Gunter Grass, the German/Polish 1999 Nobel Literary recipient and renowned author of novels such as The Tin Drum, The Flounder and Crabwalk, has been quietly cancelled.
This passively sinister action stems from a revelation that Grass had been drafted into the Nazi’s Waffen SS as a 16-year-old, something that he did not confess to until fifty years later in his 2003’s autobigraphy Peeling the Onion. I was silent. Because so many others have kept silent, the temptation is great…to shift the blame onto the collective guilt or talk about oneself only figuratively in the third person: He was, saw, did, said, he kept silent.
The common Polish thinking is that a tainted man such as Grass should not be granted the same esteem as fellow Nobel recipent Lech Walesa (and Gdansk native), who himself called Grass’ conscience into question. This cancellation stems not simply from a vague moral code but more so from how Mr. Grass wrote. As Jochen Bittner put it in his New York Times editorial: “There was a lot of self in his righteousness.” In other words, Mr. Bittner, like many others, felt that he was being written down to.
I remain a great admirer of Gunter Grass’ work, not only because of his literary talent and meticulous research but even more so exactly for the many characters who were forced to take responsibilty for their actions. Most poignant is a scene from The Tin Drum in which Alfred Matzerath chokes to death on his Nazi pin in an attempt to conceal his affiliation from the arriving Russian soldiers.
Grass’ cancellation echoes the 2018 attacks on Massachusett’s Senator Elizabeth Warren when it was revealed that she claimed Native Status on her application to Harvard, a trite notion championed by Donald Trump. The purpose of the accusation was not to achieve transparency, but rather to knock somebody who thought they knew better down to size, something the voting public took hook, line and sinker. This means that rather than have an astute, forthright and intently thoughtful leader in power, we are left with a yammering dolt who bullied, cheated and raped his way to the top.
What do we lose in this cancellation of Mr. Grass? In checking the books available at my local Gdansk library, a mere kilometer from his birthplace, I cannot find a single Grass title, but instead a ‘G’ section dominated by John Grisham and Tess Gerritsen, offering what appears to be the moral compass of the day.
