hapless writers trapped in their web of words sometimes succeed in opening up vistas of such beauty and intensity as life itself is scarcely able to provide
I was profoundly moved by a remark by a former orderly from the asylum at Herisau, one Josef Wehrle, who related how Walser, despite having completely turned his back on literature, would always carry with him in his waistcoat pocket a pencil stub and a few scraps of paper, carefully cut to size, on which he would often jot down one thing or another. However, Josef Wehrle continued, Walser was always quick to conceal these scraps of paper if he thought anyone was watching, as if he had been caught in the act of doing something wrong, or even shameful. Evidently the business of writing is one from whose clutches it is by no means easy to extricate oneself, even when the activity itself has come to seem loathsome or even impossible. From the writer’s point of view, there is almost nothing to be said in its defense, so little does it have to offer by way of gratification...good. The reader, though, would stand to lose much thereby, for the hapless writers trapped in their web of words sometimes succeed in opening up vistas of such beauty and intensity as life itself is scarcely able to provide.
~ W.G. Sebald, in his foreword to “A Place in the Country” (Modern Library Classics, Random House Publishing Group. February 17, 2018)
