Grotesque Ambivalence: Melancholy and Mourning in the Prose Work of Albert Drach (review)

Abstract

Grotesque Ambivalence: Melancholy and Mourning in Prose Work of Albert Drach, by Mary Cosgrove. Conditio Judaica, 49. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2004. 234 pp. euro56.50. Albert who? Such was reaction of many when Austrian Albert Drach (1902-1995), 86-year-young attorney and writer, won Georg Buchner Prize of German Academy for Language and Letters in 1988. Orach's career as a writer goes back to 1920s. Although many of his relatives did nor survive Holocaust, he not only managed to live through deportation and exile, but even decided to return to Austria after war and resume his law practice as well as his writing career. There was a brief flurry of serious critical attention accompanying publication of some of his books in 1960s and 70s, but that faded quickly. Then came Buchner prize, Manes Sperber prize, Grillparzer prize, and more. In ensuing years there has been increasing critical study of Drach, but virtually all in German. As first book-length critical study of Drach in English, Mary Cosgrove's book is both notable and needed. The first chapter places her work within context of scholarship on Drach; and then through first three chapters Cosgrove discusses theoretical premises upon which she bases her study. Though Cosgrove sees in Drach a certain affinity to Jewish-Viennese intellectual and literary tradition' (p. 22), she prefers rather to view Drach more as an author who exhibits (post)modern tendencies. This collision, as she calls it, of diverse influences typifies not only Drach's writing but also Cosgrove's approach. A critical environment hospitable to texts associated with postmodern has developed more slowly in German-language areas than in neighboring France or in United States. Cosgrove attempts to employ critical approaches by such scholars as Homi Bhabha and particularly Julia Kristeva in analyzing Drach's prose. Thus, she uses Kristeva's psychoanalytic approach to body and notion of subjectivity in understanding grotesque in Drach's texts. Chapter four focuses on an analysis of book IA UND NEIN. Drei Falle, particularly section UND. It is in this chapter that Cosgrove discusses Drach's perhaps most characteristic stylistic innovation, namely Protokollstil with its heavy use of indirect speech. Derived from court protocols with which attorney Drach was all too familiar, it illustrates the self-critical, shadowy side of rational language (p. 104). In chapter five, Cosgrove examines text Das Goggelbuch with particular reliance on Bhabha's concept of mimic man, which he developed to critique British colonial efforts in India. …