Austerlitz seems to be largely a mood piece. Sebald’s narrative is languid (in the best possible sense) and brooding. At the same time, it is a deceptively simple novel. Its construct and conceits are well-conceived to effect a sense of melancholy which is palpable not only emotionally but intellectually. In fact, there a perfect sense of the symbiosis between the emotional and intellectual inclination of the Austerlitz himself. His austere Calvinistic upbringing instills a sense of malaise in the young Austerlitz. It is only through his intellectual efforts that Austerlitz finds a measured (if temporary) sense of relief from this dreary environment. However, the intellectual process for Austerlitz seems to be a double-edged sword: Like Hamlet, the process of intellectualization seems also to feed the melancholy madness that plagues Austerlitz. As his thought processes shape his sense of identity through the lens of film, architecture, books, etc., Austerlitz
displays an obsessive need to frame all of his experiences through these mediums. It is both a mechanism by which the horrors of his investigation may be mitigated (just as the Nazis sanitized their atrocities through clinical records-keeping) and a means by which he may find some intellectually comforting sense of order in a chaotic, senseless world.
The physical construction of the novel further emphasizes the sense of intellectualism and emotionalism colliding in an organic way, as Sebald has avoided any sense of separation between the protagonist and narrator. We tumble headlong directly into the narrative drive of the story, although there is no sense of being “rushed.”
Sebald’s use of photographs serves to give the reader a sense of the concrete. The device constantly subverts the imagination, in that we see what Austerlitz has seen at a particular moment in time. The photos also seem to force the reader to view the entire proceeding in the mind’s eye in shades of gray. In contrast to Lynda Barry’s illustrations in Cruddy, which seem to reflect the incidences experienced by the protagonist in terms
of the adolescent imagination, Sebald’s photographs instill a sense of horrible reality (melancholia) as experienced by the overtly intellectual Austerlitz. Some of the photographs brought back memories of my own melancholy time living in Europe (near Nuremburg). Both the photos and the prose took me to a psychological place I have been before. I slipped into the mood quite easily. It is difficult to shake.
-Ron
Wilson