 ISBN 13: 9780811217262

Publisher: New Directions, 2007

Synopsis

A gorgeous illustrated poetry collection by W. G. Sebald: "An extraordinarily handsome edition of poems by the late great writer" (Confrontation).

Unrecounted combines thirty-three of what W. G. Sebald called his "micropoems"―miniatures as unclassifiable as all of his works―with thirty-three exquisitely exact lithographs by one of his oldest friends, the acclaimed artist Jan Peter Tripp.

The lithographs portray, with stunning precision, pairs of eyes―the eyes of Beckett, Borges, Proust Jasper Johns, Francis Bacon, Tripp, Sebald, Sebald's dog Maurice. Brief as haiku, the poems are epiphanic and anti-narrative. What the author calls "time lost, the pain of remembering, and the figure of death" here find a small home. The art and poems do not explain one another, but rather engage in a kind of dialogue. "The longer I look at the pictures of Jan Peter Tripp," Sebald comments in his essay, "the better I understand that behind the illusions of the surface, a dread-inspiring depth is concealed. It is the metaphysical lining of reality, so to speak." 33 black-and-white illustrations

About this title

About the Author:

W. G. Sebald was born in Germany in 1944 and died in 2001. He is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Unrecounted and Campo Santo.

Jan Peter Tripp was born in 1945 and lives and works in Alsace.

Review:

“Think of Sebald as memory's Einstein.”
- Richard Eder, The New York Times

“The images...set up a mysterious dialogue with the text, rather like the photos Sebald inserted into his novels.”
- Adam Kirsch, New York Sun

“A totally original book of poems...haunting, profound, nonsensical, surreal―at moments even painful.”
- Robert Leiter, Jewish Exponent

“The drawings along with Sebald's text play with serious themes in a European tradition that has all but vanished.”
- George Porcari, New York Arts

“The magic of W. G. Sebald's incandescent body of work continues to unfold, with this unexpected collaboration.”
- Susan Sontag

“Now this poem of gazes has become a memorial, a bequeathal...this legacy of his has the density of epitaphs.”
- Andrea Köhler

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0811217264
• ISBN 13: 9780811217262
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112
• Illustrator: Tripp Jan Peter