The ignoble prize

The Nobel Prize in literature has come to symbolize greatness in life, as in art -- but Günter Grass isn't the only laureate with a questionable past.

By George Rafael

Read more: Books, Nazis, Nobel Prize, Books Features

Oct. 11, 2006 | The prize-giving season is here. Over the next two months a veritable trophy cabinet of checks and trinkets, including the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the Man Booker Prize, the Prix Goncourt (France) and the Cervantes Prize (Spain), will be handed out to those writers lucky enough to have well-connected marketing muscle behind them. But the biggest prize of them all, the most yearned after, comes out of Sweden Thursday, the bounty of Stockholm, the Nobel Prize in literature.

This year's Nobel carries a little more baggage with it than usual, given the revelation by Günter Grass (Germany 1999) in his autobiography, "Peeling the Onion," that he was a member of the Waffen SS, the military wing of the infamous shock troops, at the end of the Second World War. The Christian Democratic government of Angela Merkel called on Grass to return the prize. (The Nobel Committee has stated that the prize cannot be rescinded or returned.) Solidarity founder Lech Walesa demanded that Grass renounce his honorary citizenship of Gdansk (formerly Danzig, Grass' birthplace and the setting for "The Tin Drum"), adding that he didn't "feel good in this kind of company." Playwright Rudolf Hochuth said that Grass "has morally discredited himself." But the harshest attack came from biographer-historian Joachim Fest, who stated that he could not "understand how someone can elevate himself to the position of moral conscience of the nation on Nazi issues and then admit that he was himself deeply involved. I wouldn't even buy a second-hand car from this man now." The recently deceased Fest's remarks were all the more damning with the appearance of his memoir "Not Me: Memoirs of Childhood and Youth," which focuses on his father, a teacher who worked hard and at great risk to himself to ensure that his five children did not become Nazis. It was possible, argued Fest, to remain decent even in dark times.

To be sure, others, such as literary heavyweights Martin Walser and José Saramago (Portugal 1998), and flyweight John Irving, have sprung to Grass' defense. Saramago and Walser, a maverick who has questioned the relevance of Berlin's Holocaust Memorial, pleaded extenuating circumstances, since no one at 17 can possibly tell right from wrong (!), and noted that old men and boys were gang-pressed into service in the final days of the Third Reich. Appearing in the Guardian, Irving's defense went, in effect, "How dare you cheap, sanctimonious hacks question the integrity of my close, personal friend, my pal, my buddy, Günter Grass. For shame!" And for good measure he got in a plug in for his latest novel, which shall go unplugged here.

In characteristic breast-beating fashion, Grass spoke sorrowfully of how he might have been tempted to commit atrocities had he been drafted earlier, or been a few years older. I'm a victim, too, he seemed to imply, even as he reminded one and all that he has never shied away from talking about his happy days in the Hitler Youth, about being a true believer until the Nuremberg trials opened his eyes to the crimes of his heroes. Trouble is, Grass' account of that time has shifted over the years with his changes in fortune; he volunteered, he was drafted, it was 1944, it was 1945; it wasn't my fault, but society at large; it was my fault, I should have known better. Old men forget.

But to many, Grass' comeuppance has inspired no small amount of schadenfreude alongside the usual heavy Teutonic soul-searching. No one likes a moralizer, and Grass is a particularly insufferable one, finger wagging, righteous and big on symbolic gestures. His stigmata are largely self-inflicted. What he doesn't seem to understand is that had he come clean about his past at the start of his literary career, his moral authority might actually have been enhanced. Instead, his reticence speaks volumes for his ambition.

Does any of this matter? Well, yes and no. If you put faith in prizes then the Nobel does matter, not for its literary merit, which seldom counts, but for what it has come to represent. Factors such as which country's turn it is to win, being at the right trouble spot at the right time and, above all, gravitas -- the right tone as it were -- on the burning issues of the day weigh more. Certain writers, like Seamus Heaney (Ireland 1995), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa 1991) and Gao Xingjian (China 2000), are tailor-made for the Nobel. (Much the same can be said for such bruited laureates of the future as Orhan Pamuk, Ismail Kadare, Margaret Atwood, Elias Khoury, David Grossman, Philip Roth, Cees Noteboom and Mario Vargas Llosa. Maybe Hans Magnus Enzensberger or Christa Wolf will win this year, say, to make up for Grass' disgrace?) Now and again, though, the committee members get it right in spite of themselves, as with V.S. Naipaul (U.K. 2001) and Harold Pinter (U.K. 2005); never mind their widely different and highly controversial sociopolitical viewpoints, which enraged their detractors on the left and right respectively, they were chosen for their undeniable literary gifts.

Naturally, any fall from grace is writ large and reflects on the judgment of the committee. This isn't about the sometimes obnoxious or offensive or even indefensible opinions uttered by past laureates -- where do you start? -- but about actual deeds, or sins of omission. And by deeds I mean writers that, in either an official or a semiofficial capacity, have brought their character into disrepute or caused harm to others, however indirectly. Grass is hardly alone in this respect. For instance, the decision taken by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria 1986) to ban Peter Hall's production of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at the Theatre of Nations Festival in Baltimore in 1986, for fear of offending that great bastion of cultural freedom, the Soviet Union, is a good example of the former. It shows up Soyinka, a victim of censorship (and worse) himself, as a hypocrite, or at the very least a practitioner of double standards, for one couldn't imagine him banning an Athol Fugard play for fear of offending apartheid South Africa. This was months before he picked up the prize! What were they thinking?

Next page: Knut Hamsun gave his Nobel Prize medal to that prime specimen of the master race: Joseph Goebbels