It seems to me then as if all of the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as when we have accepted an invitation we duly arrive in a certain house at a given time. And might it not be, continued Austerlitz, that we also have appointments to keep in the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us on the far side of time, so to speak?

For the Newberry course, “Under the Sign of Saturn: The Enigmatic Work of W.G. Sebald,” I’ve read The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, and Austerlitz, as well as Carole Angier’s biography of Sebald. (The Readers Karamazov hosted a terrific episode on The Rings of Saturn.) Next up is After Nature.