And I'm going to make an argument that A Scrap of Time is a collection of stories that works through the different kinds of stories that we've been reading. And you will remember we've been reading diaries, we've been reading memoirs, we've been reading history, histories, we've been reading Bildungsroman. So, I'm going to argue that you'll find traces of each of these in these stories. And so it is a good book to think of as a kind of summary, but more than a summary, of the kinds of literature we've been reading. But I want to begin by suggesting that A scrap of time needs to be thought of In a very up-to-date book that it's very much like a lot of other contemporary works of fiction and that it approximates to what I call a family album. And I'm going to argue that. And rereading A Scrap of Time, this last week. I thought about it as a very powerful response to trauma. And it raised, for me, the question of what words, what language, what actions can express trauma or can even heal or redeem it, and what kind of witnessing is possible. And in some ways these are issues that we've been dealing with right from the beginning. Whether we are reading Bauer or Browning or Nehamatets, what kind of witness is possible? On your recommended list, I put a novel by W.G. Sebald, the German writer Who lived most of his active life in England, a wonderful writer. And I direct you because I hope you'll be reading more Holocaust material after the course is over. Two of his books, one called The Emigrants, the other called Austerlitz, and both of these books have not only a narrative, but also photographs. And I'm sure you've seen many new books, new fiction come out with photographs. But the photographs in Sebald are fuzzy. They're a little bit out of focus. They're not quite captioned. And in some ways then, they generate what I call a family album experience. My wife told me that though you are all Facebook and Instagram and Snap Chat users, you all know what a family album is. I'm not sure if this is the case, but for me, at least the family album is something that's very important, and was very important, especially when people pass on. So, the question of a family album is how do we read a family album? And my experience is that there are pictures. You're told of relatives. You're told these are close friends practically relatives. They're standing, they're sitting, they're partying. There's a formal picture of them big banquet table,right? And my experience is, who are these people? Half the time most of the people in the pictures are not quite recognizable. You know something about them, but it immediately makes you ask, who are these people, and why are they in my family album? So I decided, I guess it must have been late at night or early in the morning, that for you, a scrap of time is like the Holocaust on Facebook. You all use Facebook, I'm sure. Peter uses Facebook. I don't use Facebook. When I retire, maybe I'll use Facebook, because I didn't know what to do when students asked to friend me. This is not good, but when I retire, who knows. So, the Holocaust on Facebook. Now, every once in a while, somebody shows me things on Facebook. There are always photographs, right? And sometimes there are captions, and mostly not. And mostly, I don't know the people that I'm being looked, shown, in the Facebook. But, that, they're somehow connected to me. So, I'm asking you to think of A Scrap of Time as your family album. The Holocaust on Facebook. You may. Post this on Facebook if you like, as one of Baumgarten's algorithms. And then I'll become famous. I understand there's a Facebook page, or whatever you call it, which has quotations from Peter. And I'm jealous. >> [LAUGH] >> In any case, A Scrap of Time, like all the other Holocaust books we've been reading, is a work of Modernism. That's a literary term, capital M. And they all include telling the story as part of, in fact, essential to the story So there are all kinds of moments in those books, and in A Scrap of Time, when the story includes how I am telling the story, and why I am doing this. It's in Nahamatet, all the books. So as you read A Scrap of Time, I want you to pay attention to that. And I want you to pay attention to the question of who tells the story? To whom? In Borowski? In Hertez? Who tells the story? And as soon as I ask this question, I know that there's something that's implied because no one really just tells a story. They tell it to someone. Right? So the teller is telling the story to someone. And these books are all raising that issue when they include this modernist theme. And this, of course, is central to literary questions and, as you look through Fatelessness or This Way for the Gas or Nahamatet or Elie Wiesel. Who tells the story? Who is the implied receiver of the story?
