SOURCE: Swales, Martin. Review of Die Beschreibung des Unglücks, by W. G. Sebald. Modern Language Review 82, no. 1 (January 1987): 248-50.

In the following review of Die Beschreibung des Unglücks, Swales faults Sebald's view of the literary critic as an interpreter of authorial pathology.

In his collection of ten essays [Die Beschreibung des Unglücks] (nine of which are reworked versions of earlier papers) W. G. Sebald highlights particular topographical features of the Austrian literary landscape from Stifter to Handke (and, in view of the prominence accorded to descriptions of natural phenomena in that literary tradition, the notion of a ‘literary landscape’ is by no means only a metaphor). By any standards, it is not a very cheering journey. Stifter figures at both the beginning and the end. Dr Sebald is at pains to stress the repressions and pathological tensions in Stifter's own psyche (particularly his ‘unüberwindlichen...