MLR, 104.3, 2009 921 G?nter Grass's 'Danzig Quintet': Explorations in the Memory and History of the Nazi Era from 'Die Blechtrommel' to 'ImKrebsgang. By Katharina Hall. Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang. 2007. 215 pp. ?29. ISBN 978-3-03-910901-2. Constructing Authorship in the Work ofG?nter Grass. By Rebecca Braun. (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs) Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2008. ix+i97pp. ?55. ISBN 878-0-19-954270-3. Grass's literary career, as it approaches its inevitable end, resembles the finale of a professional firework display. You never quite know which will have been the ultimate surprise and when it will be time to startapplauding. These two fine,bright books are both responses towhat must by now be nearly the entire spectacular event. In their complementary ways theyboth take the long view ofGrass's development, and if theywere both taken by surprise by the publication of Beim H?uten der Zwiebel, theydo theirbest not to show it. Katharina Hall's book links themost recent fiction by Grass, Im Krebsgang (an other,Die Box, has appeared since these studies were published), with his earlier fictions, theDanzig Trilogy (as it was baptized by JohnReddick in the sixties, enlist ing the erotic-aesthetic frisson of Lawrence Durreli's then controversial Alexandria Quartet), and ?rtlich bet?ubt, which, if it isnot set inDanzig, is significantly about remembering it.This makes up theDanzig Quintet, now seen as a lifelong project devoted to the subject ofmemory. (Given the popularity ofmemory studies in the humanities in recent decades, it isodd thatHall takes no account of the central con tributionmade to them by Janand Aleida Assmann.) The identification of these five texts (two novels, twoNovellen, and something inbetween) as a significant grouping is timely and persuasive. One critical gain is the re-evaluation of ?rtlich bet?ubt, which, as a transitional text, had come to be overlooked. More fundamentally, the shape ofHall's argument brings out how Grass's recent return to first-person narrative, to the travails of remembering, and to the kaleidoscopic effects of how autobiography and history interact, does indeed point up how immersed he had been fordecades in the contemporary world, and how far thathad taken him from his poetic wellspring in remembrance. Hall makes a strong distinction between memory as testimony and memory as representation. Her lucid analyses of Grass's texts are guided by this distinction, which she anchors in Freudian and especially Lacanian psychoanalytical categories. These are explained for the reader with exemplary patience and clarity in an early chapter, and successfully focus her strong line of argument. Memory as testimony is responsible and socialized: it is Symbolic. Memory as representation is Imaginary. It is ego-controlled but irresponsible. This enables Hall to classify the different memory practices employed byGrass in the elaboration of his fictions, and subtly to expound authorial emphasis and evaluation. The results are thoroughly illuminating, providing an anatomy ofGrass's ability towrite wayward magic' fiction at the same time as confronting guilt and shame more creatively and honestly thanmost other authors of his generation writing inGerman. One justwonders whether a Habermasian moral agenda (although Habermas is 922 Reviews not mentioned) has not been smuggled in behind the psychoanalytical terms, such thatSymbolic (as in: the ability todeal with complexity and lack) isalways good, and Imaginary (as in: coloured by the subject's drives) is always bad. The deployment of psychoanalytical terms drags with it therapeutic evaluations: you need to grow up and livewith difference; a dose of 'die schwarze K?chin' is good foryou.While an analyst needs to help his or her clients in certain situations tomake adjustments in relation to symbolic and imaginary identifications, and while Habermas should certainly be admired for his moral clarity in relation to the German historical identity,one thingGrass isnot writing about inhis fiction?not, in any case, in any simple way, inmy view?is moral psychology. Hall might be misunderstood to be asserting thathe is.On the other hand, her use of an analytical system deriving from Lacan should by no means be underestimated as a critical tool. Itworks very well. Nor indeed can one dismiss the imputation that, somehow, Grass's influence upon...