In an interview shortly before his death, German-born writer W G. Sebald(1944-2001) made a remarkable comment on his 'ideal' reader, i.e. "a readerwho doesn't read the text but sees it". In the present article, Lennon approachesSebald's work not as that of a creative writer but as that of a critical reader, inan attempt to discover in how far Sebald himself 'saw' the texts he read.Starting from a number of Sebald's critical essays on Adalbert Stifter, CharlesSealsfield, Leopold Kompert, Karl Emil Franzos, Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka,and Vladimir Nabokov, Lennon investigates the connections between literatureand other graphic arts, namely painting, photography, and cinematography.
