The Rings of Saturn

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One of the greatest novels of the 20th century. A beautiful blend of the postmodern and the pastoral.

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In his book on Rossini in Paris in the 1820s, Benjamin Walton recalls that Stendhal suggested once that an ideal emblem for the art, music or literary critic could be found in an anecdote concerning an Italian tour guide, who would mutely indicate with an extended arm where his clients ought to be looking, all the while saying nothing. I think of this when I think of how one reader might suggest "The rings of Saturn" to another. My friend Emily leant me her copy sometime in June 2010: her bookmarks stayed with the book, two ticket stubs showing trips between Philadelphia, New York and Washington. One of my own bookmarks has stayed, too, a boarding pass for a flight from Toronto to Glasgow, from the last week of June 2010. I only read the book this spring; when I first tried it, it didn't catch, although I did recall the scene of generations of fishermen and their huts on the east coast of England. But it would be wrong to say more about the book, as its unexpected qualities... ah... I almost said too much. I did say too much. I am sorry. Let's just go back to that church interior somewhere in, oh, probably Venice, sometime around 1818, stand beside the guide, and point in the direction of "The rings of Saturn."

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so, the first time i tried reading this book, i had trouble getting into it. but in the late spring of 2010, i gave it another chance... and i'm so glad, because as i continued on, i felt more and more amazed at what the author--and translator!--had accomplished. i was truly stunned by the poetry and lyricism of the language, and the strong thematic lines that emerged through uses of carefully repeated words and turns of phrase. the translator obviously took a lot of care to bring out the deep ideas of this complex novel. there is a running theme about silk in the book, and one day i read a section in which sebald (gorgeously) describes the silkworms kept by the empress of china. a day or two after reading that, i stopped in at a little cafe in a little town on the central coast of california, and as i was sitting outside at a little table sipping my drink and reading RINGS OF SATURN, a woman walking by stopped and asked if i wanted to see some silkworms. turns out she had some in a box in her store. so i went and looked at them, and i listened to them munch their leaves, and i held one's strangely elastic, milky-white body in my hands and felt its sticky little feet, and thought, wow. this is pretty cool. i don't know whether that would have happened if i hadn't been reading THE RINGS OF SATURN, but i like to think it wouldn't have.

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The rings of the planet Saturn are really one continuous ring made up of innumerable small particles. One well established astronomical theory suggests the rings are debris left over from a moon that was pulled apart when its orbit fell too close to Saturn. Light reflected from the varying substance of the rings is what makes Saturn appear to wax brighter and ebb dim. W.G. Sebald’s book, The Rings of Saturn, does not concern itself directly with the planets or astronomical topics, but with a very personal exploration into how a contemporary person can possibly shoulder an awareness of shared human history, and not be obliterated by it... Read more: http://tiny.cc/dUZir