Less often remarked upon, however, is the fact that Sebald’s books are virtually impossible to remember precisely, which is only an apparent paradox given that the main theme in his work is memory. Reading Sebald is a profoundly disorienting experience: the reader feels that she is lost — sometimes enjoyably so, and others distressingly so — somewhere in a random point of a hypertext that may not have an end. Sebald has a unique ability to blur the transition from one narrative block to the next, which makes reading his books a dreamlike experience: you read them and have the impression of entering and exiting a dream, or perhaps many interconnected dreams, similar to Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Like in dreams, when you wake up (but do you really wake up?), all you remember are vivid images torn out of context, fragments, and the impression of coming back from the underworld.
Each generation, in short, is defined partly—maybe even largely—by the apocalypses, the world-remaking catastrophes, it experienced somewhere in the cusp between adolescence and adulthood. The Boomers got duck-and-cover, Vietnam, and the convulsions of the 60s; Gen X had the Challenger explosion, the sputtering wind-down of the Cold War, Desert Storm on CNN. My generation, the Millennials, got 9/11 and the subsequent catastrophes of the Bush years. Gen Z is getting Covid-19, the global decline of democracy, the unmistakable signs of climate change, and… well, maybe the actual end of the world?
On Sunday mornings at the bagel shop though, being alone never felt so bad. I had my Sundays down to a science. Grabbing my latest book, I drove eight minutes to the bagel store by the water, one of the few routes I had memorized. There, I waited in line while watching for a booth to empty.
A bagel store on a Sunday morning is like an exhibit of dioramas, perfect human moments displayed in miniature all around you. The college kids in sweatpants, clutching chocolate milk in their fists like hangover talismans. Parents wiping schmear from their children's cheeks as the little ones babbled and squawked. Each person who approached the counter seemed deserving of attention, of appreciation. (Except for the blueberry bagel types. You know the ones.)
“Vagabonds!” abounds in spirits, but it defines the living city of Lagos and its very real rules. And though these rules can at first be hard for a reader to understand, and the voice dictating them can at times fall jarringy out of range, they become the powerful texture of the novel — or rather the game board on which complex characters are forced to play. And their teller, Osunde, becomes a bold new voice for bold new generations.
The Rack is not an easy read, particularly now, but it is a vital one, a novel of big ideas with a febrile, twisted sentimentality at its heart. It asks us to consider what makes life worth living, and what, in the end, we would be prepared to die for.