Grass's

Grass's crime is to have betrayed those whose spokesman he has sought to be.

The Biographical Fallacy 2009

If Grass's silence is also partly what spurred him on, then the route to condemnation is less easy.

The Biographical Fallacy 2009

Further removed from the struggle that has marked the last 60 years of German history, the sense of betrayal is bound to be less keen for those whose relation to Grass's work is a literary and aesthetic one.

The Biographical Fallacy 2009

Moreover, besides its purely literary merit, for non-German readers much of the value of Grass's work has been in the powerful access it provides to the complex morality and psychology of post-war Germany.

The Biographical Fallacy 2009

As far as I can tell, Grass's primary moral failing lies in remaining silent about his service with the Waffen-SS.

The Biographical Fallacy 2009

Yet I can't see why even on a national level, Grass's reluctance to confess should "leave deep scars on his books."

The Biographical Fallacy 2009

Won't German readers of the future, themselves no longer in need of his "services" as moral exemplar, be just as able to appreciate Grass's accomplishments as a novelist as those of us outside of Germany who never considered him to be one in the first place?

The Biographical Fallacy 2009

News at Eleven: At the same time that Günter Grass was trying to write a future for Germany by repoliticizing the novel, at the same time Peter Handke was denouncing Grass's outward approach to politics and was instead writing inward, Heimrad Bäcker invented a terminus for both: the personal and political.

Archive 2010-02-01 Rus Bowden 2010

News at Eleven: At the same time that Günter Grass was trying to write a future for Germany by repoliticizing the novel, at the same time Peter Handke was denouncing Grass's outward approach to politics and was instead writing inward, Heimrad Bäcker invented a terminus for both: the personal and political.

News at Eleven: At the same time Rus Bowden 2010

Developed in her darkroom by Marie or Mariechen a homage to Grass's late friend, Maria Rama, the camera's 6x9 cm prints are nothing less than the imagination of Günter Grass, at 81 years old: battle-shocked, tainted, half-discredited, but still hurling his dark visions of the German past and future at his countrymen and women.

The Box: Tales from the Darkroom by Günter Grass - review James Buchan 2010