Released from the formulas of falsity that contaminate much realistic
fiction — drama, dialogue, the pretense of "real time," the
cause-and-effect of motive — the writer proceeds like a biographer who
sees everything after it has happened. Sebald understands that a life is
an edifice, which we build partly to hide its foundations. And the
difference between an edifice and a ruin may be hard to detect.
-- James Wood. "The other side of silence: Rereading W.G. Sebald"
New Yorker (June 5, 2017).