Roger Zelazny. The format for entries in "invaluable" or "amusing" or even "brief." ail sections is the same: bibliographie infor­ The authors should strive, within the mation followed by a descriptive paragraph limitations imposed by time and access, or summary of the item. This arrangement to coordinate their efforts and thus turn is so very clear and obvious that the a useful tool into an indispensable one. lengthy indexes (sixty-one pages) are scarcely needed. The book is, nevertheless, the best thing of its kind. Libraries should acquire it; The authors have done a good job in scholars, critics, and teachers should have keeping the number of entries to manage­ access to it; students should learn of its able size by omitting book reviews existence. Along with Clareson's initial (covered in H. W. Hall's annual Science volume, forthcoming volumes of the same Fiction Book Review Index), catalogs, columns, series, Schlobin's and Tymn's other works, and introductions to fictional works. Most and the many specialized listings of science entries are American; a few are British. fiction anthologies, science fiction maga­ Much that is written about science fiction zines, and the like that have appeared in appears in "fanzines" like Algol; the authors the last decade, it should prevent a great have included from such sources only deal of unnecessary searching on the part those pieces which seem to have scholarly of researchers in and newcomers to the value. There are some inconsistencies in field. their choices. Among single-figure periodi­ cals, for instance, the one devoted to James Branch Cabell, Kalki, is included, Brian Attebery while The Baum Bugle is not.

The most conspicuous flaw in the book is the great variation in the nature of the annotative paragraphs. These range from brief descriptions to detailed abstracts, from less than a dozen words to well over a GÜNTER GRASS hundred. Under the heading "Stanley Das Treffen in Telgte Kubrick," for example, a book by Daniel Darmstadt: Luchterhand Verlag, De Vries is summed up tersely as "Con­ tain [ing] analyses of Dr. Strangelove, 2001, 1979. Pp. 182. and A Clockwork Orange," while an article from the Georgia Review is revealed as stating that "Kubrick's 2001: A Space Das Treffen in Telgte is an ingenious Odyssey demonstrates the limitations of and convincing representation of German words as a tool for metaphysical inquiry. baroque poets and dramatists taking part The critics of the movie are baffled by his in a fictitious meeting in 1647. Grass treatment of words and are therefore evokes these sacred cows of German litera­ unable to follow what is happening in the ture with the same mixture of irreverence narrative. To follow it one must see, first, and intuitive understanding of style and that his story can only be told in moving epoch as Anthony Burgess uses in A images, and second, that its action divides Clockwork Testament to conjure up minor into three stages: the bestial, rational, and Elizabethan dramatists and to satirize the imaginative periods in man's growth." dryasdust pedantry with which academics treat them. Through a combination of This inequity of treatment does not in­ vivid character sketches and tantalizing validate the book, but it does mean that snippets of quotation, through his evoca­ some entries are considerably more helpful tion of die catastrophic Thirty Years' War than others, with no discernible selection (1618-1648) and most importantly through factor governing the differences. A related the suggestion of parallels with post W.W. weakness is the frequent use of quoted II Germany, Grass has achieved a bril­ material within the descriptive paragraph: liant historical novel of contemporary in some cases the words seem to be taken relevance. directly from the source and in others from some unknown third party's com­ Grass suggests political and literary ments upon it. Some entries are made parallels between this fictitious meeting in up entirely of quotation, which precludes 1647 and the real meetings of the "Gruppe the evaluation given to other works, the 47" of which he himself was a prominent ones that are described as "cogent" or member. With the secular authorities so

144 The International Fiction Review, 7, No. 2 (1980) completely discredited in the holocausts of presumably thinking of both the avalanche 1618-48 and 1933-45, Günter Grass asks of foreign words into contemporary Ger­ himself what contribution to civilization man and also of the damage that National could be expected from the nation's un­ Socialism did to the German language acknowledged literary and spiritual through macabre euphemisms, bureau- leaders. Are poets and writers "das andere, cratese and fake exhumations of some das wahrhaftige Deutschland" (p. 92)—a mythical Aryan-Teutonic language. self-consciously anachronistic phrase in this novel, but a phrase which was much Grass teases the reader into believing flung around in the soul-searching years that Das Treffen in Telgte is rambling, after W.W. II—or are they a modey crew low-key and perhaps even esoteric in of destructive, squabbling egoists who theme. Only in the last third of his tale would never make statesmen. As Grass does he draw independent threads to­ portrays them, they are as divided gether to create a morally devastating on principles of religious freedom and climax which rises unexpectedly out of a responsible government as they are on the roistering feast. The poets' protestations of theory of artistic genre and literary evalua­ piety and preaching of valutas vanitatum tion. Their disputes are ferocious and witty, are put to an alarming practical test. In a but the objective consensus and practical structural repetition of the Magdeburg inci­ results are nil. One feels a mature Grass dent (cf. p. 52), the war crimes of both echoing the resigned words of the meet­ sides intrude into the poets' "Musenhain" ing's convenor, Simon Dach, who says: and rob them of their otherworldly inno­ "Es fehle den Dichtern alle Macht, außer cence. The provisions for their feast are der einen, richtige, wenn auch unnütze revealed to have come from the murder Wörter zu setzen" (p. 94). of an innocent farmer's family and the party's exuberance ends in "Jammer" and There is much scatological humor and "Graus," or as Grass's spokesman Simon ribald vulgarity. Chaucer and Rabelais live Dach puts it: "Seht, wie, was lebt, zum again but with twists of savage black humor. Ende leufft,/ Wisst, Aaß des Todes Rüssel/ Mother Courage makes a far more gro­ Mit vns aus einem Glase säufft/Vnd frisst tesque appearance than she does in Bert aus einer Schüssel" (p. 129). In vain the Brecht's play and her ghoulish corpse- poets try to shed their communal guilt robbing at Magdeburg seems to suggest a by making their uneducated, soldierly pro­ scene at a Nazi extermination camp. tector, Grimmelshausen into their scape­ goat. But he deflects their attack by accus­ Grass poses some disturbing politico- ing them of living in an ostriches' para­ literary and religiQus questions in Das dise, prostituting their talent to the Treffen in Telgte: are the literary as well aristocrats and composing in styles of as the political utterances of these poets epigonal irrelevance to the Thirty Years' invalidated by their position as kept mis­ Holocaust. Grimmelhausen's antidote is to tresses of the' royal courts? Does all-per­ dedicate himself to a truer art, a socio- vasive Christian theology have a perjorative politically and linguistically honest mirror effect on the sincerity of baroque verse? of contemporary chaos and evil. And so Are the poets' secular insights blunted by the soldier turns writer and creates the their spiritual preoccupations? The most century's blockbuster, Simplicissimus. fascinating literary problem which Grass sets his characters and his readers is: Initially one is struck in Das Treffen in which is the more striking vehicle for Telgte by the absence of extravagant word­ artistic expression, the many German dia­ play and grotesque symbolism so charac­ lects or the elevated High German? Grass teristic of the Danzig-trilogy. But in the reveals his sympathies when he shows how last third of this novel inauspicious sym­ the satiric Plattdeutsch versifier, Laurem- bols suddenly achieve dramatic depth and berg, "spielte das unverdorbene Nedder- associative strength. Even Simon Dach's dütsch gegen die gestelzte, affektierte, sich modest "Kürbislaube" (p. 166) becomes hier kringelnde, dort zum Wust gestaute the hope for an idyllic refuge for all Kanzlei—oder Hochdeutsche Sprache aus: poets both from exploitation by aristocratic 'Se is so lappisch und so verbrüdisch, Dat patrons and from the gruesome horrors men schier nicht west off idt Welsch is of war. The most important image is of edder Düdisch . . .'" (pp. 39-40). When course the thisde: "Taub, stechend, vom Grass presses the question of "Was sie Wind versât, des Esels Fraj8, des Bauern [die deutsche Sprache] zerstört habe und Fluch, des strafenden Gottes Zorngewächs woran sie gesunden könne" (p. 31), he is und Wucherplace, das hier, die Distel, sei

Brief Mentions 145 ihrer aller Blum und Vaterland!" (p. 172). Calling on the three broad cycles oudined Here the thistle expresses the only comfort by the critic Jean Roudaut, the "mystical," left to the assembled poets in their politi­ the "realistic," and the "mythological," cal impotence: the consolation that they Henkels suggestively traces the evolution derive from metaphorical expression of of Pinget's novels (though it should be their grief. As the narrator says of their said that these pseudo-cycles act only as "distelwüehsige[s] Deutschland," "Fast sah dubious markers largely alien to the es aus, als seien wir nun zufrieden und fluency, overlap, and backtrack of the auf deutsche Art froh über die Bildkräf- author's ongoing pursuit, just as to lean tigkeit unseres Jammers" (p. 172). Like on Gide's distinction between roman and Goethe's Tasso, the only comfort of poets récit and to call Quelqu'un one and Fable then and now is: "Wenn die anderen in the other is to invoke an already congealed ihrer Qual verstummen gab mir ein Gott criterion and to minimize Pinget's dissolu­ zu sagen wie ich leide." But how these tion of the whole notion of genre). The baroque poets speak! Grass celebrates the first period, that of Entre Fantoine et Agapa glorious variety of their styles: Greflinger's (1951), Mahu ou le matériau (1952), Le Arcadian pastorals; Birken's visual figure Renard et la boussole (1955), Graal Flibuste poems; Spee's haunting condemnation of (1956) and Baga (1958), is characterized by the Inquisition; Paul Gerhardt's well satir­ a spirit of parody and surrealistic fantasy, ized, fanatical protestantism; Angelus illogicality, and dreamlike effects, acrobatic Silesius's aphoristic mysticism; and most leaps between the real and the imaginary. startling of all, misanthropist Gryphius's Here the reader is plunged into fragments powerful expression of betrayal, evil, and and indirections, lacunae and outrageous futility on the stage of world history. For metamorphoses. The second stage, less con­ here is a novel which is rich in literary cerned with toppling the house of fiction treasures as well as in political and religious in zany and capricious manner, becomes problems. more densely (and yet perhaps more Vacuously) introspective. Le Fiston (1959), Clope au dossier (1961), and L'Inquisitoire David A. Myers (1961) take the form of an infinite in­ quisition, a hide-and-seek of question and answer, pseudo-detective novels which lose their way at every intersection and solve nothing; while Quelqu'un (1965) focuses all ROBERT M. HENKELS, JR. the more on the evasive verbal process Robert Pinget: The Novel as Quest which can never be transformed into any­ Birmingham, Ala.: University of thing more than an increasingly involved and confused "preliminary hearing." The Alabama Press, 1979. Pp. 277. most recent period, comprising Le Libera (1967), Passacaille (1969), Fable (1971), and Cette voix (1975), moves further from time Mr Henkels's opening cluster of quota­ and space, real or imaginary, into the echo tions draws back the curtain on the theme chamber of an inner tone, played and re­ of genesis in Robert Pinget's work: all the played until it is tantamount to silence. obscure inner births, contradictory and Henkels speaks of a "flirtation with verbal unassimilable, to which the writer gives suicide" (p. 170). The novel itself seems voice. Who begets what, and over what almost uninhabited, the only characters derisory kingdom does the would-be cre­ being the endless verbal and aural permu­ ator hold sway? A Pinget novel is a groping tations weaving their own plaintive and literary project which decomposes as it beautiful forms in frustrated anticipation of composes, curls back as it advances, inter­ an ultimate innommable. Words here be­ feres with itself as it reaches outwards. come, as Michel Butor has said of his own It is an ambiguous and inconclusive quest fiction, "de véritables personnages de "qui se détruit elle-même au fur et à roman, qui avaient des aventures." mesure," as Robbe-Grillet might say. It sets on stage, not the "man-in-his-acts" or Mr Henkels clearly appreciates a main l'homme en situation of the Sartrean mo­ critical problem in dealing with an author ment, but "man-in-his-language": an em­ such as Pinget. It would require, he says, bryonic being embedded in an intractable "the talents of a scribe both learned in the and paradoxical medium which makes a art of glossing complex tropes and willing mockery of novelistic conventions, ordered to smudge the end of his nose on pages chronology, and autobiographical stability. of black ink in order to get to the level

146 The International Fiäion Review, 7, No. 2 (1980)