The Old man and his past : shallow thoughts on Günter Grass

I don't know much about Günter Grass. I have never read one of his books even though I am an avid reader. When I heard of the controversy surrounding his admission that he served in Hitler's army, I thought, “not again.” The New York Times explains why his confession is causing so much outrage:

Grass’s central literary theme has always been Germany’s struggle to come to terms with its past, and he has used his own life — and the realizations forced upon him after the war ended — as a platform for trenchant moral and social criticism. He stands accused now, especially from the right, of deceit and hypocrisy. He might just as well stand accused of embodying, far more fully than his readers could ever have guessed, the unbearable historical and ethical tragedy implicit in his work. Memory should always speak, no matter how painful. That it has done so for Grass, only at last, means that he will forever be constrained by his own lie.

Memory is a stubborn thing and my guess is that now that he has lived most of his life, Grass feels safe enough to admit to himself and to the world that when he was very young, he was a solider in Hitler's army. Grass is going to remain an important literary figure, but he will no longer be a hero, he will no longer have any moral authority. May be that's what he wanted, to be once again only a writer, but the problem is that it is going to take some time for people to read his prose without thinking of his lie. We are back to the question raised by the James Frey controversy: are lies tolerable by a writer if he reader believes them to be the truth? The answer to that question is yes. The writer as a responsibility toward her/his readers, which requires her/him not to mischaracterize her/his own life especially when it is so intertwined with her/his work. Salman Rushdie argues that, “You can either look at the life on the basis of a youthful mistake [...] or you can look at it over the course of more than 70 years, most of which have been spent being, in my view, one of the two greatest writers living in the world, with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” However, the problem isn’t what Grass did over 50 years ago, but it is the lie and the fact that he was able to shut his conscience down for 70 years. I am not outraged. I am just incredibly sad as I am every time I realize that talent doesn't always come with integrity.

Comments

[Panthagorass]

You could read this Frederic Beibeder's chronicle in the french magazine "Lire".

It could be very interesting, I think .
(To the english visitors, this link is in french, sorry)

http://www.lire.fr/chronique.asp/idC=49643

[Panthagorass]

And this one too, name:
"Les clés du roman sont dans la boîte à gants"

http://www.lire.fr/chronique.asp/idC=49736

[Panthagorass]

To conclude, if I was born in Germany, during this dark times, I was be, certainly, a too much young boy in Hitler's army. Like you had say, I m not an hero, so...

And who could say : I am an hero...

The currently pope was himself in Hitler's yougs.

And More, the control mind by nazi was very efficient. (The Costa-Gavras's movie, Amen, is an excelent exemple about this)

After the war, all the europe had must to forget a minimun, else it could not was possible to live between us.

This autor talks today, in my opinion, cause the time to talk is arrived from him.

And, immediadly after war, who had read his books, which worked to never forget the Shoa, if he had say that? To me nobody...

Excuse me to the syntaxes and grammaticals mistakes in my text, and if I can not explain more precisely my opinion, it is cause I do not speak English.

N'oubliez jamais...

[Kiki]

Grass was considered to be one of the greatest Germans of the last century not because he is a great writer, but because people looked up to him because they believed that he was the voice of the German Nation and a man of conscience. One cannot be a man of conscience and lie about a little, but significant detail of his past. Is Grass all of a sudden a bad writer because he lied? No. Has he become a bad person? No. But he is no longer a moral voice. Unfortunately, the fact that he chose to say the truth late, means that he has no or very little time to atone for his "sin" of omission.

[Panthagorass]

I remember my grand-parents who never talked about this period. And, I know it was not cause they could felling shame.(and they are not heroes, cause heroes does not exist)

When we tried talking about war to them, the only one reponse we had got: Silence, shame, and so munch sadness in theirs eyes.

I think it was humans whose inspired this shame. And I think they did certainly some unpleasants thinks during this time, cause they was humans too.

Maybe, it's a different between french culture and american culture, but certainly you are right.