Terry Pitts (Vertigo)
@vertigoterry.bsky.social
Since 2007, I have written about W.G. Sebald, literature with embedded photographs, and literature at the challenging end of the spectrum. I write at https://sebald.wordpress.com/.
Want a novel on the challenging side with an independent voice? Caleb Klaces, Mr. Outside (Prototype Press) or Rebecca Grandsen, Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group (Tangerine Press). Mr. Outside comes with photos. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/11/13/r...
November 13, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Want a novel on the challenging side with an independent voice? Caleb Klaces, Mr. Outside (Prototype Press) or Rebecca Grandsen, Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group (Tangerine Press). Mr. Outside comes with photos. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/11/13/r...
In his novel "Tomás Nevinson," Javier Marías describes the expressions on the faces of people in a photograph shown on the next page. The idea of reading faces like this gets its public scientific stamp of approval from Charles Darwin in 1872. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/t...
November 3, 2025 at 4:34 PM
In his novel "Tomás Nevinson," Javier Marías describes the expressions on the faces of people in a photograph shown on the next page. The idea of reading faces like this gets its public scientific stamp of approval from Charles Darwin in 1872. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/t...
Reposted by Terry Pitts (Vertigo)
A brilliant article by Caleb Klaces on the often overlooked role of photographs in fiction, thinking 'about what the picture “knows” that the words do not.'
lithub.com/what-the-pic...
lithub.com/what-the-pic...
What the Picture Knows: Books That Seamlessly Blend Text and Image
According to linguist David Crystal, once a person has learned to read, it is almost impossible to process the graphic marks that make up a letter as anything but a letter. At some point, we stop l…
lithub.com
October 17, 2025 at 9:10 AM
A brilliant article by Caleb Klaces on the often overlooked role of photographs in fiction, thinking 'about what the picture “knows” that the words do not.'
lithub.com/what-the-pic...
lithub.com/what-the-pic...
Reposted by Terry Pitts (Vertigo)
“Walter Abish should be on every bookshelf in these times,” she sighs to her dog Radu.
September 21, 2025 at 1:32 AM
“Walter Abish should be on every bookshelf in these times,” she sighs to her dog Radu.
Making the wrong choice is the way characters are tested in Shirley Hazzard’s universe. In her 1980 novel The Transit of Venus, she puts unbearable pressure on marriages & affairs to see if anyone has an ethical spine. Absolutely great reading. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/09/15/t...
Transiting Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus
At first, there is something you expect of life. Later, there is what life expects of you. Shirley Hazzard’s novel The Transit of Venus (1980) is a novel I have looked forward to rereading for a lo…
sebald.wordpress.com
September 15, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Making the wrong choice is the way characters are tested in Shirley Hazzard’s universe. In her 1980 novel The Transit of Venus, she puts unbearable pressure on marriages & affairs to see if anyone has an ethical spine. Absolutely great reading. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/09/15/t...
Giorgio Agamben’s “Self-Portrait in the Studio” is utterly fascinating in so many ways. He uses his study as the locus for an intellectual memoir tracing the people, books & places that have been important to his thinking. Great photographs throughout.
August 19, 2025 at 2:29 AM
Giorgio Agamben’s “Self-Portrait in the Studio” is utterly fascinating in so many ways. He uses his study as the locus for an intellectual memoir tracing the people, books & places that have been important to his thinking. Great photographs throughout.
Mathias Énard's "Tell Them of Battles, Kings & Elephants" is not his best, but very readable. However, vol. 2 of Yoko Tawada's trilogy, "Suggested in the Stars" is mostly forgettable. It feels like she's lost her way. As they say on the news, details at: sebald.wordpress.com/2025/08/11/r...
August 11, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Mathias Énard's "Tell Them of Battles, Kings & Elephants" is not his best, but very readable. However, vol. 2 of Yoko Tawada's trilogy, "Suggested in the Stars" is mostly forgettable. It feels like she's lost her way. As they say on the news, details at: sebald.wordpress.com/2025/08/11/r...
I wrote on 2 novels I mostly liked: Mathias Énard's The Deserters & Yoko Tawada's Scattered All Over the Earth. Enard's book is about the brutal & the elite; Tawada's subtle, almost cartoony novel is about language & climate change. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/07/24/r...
July 24, 2025 at 3:53 PM
I wrote on 2 novels I mostly liked: Mathias Énard's The Deserters & Yoko Tawada's Scattered All Over the Earth. Enard's book is about the brutal & the elite; Tawada's subtle, almost cartoony novel is about language & climate change. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/07/24/r...
There's a new edition of Andre Breton's Nadja out now by NYRB. I'm not up to comparing the new translation by Mark Polizzotti with Richard Howard's, but there are some good reasons to spring for the new edition, even though my heart loves the old Grove edition. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/07/02/t...
The Two Nadjas
André Breton’s Nadja is one of the cornerstone novels of French Surrealism. Published in 1928, the narrator, Breton himself, tells the story of meeting a woman on the streets of Paris and fin…
sebald.wordpress.com
July 2, 2025 at 10:08 PM
There's a new edition of Andre Breton's Nadja out now by NYRB. I'm not up to comparing the new translation by Mark Polizzotti with Richard Howard's, but there are some good reasons to spring for the new edition, even though my heart loves the old Grove edition. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/07/02/t...
I'm really impressed with Shadows of Reality: A Catalogue of W.G. Sebald’s Photographic Materials. I gave it a good shakedown & decided it's an impressive research tool that's equally fun to browse though. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/06/13/s...
Sebald’s Shadows of Reality
To photograph is to be profligate. I have thousands of digital images of my family and travels scattered across several cloud storage sites, my Flickr account, my hard drive, and a thumb drive. And…
sebald.wordpress.com
June 13, 2025 at 9:02 PM
I'm really impressed with Shadows of Reality: A Catalogue of W.G. Sebald’s Photographic Materials. I gave it a good shakedown & decided it's an impressive research tool that's equally fun to browse though. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/06/13/s...
Such a great author photo. Peter Handke playing Foosball on the rear jacket of Short Letter, Long Farewell (FSG, 1974). US first edition.
April 28, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Such a great author photo. Peter Handke playing Foosball on the rear jacket of Short Letter, Long Farewell (FSG, 1974). US first edition.
I dove into John Trefry's nearly abstract novel Plats and resurfaced with a few things to say. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/t... Plats summons the reader to conjure up images and situations that can only be constructed in the mind, to use the infinite plasticity of our own imaginative processes.
“The composition cedes to disorder”: John Trefry’s Novel “Plats”
Giorgio Morandi, Still Life, 1955. Art Institute of Chicago Every moment is an interchangeable plat of stained irrelevent objects, and exits in guilt, emptiness, or the next plat. The end is useles…
sebald.wordpress.com
April 21, 2025 at 7:40 PM
I dove into John Trefry's nearly abstract novel Plats and resurfaced with a few things to say. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/t... Plats summons the reader to conjure up images and situations that can only be constructed in the mind, to use the infinite plasticity of our own imaginative processes.
Sylee Gore's first book "Maximum Summer" (Nion Editions) gives us short, intimate, sometimes visceral poems about the first few months of the poet with her new child. The poems are arranged on the page like snapshots in an album. No photographs necessary.
April 10, 2025 at 2:24 AM
Sylee Gore's first book "Maximum Summer" (Nion Editions) gives us short, intimate, sometimes visceral poems about the first few months of the poet with her new child. The poems are arranged on the page like snapshots in an album. No photographs necessary.
Second half of my long review of W.G. Sebald's book of essays on Austrian literature Silent Catastrophes, translated by the terrific Jo Catling, is up now. Get the book! It's affordable! sebald.wordpress.com/2025/04/04/s...
April 6, 2025 at 1:09 AM
Second half of my long review of W.G. Sebald's book of essays on Austrian literature Silent Catastrophes, translated by the terrific Jo Catling, is up now. Get the book! It's affordable! sebald.wordpress.com/2025/04/04/s...
From Virginia Woolf's Diaries, September 10, 1918
January 28, 2025 at 5:33 PM
From Virginia Woolf's Diaries, September 10, 1918
So far, I have found 15 titles of fiction & poetry published in 2024 that use photographs. Some really great examples. Poetry books were half the titles. What did I miss? sebald.wordpress.com/2025/01/13/p...
Photography-Embedded Fiction & Poetry 2024
from Stephen Downes’ novel Mural Photo-embedded literature—novels and books of poetry which use photographs as an essential element of the “text”—is a core interest of mine and has been somet…
sebald.wordpress.com
January 15, 2025 at 4:10 AM
So far, I have found 15 titles of fiction & poetry published in 2024 that use photographs. Some really great examples. Poetry books were half the titles. What did I miss? sebald.wordpress.com/2025/01/13/p...
The 18 notable books I read in 2024, from Asiya Wadud's incandescent poetry which wants to become dance, to Jeremy Eicher's Time's Echo, on music composed to commemorate the Holocaust. Also: @saintsoftness.bsky.social, Yoko Ogawa & Cristina Rivera Garza. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/01/02/n...
January 7, 2025 at 8:14 PM
The 18 notable books I read in 2024, from Asiya Wadud's incandescent poetry which wants to become dance, to Jeremy Eicher's Time's Echo, on music composed to commemorate the Holocaust. Also: @saintsoftness.bsky.social, Yoko Ogawa & Cristina Rivera Garza. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/01/02/n...
I'm doing a 6-parter on David Peace's Red Riding Quartet, one of the most malevolent places I have experienced in the world of literature. Peace has taken us inside the fat belly of a very uncomfortable whale, a place where there is no exit but death. Part 4 is just up.
David Peace’s 1980: “The vast kingdom of grief”
“e cannot write e cannot tell memory and vocabulary not enough here neither dead nor alive before the king of the vast kingdom of grief. . .” As David Peace’s novel 1980 opens, it is early December…
sebald.wordpress.com
November 14, 2024 at 3:43 PM
I'm doing a 6-parter on David Peace's Red Riding Quartet, one of the most malevolent places I have experienced in the world of literature. Peace has taken us inside the fat belly of a very uncomfortable whale, a place where there is no exit but death. Part 4 is just up.
After watching the movie version of Claire Keegan's "Small Things Like These," I really need to read the book. Powerful film, great acting, little is said (but much is whispered). Cillian Murphy spends half the film looking deeply inward.
‘Small Things Like These’ Review: The Fears of a Watchful Father
Cillian Murphy of “Oppenheimer” fame plays an Irishman interrogating a system of abuse and forced labor, despite everyone’s warnings to look the other way.
www.nytimes.com
November 14, 2024 at 1:19 AM
After watching the movie version of Claire Keegan's "Small Things Like These," I really need to read the book. Powerful film, great acting, little is said (but much is whispered). Cillian Murphy spends half the film looking deeply inward.