'Mich in variationen erzählen': Günter Grass and the Ethics of Autobiography

Abstract

This article examines Grass's 2006 autobiography Beim Hauten der Zwiebel against the background of a long career of overtly complex literary self-presentation. Its aim is twofold: to situate the autobiography as an aesthetic form within Grass's œuvre, and to use what I term Grass's much wider `autobiographical project', developed over the course of his career, to suggest that a kind of narrative ethics may in fact underlie much apparently wilful posturing in autobiographically informed literature. Using Philippe Lejeune to develop the idea of a `contractual effect' felt by author and reader, I argue that Grass draws on the autobiographical mode in order to critique contemporary reading practices.