Too Far Afield (ISBN 0156014165)

Grass's Reunification Novel:
Here we are, another masterpiece from one of Germany's greatest contemporary novelists. This work, which first appeared in Germany in 1995, is Grass's treatment of Germany's reunification. Among the novel's central themes is this: that through successive periods of history some things never change. They may be harder to spot, they may have a different name, they may be lurking in a cellar where no one wishes to find them, but they are there all the same. Grass here uses the medium of the novel to assert that the celebrations of 1989-1990 ignored the dark side of the German national identity. He accomplishes this by invoking minutiae from throughout German history, all of which is related through the novel's two central characters: Wuttke, who believes himself to be the nineteenth-century writer Theodore Fontane; and Hoftaller, a former East German police agent who is Wuttke's "shadow". What emerges is a fascinating montage where elements from both past and present intermingle, which is what Grass wants us to believe anyway: that what is "past" isn't really in the past at all. A variety of symbols reinforce this message. Much of the novel takes place in a quintessentially symbolic building in central Berlin: a building which originally housed the Third Reich's Aviation Ministry, then East Germany's "House of Ministries," and now (although not mentioned in the novel) the Federal Ministry of Finance. Within this building one finds the "Paternoster," an old elevator system which Wuttke attempts to save from being replaced by modern high speed elevators, and which carries a symbolic import of its own: it represents the rise and fall of various people within the building, the memory or in the novel the "Archives" of Germany. At more than 650 pages this is a formidable undertaking but in the end well worth the effort. A reader not terrible familiar with German history or literature may find many of the references terribly confusing or elusive. But here is Grass at his finest--his wit, his insight, his courage to poke fun at everything the Germans have considered sacred: from the former chancellor and "hero" of reunification Helmut Kohl to contemporary author Christa Wolf.

Tough Sledding, but Rewarding:
The way to get the most out of this novel is to be both well-versed in German literature (especially the work of Fontana), as well as to be knowledgeable about the history of Germany, and of Berlin in particluar. For me, to read this book was to embark on a rigourous journey of two extremes: On the one hand, I did not understand and thus could not appreciate the no doubt rich literary commentaries and allusions that surrounded Fontana; I am simply not conversant with his writing. All I could do in those parts of the novel was read what was written, and wish that I had read Effi Briest, etc. first. On the other hand, I was at times mesmerized by the depth and breadth of Grass's probing and questioning of historical issues pertaining to Germany and Berlin. By my having spent the equivalent of almost a year in Germany, including time in Berlin in the 70's, 80's and 90's, I was able to grasp Grass's commentary on the transformation of Germany and Berlin into one country and city, respectively, from their previously divided conditions. Grass makes all sorts of subtle and clever references to certain streets, neighbourhoods and buildings ("the hall of tears") in Berlin, as well as to various historical incidents and figures (e.g. the "Goatee": Walter Ulbricht), referring to them by their locally-known idioms or nicknames; this rich aspect of the novel, which, gratifyingly, made me feel very close to the author and to the story, will likely be lost on readers without a firm grounding in 20th century German history. The historical commentary is usually highly concentrated, at times hypnotic in its relentlessness and directness; I often found myself mentally exhausted from having to concentrate as much as I needed to, to follow the threads of discussion and inquiry. Invariably, though, I wanted to do nothing more than keep reading, so compelling is Grass's writing style. I did not want the book to end; I did not want to say goodbye to Wuttke/Fonty. I was sad that the exhilarating experience of reading this novel was over. I felt a certain wistfulness toward Germany, its people and its turbulent history. One can tell that Grass both loves his country, and is most wary of its history and circumstances. One needs to invest a lot of emotional and intellectual energy to get through this novel, but so long as the reader is conversant with German literature, German history, or, ideally, both, it is well worth the effort.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same:
Having been recently impressed by Mr. Grass's new book, Crabwalk, I also found myself happy to have finally read The Tin Drum since then. Encouraged by those experiences, I decided it was time to read Too Far Afield, which was roundly criticized when it came out. I wondered how the book had stood the test of time in its views about German reunification. I came away feeling that I had read a masterpiece. Mr. Grass's point is simply that human nature and our histories play a powerful role in shaping our present and future lives. In Too Far Afield, he magnificently captures the enormous influences that culture, nation, religion and family practices play in reinforcing our human nature and histories. Of the three books, I felt like Too Far Afield was the only one that captured the human condition in its broadest sense, rather than just the German human condition. Although I majored in European history in college, I don't think I ever quite got the point about how 19th century influences came together to have such a large impact on people who lived in East Germany prior to the reunification. Too Far Afield put the mosaic of those influences together for me for the first time. The story is an unbelievably intricate one. After finishing the book, I couldn't see how the points could have been made as powerfully without all of the material. You will feel like the book dawdles in many places. Please realize that Mr. Grass is trying to set you up to draw the wrong conclusions as you react to the surface reality, so that his story can serve as a counterpunch to your gut reactions. In that subtle way, he strengthens his message that life is vastly different than what you believed when you started the book. The book has many interesting characters, but all exist to tell the story of Theo Wuttke. Wuttke is every person in the story. He has been drawn to the rich cultural tradition of Germany's great writer, Fontane (referred to as "The Immortal"), and is inspired to want to experience the freedom and variety of the West. Historical accidents impinge on those yearnings. The East German bureaucracy keeps him in line, acting very much as its predecessor, the Nazi bureaucracy, and its predecessor, the Prussian bureaucracy did. The governmental constraints work because Wuttke has sinned, and does not want those sins exposed . . . or his children harmed. So he turns out to be a captive of his past and his nonexistent former nation, even as the dawn of freedom arrives with the reunification. Wuttke ultimately finds redemption as the indirect result of his attempts to do good in the past. The story is told through extensive use of internal monologues and indirect references to the past. Be patient. Those indirect references are eventually brought together in an astonishingly cogent way. Although the tone of much of the book is quite grey and seemingly hopeless, Mr. Grass does a marvelous job of employing satire and irony to comment upon seemingly unpromising situations. I found myself laughing aloud in many places in the book. I'm sure that anyone who knows Germany better than I do will find the book even funnier. No one can miss or fail to appreciate the humor involved in the marriage of Wuttke's daughter to a prosperous West German business man . . . an obvious metaphor for the reunification itself. Although the book is ostensibly about the reunification, please be sure to see the reunification as a metaphor for our need to reconnect with our true selves and the rest of humanity. Please do be aware that this book is a challenging read. Be sure to read and refer to the brief chronology at the beginning of the book. It's a wonderful introduction into the historical elements that Mr. Grass chooses to weave together. I found it helpful to go through the book in 40-50 page chunks. Whenever I began to find my mind wandering away from the story, I would stop for the day. Also, Wuttke has two sides. One is a file courier operating in a large bureaucracy where he snatches moments of freedom on the ancient elevator (the "Paternoster"). The other is as Fonty, the erudite cultural aficionado of Fontane. He is referred to in both ways in the story . . . but it's the same man acting in different ways with others. As I finished the book, I began to question how my own culture and personal history influence me in choosing some paths (and ignoring others). I came away with a stronger sense of who I am, versus who others hope that I am. That's a great gift. Thank you, Mr. Grass!

Perpetuation of the Immortal:
Not having read anything by the nineteenth-century German novelist Theodor Fontane has put me at a disadvantage in my reading of Gunter Grass's "Too Far Afield." Fontane's life and work, you see, are constant objects of reference in Grass's novel, to the extent that the protagonist, Theo "Fonty" Wuttke, is virtually a reincarnation of Fontane, who died in 1898 but whose memory is exalted by his protege. Fonty calls his predecessor the Immortal and, reliving his life in many respects, is either actively determined or passively fated to immortalize him. "Too Far Afield" begins with a chronology of modern German history, which Grass implicatively traces back to 1685 when French Huguenots escaping religious persecution in their native country sought refuge in Prussia; Fontane, as his French-looking name indicates, was descended from Huguenots. Born in 1919, exactly a century after Fontane, Fonty leads a life that surrealistically parallels that of the Immortal. Like Fontane, Fonty is a man of letters with a keen interest in the march of war, a renowned poet and one of East Berlin's leading cultural figures since the second World War ended in a geopolitically divided Germany. Grass's narrative takes place mostly in East Berlin in the early 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In much the same way that Fontane had chronicled the unification of Germany under Bismarck in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Fonty reflects on the reunification of Germany following the collapse of the Soviet umbrella under which East Germany had been nurtured and the clash of cultures that results when the stagnant communism of the East is awkwardly reconciled with the dynamic capitalism of the West. Fonty, in addition to his literary endeavors, has worked as a courier in the East German Ministries Building, where he runs files up and down the floors in a rickety elevator affectionately called the "paternoster" (Our Father) -- perhaps after a prayer uttered by the hapless passenger for his safety. The dissolution of his government after the Wall has fallen temporarily displaces Fonty, but fortunately the Ministries Building is taken over by a trust company called Handover, where he accepts a job as a consultant in their affairs to help reconstruct East Germany. The political situation provides a backdrop for Fonty's personal dramas. His daughter Martha, a teacher, having lost her faith in socialism, becomes a Catholic and marries a wealthy West German builder she had met at a resort by the Black Sea several years ago; in this episode we learn that West Germans, whose currency was much more solid than that of the East Germans, received preferential treatment. Fonty's closest friends are Hoftaller, alias Tallhover, a spy for the former East German government, and the cynical Professor Freundlich, pointedly referred to as a "leftover" Jew, an anti-Zionist who is sour over his daughters' decision to move to Israel but eventually accedes to the view that Europe can never again be a haven for the Jews. We also learn that Fonty has a granddaughter named Madeleine, the offspring of a daughter he had illegitimately with a French woman while serving ineffectually as a soldier in World War II, who comes to him in his old age. "Too Far Afield" bears little resemblance to Grass's 1959 masterpiece "The Tin Drum" (one of the best novels of the last century); of course, "The Tin Drum" did not anticipate a reunified Germany but instead assumed a permanently splintered one symbolized by its deformed protagonist Oskar Matzerath, whose piquant personality Fonty lacks. "Too Far Afield," facing the reality of what many Germans including Grass might have thought impossible, is less whimsical, as though it were wandering around in a daze contemplating the unexpected destruction of the physical barrier that had emerged emblematic of the great German divide of the twentieth century. As for myself, I resolve to delve into "Effi Briest" as soon as possible. Dare I ignore the Immortal any longer?

Re-examining and re-imagining the history of a 170-year-old:
One of my favorite moments in Grass's difficult, often ponderous novel takes place early in the book, in a McDonald's restaurant around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eager to avoid a seventieth-birthday celebration thrown by his young followers, Theo Wuttke and his sometimes cohort, sometimes archenemy (and former Stazi agent) Hoftaller decide to escape to Berlin's "approximately Scottish" fast-food joint instead. Invigorated by a cheeseburger and Chicken McNuggets and sensing an audience in the "young folk" hanging out in the dining area, Wuttke adopts the persona of his literary doppelganger Theodor Fontane and launches into a spiel about the feud between the historical "McDonalds and their mortal enemies, the Campbells" and ends up declaiming all 33 stanzas of Fontane's poem "Archibald Douglas," about "the feud between the Douglas brothers and King James." "The employees and the regulars were struck dumb with amazement. Nothing like this had ever happened at McDonald's before." Even "a beer-bloated skinhead, stuffed into much rivet-studded leather," commends the performance as "heavy." Episodes like this one spice up a novel in which Grass constantly (and, at first, jarringly) shifts back and forth between Wuttke's life from 1919 to 1989 and Fontane's career in the second half of the nineteenth century as Wuttke re-imagines it--sometimes blurring the two men until it's not entirely clear who is being described. (Hoftaller, too, is transformed into a menacing Bismarck-era police officer named Tallhover.) Similarly, Grass mirrors post-Soviet German unification with the national unification of 1871 to reiterate his long held belief in the circularity of history. And, finally, the plots, themes, prose, and style of Fontane's many works pervade the book; Wuttke not only resembles his literary idol, who was born exactly 100 years earlier, but also he knows so much about Fontane's life that he has come to imagine that he lived it himself. Fontane is "the Immortal One" whose ghost survives in Wuttke. All this will be confusing to American readers, most of whom (like myself), if they've heard of Theodor Fontane at all, know only of "Effi Briest"--the only one of his works currently in print in the U.S. Before attempting this book, then, one should read a good, brief summary of Fontane's life and work--novels, poems, and historical works. For example, to understand fully the McDonald's episode described above, I had first to learn that Fontane spend many years in England, under the thrall of Sir Walter Scott's romances, and that he had written the poem Wuttke--and Grass--quotes at length. (Like many of Fontane's works, it apparently has never been translated into English.) Reading this book made me wonder how non-English readers manage to appreciate novels about our own authors, like "The Master" or "March." Likewise, it helps to know that many German readers were turned off by Grass's stance on German unification (he opposed it, arguing that Eastern Germany would be soured and corrupted by Western greed and materialism). Since many East Germans shared these apprehensions, Grass's incorporation of these beliefs into Wuttke's cynical worldview seems germane to the fiction itself--and Grass's portrait is a bit more ambiguous and nuanced than one might expect. Amidst the 600 pages of Grass's (understandably) parochial fixation with Germany's literary heritage, there are any number of comical scenes, poignant events, and two memorable characters (both Wuttke and Germany itself)--all of which make the exertion largely worthwhile.