Bavarian Rhapsody

I don’t think Lauren Oyler was quite fair in accusing W. G. Sebald of excising all evidence of modernity [“Desperately Seeking Sebald,” Review, December], particularly when she lays “denialism about the existence of McDonald’s” at his door.

Sebald’s narrators do mention McDonald’s, and not only in Austerlitz, as Oyler observes. There is a carton of McDonald’s fries ordered at a “brightly lit counter” in The Rings of Saturn. While it’s true that ordering those fries did make the narrator feel “like a criminal wanted worldwide,” Sebald can hardly be accused of refusing to acknowledge the…