[SusanSazzios]

I offer a very brief impression, in the hopes of opening the discussion:

Sebald rambles along on a walking tour and riffles through history and literature to find patterns in the broken remnants of the past. His sympathies are with the dispossessed, the marginalised, the quixotic, his erudition is sweeping and by the end of the book I had a clearer picture of the complex ways in which culture and exploitation co-exist in an uncomfortable alliance most of us prefer to ignore.

Peripatetic indeed, but symphonic in the way central themes are subjected to variations, transformations and reprises. There are times when it can seem tedious, as Salitthomas remarked on Austerlitz, but I think the lulls are a part of Sebald's rhythms too. I left the book haunted by many powerful images, given greater poignance by Sebald's presentation, and many intriguing if forlorn turns of thought and phrase.

[downtowndude]

The digressive style both reflects the writing process and masks it: excerpts from a New Yorker interview (no longer directly online, but collected in The emergence of memory) may shed some light.