Volume 14, Number 11 · June 4, 1970
Always New Pains
By D.J. Enright
Local Anaesthetic
by Günter Grass, translated by Ralph Manheim
Harcourt, Brace & World, 284 pp., $6.95
The line between what one most admires in Günter Grass's writing and what one most resents is a remarkably fine one—and, it sometimes seems, a mobile one. His set pieces possess a Dickensian quality, but happily Dickens had not heard about motifs and symbols and other such-like devices for doubtfully expressing the perfectly expressible, whereas Grass, who is a bit of a pedagogue, has. There is something of Dürer, of Brueghel, and of Bosch in Grass's make-up; there is also something of Mary McCarthy's Mr. Converse, the creative writing teacher who went through his students' work 'putting in the symbols.' Looking back, you may find you remember most vividly some horrific-farcical scene which in the actual reading was spoiled for you by the author's persistent nudging.
Review, 2460 words
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