

Günter Grass, by Tomi Ungerer.

Günter Grass has achieved a very rare thing in contemporary arts and letters, earning both critical respect and commercial success in every genre and artistic medium he has taken up. A novelist, poet, essayist, dramatist, sculptor and graphic artist, Grass appeared on the international literary scene with the publication of his first novel, the 1958 best-seller The Tin Drum. It and his subsequent works—the novella Cat and Mouse (1961) and the novel Dog Years (1963)—are popularly known as the Danzig trilogy. His many other books include From the Diary of a Snail (1972), The Flounder (1977). The Meeting at Telgte (1979), Headbirths, or The Germans are Dying Out (1980), The Rat (1986), and Show Your Tongue (1989). Grass always designs his own book jackets, and his books often contain illustrations by the author. He has been the recipient of numerous literary prizes and medals, including the 1965 Georg Büchner Prize and the Carl von Ossietzky Medal (1977), and is a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Grass was born in 1927 on the Baltic coast, in a suburb of the Free City of Danzig, now Gdansk, Poland. His parents were grocers. During World War II he served in the German Army as a tank gunner, and was wounded and captured by American forces in 1945. After his release, he worked in a chalk mine and then studied art in Düsseldorf and Berlin. He married his first wife, the Swiss ballet dancer Anna Schwarz, in 1954. From 1955 to 1967, he participated in the meetings of Group 47, an informal but influential association of German writers and critics, so called because it first met in September of 1947. Its members, including Heinrich Böll, Uwe Johnson, Ilse Aichinger, and Grass, were organized around their common mission to develop and use a literary language that stood in radical opposition to the complex and ornate prose style characteristic of Nazi-era propaganda. They last met in 1967.

Living on a small stipend from the publishing house Luchterhand, Grass and his family spent the years 1956 to 1959 in Paris, where he wrote The Tin Drum. In 1958 he won the annual prize of Group 47 for his readings from the work in progress. The novel shocked and astounded German critics and readers, confronting them for the first time with a harsh depiction of the German bourgeoisie during the Second World War. Grass’s 1979 volume, The Meeting at Telgte, is a fictitious account of a meeting of German poets in 1647 at the close of the Thirty Years’ War. The purpose of the fictional gathering, as well as the book’s cast of characters, parallels that of the post–World War II Group 47.

In Germany, Grass has long been as well known for his controversial politics as he is for his celebrated novels. He was Willy Brandt’s chief speechwriter for ten years and is a longtime supporter of the Social Democratic Party. Lately, he has been one of the few German intellectuals to protest publicly the swift course German reunification has taken. In 1990 alone, Grass published two volumes of lectures, speeches, and debates on the subject.

When he is not traveling, he divides his time between his estate in Schleswig-Holstein where he lives with his second wife Ute Grunert and the house in the Schöneberg section of Berlin where his four children were raised and where his assistant Eva Hönisch now manages his affairs. This interview was conducted in two sessions, one before an audience at the 92nd Street YMWHA in Manhattan and one last fall at the yellow house on Niedstraβe, when Grass had found a few hours’ time during a brief stopover. He spoke in small gable-windowed study with white walls and wooden floors. The far corner was piled high with boxes of books and manuscripts. Grass was dressed comfortably, in a tweed jacket and button-down shirt. He had originally agreed to do an interview in English, thereby circumventing the complications of subsequent translation, but when reminded of this squinted his eyes and smiled, announcing, “I am much too tired! We will speak German.” Despite his professed travel-weariness, he spoke with energy and enthusiasm about his work, often laughing quietly. The interview ended when his twin sons Raoul and Franz arrived to pick their father up for a dinner to celebrate their birthday.

INTERVIEWER

How did you become a writer?

GÜNTER GRASS

I think it had something to do with the social situation in which I grew up. Ours was a lower-middle-class family; we had a small, two-room apartment. My sister and I did not have our own rooms, or even a place to ourselves. In the living room, beyond the two windows, was a little corner where my books were kept, and other things—my watercolors and so on. Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise. And so I started writing and drawing at an early age. Another result is that I now collect rooms. I have a study in four different places. I’m afraid to return again to the situation of my youth, with only a corner in one small room.

INTERVIEWER

What made you turn to reading and writing in this situation, rather than, say, to sports or some other distraction?

GRASS

As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things. When I was ten years old she called me Peer Gynt. Peer Gynt, she said, here you are telling me marvelous stories about journeys we will make to Naples and so on . . . I started to write down my lies very early. And I continue to do so! I started a novel when I was twelve years old. It was about the Kashubians, who turned up many years later in The Tin Drum, where Oskar’s grandmother, Anna, (like my own) is Kashubian. But I made a mistake in writing my first novel: all the characters I had introduced were dead at the end of the first chapter. I couldn’t go on! This was my first lesson in writing: be careful with your characters.

INTERVIEWER

What lies have given you the greatest pleasure?

GRASS

Lies that do not hurt, which are different from lies that protect oneself or hurt another person. That is not my business. But the truth is mostly very boring, and you can help it along with lies. There is no harm in that. I have learned that all my terrible lies really have no effect on what is out there. If, several years ago, I had written something that predicted the recent political developments in Germany, people would have said, What a liar!

INTERVIEWER

What was your next effort after the failed novel?

GRASS

My first book was a book of poetry and drawings. Invariably the first drafts of my poems combine drawings and verse, sometimes taking off from an image, sometimes from words. Then, when I was twenty-five years old and could afford to buy a typewriter, I preferred to type with my two-finger system. The first version of The Tin Drum was done just with the typewriter. Now I’m getting older and though I hear that many of my colleagues are writing with computers, I’ve gone back to writing the first draft by hand! The first version of The Rat is in a large book of unlined paper, which I got from my printer. When one of my books is about to be published I always ask for one blind copy with blank pages to use for the next manuscript. So, these days the first version is written by hand with drawings and then the second and the third are done on a typewriter. I have never finished a book without writing three versions. Usually there are four with many corrections.

INTERVIEWER

Does each version begin at alpha and proceed to omega?

GRASS

No. I write the first draft quickly. If there’s a hole, there’s a hole. The second version is generally very long, detailed, and complete. There are no more holes, but it’s a bit dry. In the third draft I try to regain the spontaneity of the first, and to retain what is essential from the second. This is very difficult.

INTERVIEWER

What is your daily schedule when you work?

GRASS

When I’m working on the first version, I write between five and seven pages a day. For the third version, three pages a day. It’s very slow.

INTERVIEWER

You do this in the morning or in the afternoon or at night?

GRASS

Never, never at night. I don’t believe in writing at night because it comes too easily. When I read it in the morning it’s not good. I need daylight to begin. Between nine and ten o’clock I have a long breakfast with reading and music. After breakfast I work, and then take a break for coffee in the afternoon. I start again and finish at seven o’clock in the evening.