Submitted by A. Aleksander, Jul 3, 2007 06:55

This is such a disgraceful review and commentary upon a man who has spent his life in a sort of self-examination that has necessitated very few good memories or even nostalgia, but has only been a process of living suffering and engaging in a sort of constant confessional. Is it so necessary that over a half century later we should treat a man who was a teenager at the time in the same way we would prefer to treat an abysmal tyrant who escaped the hands of real justice? One feels that Mr Johnson would write the same letter to any surviving person who was a teenager and served in any office or division whatsoever of the Nazi regime, even that of cooking up and serving sub par schnitzel. Would you, Mr. Johnson, prosecute also the army chef for feeding such an admittedly despicable Army? Would you ask, instead, Why didn't conscience instead inform you to let the monsters starve? What Grass is is a man who has spent his life who participated either indirectly or directly in an atrocity of his youth that he has spent his entire life in trying to understand almost to a point that he cannot believe it could have been as it was. He may not be any kind of hero; but, he's also not a whipping boy for some mediocre book reviewer or sauce-dipping historian seeking a poster child on which to vent personal or historical nonsense. To read Grass is to be in the midst of and experience the most visceral self-examination a reader can experience; and whether it is directly expressed or not, it is to be within a style of and character of guilt. I, as a Jew, need no admission of guilt to understand when a person is consumed by the philosophical journey of understanding and reckoning, and it is clear to me that Grass' life has not simply been one of justification. He tells a valuable story, and it connects with every other valuable story in creating a history that shall never be forgotten. And, Mr. Johnson, if we wanted to keep us from his past....well, perhaps he'd never written a word in the first place.

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