A comprehensive narrative overview and analysis of the criticism of the
controversial German author's works.
When the Swedish Academy announced that Günter Grass had been awarded
the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, it singled out his first novel The
Tin Drum (1959, English translation 1963) as a seminal work that had
signaled thepostwar rebirth of German letters, auguring "a new beginning
after decades of linguistic and moral destruction." Nearly fifty years
after its publication, the novel's significance has been generally
acknowledged: it is the uncontested favorite among Grass's works of
fiction on the part of reading public and critics alike, yet its
canonical status tends to obscure the decidedly mixed and even hostile
reactions it initially elicited. Along with The Tin Drum, Grass's
impressive body of literary work since the 1950s has spawned a cottage
industry of Grass criticism, making a reliable guide through the thicket
of sometimes contradictory readings a definite desideratum.
SiegfriedMews fills this lacuna in Grass scholarship by way of a
detailed but succinct, descriptive as well as analytical and evaluative
overview of the scholarship from 1959 to 2005. Grass's politically
motivated interventions in publicdiscourse have kept him highly visible,
blurring the boundaries between politics and aesthetics. Mews therefore
examines not only academic criticism but also the daily and weekly press
(and other news media), providing additionalinsight into the reception
of Grass's works.
Siegfried Mews is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
