Among contemporary works, the narratives of W.G. Sebald (The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn) are exemplary in this regard, pointing up, as they do, against the backdrop of this bloody century (and with an apercu of others), the enormous difficulty of fixing experience, both personal and collective. Keith Waldrop's harrowing memoir Light While There Is Light (which calls itself fiction) is another example. As is David Markson's intriguing Wittgenstein's Ladder.