Why Teju Cole is like W.G. Sebald

The more I read in Teju Cole's "Open City," the more clear it is to me that Cole is not interested in plot and character development in any traditional sense. As I started to think from the first chapter, he's very much in the tradition of Sebald; he introduces many characters and plot strands and, at least so far (about 3 chapters or 50 pages in) he has no desire, or perhaps no capacity?, to pull these strands together. Like Sebald, he is full of arcana, and he has a penchant for speaking with strangers and hearing out their stories - he, the narrator I mean, is a resident in psychiatry, so that would make sense - and he will sometimes go off on what seems to be a tangent as he gives almost a miniature essay or lecture about a bit of history, landscape, architecture, or, with Cole in particular, works of art. Open City includes a rather lengthy section on a visit to an exhibit of the deaf Colonial artist Brewster - I, too, have been very moved by Brewster's works and by his story (I saw the same exhibit, though I saw it in Cooperstown I think). Also, Cole and Sebald share an Asperger-like fascination, or fixation, on modes of transportation - subways, mostly, in Cole's case (trains for Sebald). The novel continues to hold my interest and attention, but not sure how well he can maintain this mood over 300 pages or so without further depth of character. We do, in chapter 2, at least learn a little about who the narrator is: A native of Nigeria (like Cole) who settles in the U.S.; hints of some time in Europe and England, and also of possibility that one of his parents/grandparents is European? Some discussion of a girlfriend who'd moved to San Francisco - but all this is mostly by nuance and inference - there is no real conflict or dramatic element to the novel at all, not in the least, in the first 50 pages or so. Can he sustain this?