The passions of a social-democrat artist: a baker's dozen essays and speeches voicing Grass's sober, doggedly honest political humanism. As always, Grass gets right down to business. "Ladies and Gentlemen," he tells the Belgrade Writers Conference (1969), "I'm against revolution. . . I detest the sacrifices that always have to be made in its name." Speaking in Athens during the reign of the colonels (1972), he condemns their suppression of democracy, and rehearses his own painful case: At the end of WW II Grass was a 17-year-old Hitler youth, who had just missed being called up, "too young to participate in the crimes of National Socialism, but old enough to have been shaped by their consequences." Belatedly discovering the horrors of the Holocaust, in his native Danzig and elsewhere, he continues to wrestle with his guilt (as in "What Shall We Tell Our Children?"). In this, he attacks the cowardice, the murderous bureaucracy, and demented utopianism of the Nazis and all subsequent dictatorships, right and left, in the First, Second, and Third Worlds. In "Superpower Backyards" (1982) he angrily compares Nicaragua to Poland—though without simply equating the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. In "Kafka and His Executors" (1978) he applies Kafka's "vision of totalitarian administration" to the Czechoslovakian regime and Germany, East and West. In "Erfurt 1970 and 1891" (1970) he looks back over the history of socialist revisionism and hails the sanity and decency of the much decried (by Marxists) Eduard Bernstein. Grass seems to have no illusions. In "The Destruction of Mankind Has Begun" (1982) he accepts the grim findings of the Club of Rome reports, and says that he writes, not out of hope, but "because I can't help it." This collection of occasional pieces is a humble, workmanlike affair, of no great stylistic brilliance. But Grass's unblinking intelligence and moral power make it a more than respectable performance.
Pub Date: June 21, 1985
ISBN: 0156687933
Page Count: -
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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