by Nicholas Bone, Sans façon and Ian Cameron
The script of a play about walking.
Stense bought me this book, which is the script to a play she saw. She thought I'd like it. I did, very much indeed.
As I wrote to Stense, after reading the script twice, the play is clearly heavily influenced by the writings of W.G. Sebald, of whom I am a huge fan. I detected the similarity to Sebald immediately: the going off on weird tangents; the formal, slightly antiquated language; the mysterious photographs appearing throughout the text; various accounts of suicides; and so on.
Admittedly, when you're a Sebald fan, everything seems to have a Sebaldian connection. But, in this case, it turned out I was correct. After I'd finished reading A Walk at the Edge of the World, I Googled the name of the play and found the following introductory video. See how long it takes Nicholas Bone, the chap who wrote and directed the play, to mention Sebald:
…I think you'll find that was 23 seconds. I rest my case.
Very enjoyable.
