None of Peter Seeberg’s novels are conventional novels, with an unbroken plotline linked to one or more main characters. This is also very true of At the Seaside (1978). It has no central protagonist, but 20 to 30 people who show up at different times of the day. So we don’t get to know any of them that well. A clear sign that Peter Seeberg is not interested in the singular individual, but the people - humanity itself. And in At the Seaside, he explores the human condition by bringing a whole crowd to the beach for a day. Sun. Sky. Sea. For a short space of time they are detached from humdrum life and society. Of course, they bring their everyday travails with them, but they also experience a release as they are embraced by the elements. In order to show the contrast between the run of the mill life to which human beings are tied, and their altered state by the sea, Seeberg shows the time of day in the margin of the book. From 0600 to 2400. This serves to emphasize that, whilst we can take time off, we are still subject to one inescapable fact: the march of time. And for everybody, a liberating, happy moment is only that. A moment.

Peter Seeberg is one of the most significant existentialist writers of his age and shares a kinship with philosopher writers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Alain Robbe-Grillet. His whole authorship seeks to investigate the relationship between the body and earth to which we are bound and our spiritual needs and constitution. Thus, in At the Seaside, he situates two people, Bloch and Gerard, at a beachfront restaurant and has them philosophise on what they see around them. In this way, and in his own unique style, Seeberg melds a fully concrete depiction of people’s ordinary lives with wide-ranging questions about the meaning of life and the importance of nature. Or as Bloch, at one point, puts it:

”… the earth is friction, slog and strain. The sea is embrace, uplift and floating. You’ll never get to the bottom of the sea.”

At the Seaside moves between the different actions and comments of its characters. But there is one event that gathers them all together: a parachute jump. Everyone stands and watches the beautiful parachutes as they unfold across the sky, until Biggie – a reference to Icarus of Greek mythology – jumps from the airplane and they see that his chute doesn’t release until the very last moment. He fumbles with the cord that triggers the chute and thinks for a few seconds that it’s all over. In that vital moment, he grasps the whole wonder and beauty of life. But this scene also confronts us with our human limits. We cannot fly. We can enjoy the great mysteries held by the sea and the heavens. The fire inherent in the sun and air. But for how long? As the customs official says on the novel’s last page, at 2400: “even at the seaside you’re not safe.”

Marianne Juhl, writer and critic