sebald's austerlitz & photography

My favourite thing over the last few days has been rereading W. G. Sebald's novel, Austerlitz. It creates a world and texture of its own that is mesmerizing. I feel as if I fall into the cadences of the book and get absorbed into a completely different tempo of thought. I've always been perplexed by the contrast between Susan Sontag's deep appreciation for Sebald (and her great taste in writers in general) and her own novel (has she written more than one?) In America which is so surprisingly, the title notwithstanding, and strangely American in tone and style. Here's Sontag on Sebald: "Is literary greatness still possible? Given the implacable devolution of literary ambition, and the concurrent ascendancy of the tepid, the glib, and the senselessly cruel as normative fictional subjects, what would a noble literary enterprise look like now? One of the few answers available to English-language readers is the work of W. G. Sebald."

Sebald uses a lot of photographs in his novel (and Sontag, of course, often writes on photography) and so I thought I'd turn to the favourite things list for favourite photographers. And here was another interesting gap. No favourite photographers. Nor was photography itself listed by anyone as a favourite activity.