Crabwalk [Audio Cassette]

Tulla Pokriefke, one of the survivors of the tragedy, cannot find words to describe what she saw on the ship as the torpedoes hit: "There's no notes in the scale for it..." Nevertheless, for years she has been insisting that her son write it all down - the way she remembers it. Paul Pokriefke, a second-rate middle-aged journalist, born on one of the rescue ships at the time of the sinking, reluctantly takes on the "job". He's pressured into it by the major background player, Grass himself. Paul timidly argues with Him about the format, scope and depth of his book. He is in favour of a neutral documentary on the ship, its history and its namesake, a Nazi "martyr" and hero. His disinclination to take on this project at all speaks volumes about his generation's reluctance to relive and confront all aspects of the German past. Paul is typical in other ways too... But He nags and guides Paul through the details: take the central theme of the sinking of the ship and trace its history; bring out the lives of the people directly connected with it; don't forget Tulla, yourself and your son - make it personal. The outcome is a description of historical characters like Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi activist, David Frankfurter, the German Jew who killed him in 1936, and Alexandr Marinesko, the submarine captain who sank the vessel, interwoven with Paul's and his family's life, from then to now. Three generations of Pokriefkes, deeply influenced by the disaster, have to deal with it and the wider Nazi history in their individual way. None of them is comfortable with their present-day life.

It takes a specially gifted writer and authoritative critic like Gunter Grass to make this tragedy public in a format that is meaningful today. Having referred to the sinking of the Gustloff in previous novels, "it seems that He knew Tulla when she was young", he had been reluctant to expand on it until he had identified the right fictional frame in which to embed the facts. He found it in the strong character of Tulla, 18 at the time of the disaster and turning completely white on that day, who epitomizes the successful survivor and practical realist of her generation. She remains in the East, seemingly switching allegiances without effort to the Stalinist regime, defending it long after the Wall has crumbled.

Gunter Grass' language and literary skills are undeniable; but his often difficult language (at least in German) and his complex imagery and use of metaphor have brought him admirers as well as critics. In CRABWALK, both the language and the imagery do not present any difficulty for the reader. In fact, the text flows relatively smoothly: it reads fast despite the subject matter. Walking sideways like a crab and "scuttling backwards" to move forward describes the flow of the story. Slowly the characters come into view and the different strands merge to form a comprehensive picture. Paul's more or less ongoing commentary about his writing efforts, his reactions to family and Him, his jumping back and forth in the story, results, at times, in a somewhat lighter, more conversational tone.

Grass deliberately uses the structure of a traditional 'novella' (not specified in the English version) to convey the historical events and their impact on his group of Germans. An addition to being a 'short novel', a novella is usually more tightly structured and focused on a single major event. It often comprises a didactic angle or moral message. All of these elements can be found in CRABWALK. Grass' message in particular addresses the after-war generation(s). He integrates into the story the recurrent problem of young neo-nazis, skinheads and the danger of hate websites on the Internet characterized through Paul's son Konny. He reflects on the inability of the parent generation to come to terms with the children as well as their own reality. He criticizes the lukewarm attitudes towards politics and history by many Germans of Paul's generation. He is concerned with what the future holds. The German word 'Krebs' - CRAB also means cancer. Although not stated directly the reader of German cannot avoid reflecting on this connotation. Like cancers, totalitarian and fascist systems infect society, then go into remission, come and go. Can we be wholly cured of them? CRABWALK is on many levels an important book, which leaves you with ample food for thought. [Friederike Knabe, Ottawa, Canada]

Along with W. G. Sebald's "A Natural History of Destruction" and Joerg Friedrich's "Der Brand," "Crabwalk" is one of the three books shaping the most important debate going on in contemporary German intellectual circles. Grass, an old Leftie, makes the argument that by not addressing the topic of *German* victimhood (at the hands of the Allies) during World War II, mainstream German society has abandoned the topic to the political Right, including neo-Nazi groups.

On face value, this argument has a great deal of validity. Sebald provides much more detail on how academics and writers have avoided the topic altogether or have addressed it in an insufficient manner. HOWEVER, this argument has a serious weakness.

By re-focusing German debate on German victimhood during the war, there is a very serious risk of obscuring the victimhood of other groups (notably Jews and conquered nations). There is a precedent: The so-called Historians' Debate of the 1980s shocked and polarized German society as Stalin's crimes were compared with Hitler's crimes in a relativizing manner.

In other words, if this debate is not conducted very carefully, millions of people (not just Germans) will argue, "We were all victims of the war: Jews and Germans, Allies and Axis. Is there any difference?" There will be a radical relativization or radical leveling of victimhood. There is a real risk that Germans and others will lose sight of who started the war and who murdered millions of Europeans as part of a war of racial conquest. This line of logic already has many proponents in German society, and not just among the political Right. Radical pacifists among the political Left share this view. The German World War II memorial, Kaethe Kollwitz's Pieta sculpture in Berlin, is dedicated "to all victims of war and violence," including the poor German soldiers who fought the war for the fascists. (Yes, there is now a memorial expressly dedicated to Jewish victims.)

Thus, Grass's argument is interesting, and it is worth discussing, but it is potentially explosive and self-serving.

As literature, this book is clumsily written. (Nobel Prize-winner John Cotzee shared this opinion in his "New York Review of Books" review of "Crabwalk.") The "crabwalk"-style of narration (moving backwards or sideways to move forward) can make the story hard to follow at times, but it is not a major hindrance. The prose is not elegant, even though Grass is a Nobel laureate himself. The story is told by a first-person narrator, Paul Pokriefke, whose mother appears in several of Grass's novels. Unfortunately, Paul -- as a mouthpiece for the author -- was insufficient for the author. He inserts himself in the novel as a minor character! The author writes that Paul's friend "Grass" cannot tell the story, so he has asked him to tell it. This seems to be a very weak psychological device. Grass should either have told the story himself or have let Paul tell it. In the first case, his moral stature and renown would have given him the right to tell it. In the second case, the reader could have figured out that Paul speaks for Grass the author. There was no need for "Grass" the character in the novel.

In sum, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in German history, in German literature, or in the debates in German politics. However, read this book (and swallow its underlying message) with a grain of salt.

The ending of "Crabwalk" shows how the German people's willed amnesia has created yet another underclass to fear.

Chilling stuff.