Synopses & Reviews
This book traces the career of the most widely read and influential German novelist in the second half of the twentieth century. It shows in particular how his experiences as a teenage Nazi shaped his thinking, both in his novels and his role as critic and campaigner, from
The Tin Drum (1959), his most famous novel, to
My Century (1999), from his public protest against the building of the Berlin Wall (1961) to his diatribes against Helmut Kohl in the late 1990s. This new paperback edition includes new material on his last two books,
My Century and
Crabwalk including a revised Bibliography and Chronology.
Review
Reviews of hardback edition:
"Julian Preece combines literary analysis and elucidation of the historical-political context that so incisively shaped Grass's generational experience that "informs all his writing, fiction and non-fiction, and all his public utterances"...Yet the emphasis Preece places on the political, historical, and biographical context does not detract from his careful reading of Grass's texts. In incorporating biographical details...Preece draws attention to a dimension of the text that is often neglected and goes far beyond a mere introduction."--Siegfried Mews, The German Quarterly
"...satisfying...enormously rewarding."--German Studies Review
"...[for] anyone interested in Grass... [this would] provide a useful or even necessary foundation."--Brad Prager, Seminar
"...well written and well researched and can be read by specialists and non-specialists alike."--Kerstin T. Gaddy, South Atlantic Review
About the Author
Julian Preece is a Reader in German and Comparative Literature, University of Kent, Canterbury.
Table of Contents
Dedication * List of Plates * Acknowledgements * Chronology *
Part I: Life and Art * Biographies: Real and Imagined * Poet, Playwright, and Artist * Multi-Talented Art Student * Artistic Cross-Connections * Idealists, Absolutes and Crypto-Social Democrats: The Plays *
Part II: Lives in History * The World Novel:
The Tin Drum * Danzig Requiem * Scandal *
Cat and Mouse: Is Pilenz Guilty? * After Kafka - After Man *
Dog Years: Broken Biographies *
Part III: The Turn to Politics * A Famous Young Man * A Broken Intellectual Tradition * I Advise You to Vote ES-PE-DE * Writers and Politicians * The Student Revolt * 'I Meant Myself Just as Much': Brecht in the Crossfire in
The Plebians Rehearse the Uprising * On Cooking Pigs' Heads:
Exhaustively Questioned * 'Burn, Warehouse, Burn!':
Local Anaesthetic * Sceptics and Melancholics:
From the Diary of a Snail *
Part IV: The End of History Man * A State of the Nation Novel:
The Flounder * 'Social-Democratic Rabelais' * False Messiahs on Father's Day * Feminism and
The Flounder * Writers and the State in Germany, 1647-1979:
The Meeting in Telgte * Orwell's Decade * A Critical Intellectual in the Post-Modern Era * Exotic Encounters * Fiction Against the Bomb:
The Rat *
Part V: Wrong Side of the Wende * The Galloping
Weltgeist * Grass and the German Question, 1953-1989 * Burying the Past or Melting Pot Utopia:
The Calls of the Toad * Execution of an Author * Fonty/Fontane: Broken Biographies in
Too Far a Field * Making Sense: Finding Truth * Postscript: 1997-2002 * Guide to Further Reading * Index