Constructing Authorship in the Work of Guenter Grass

摘要

This study of Germany's foremost writer begins with the assumption that multiple identities are embedded in the narrative figures employed in his fiction. The author's trademark moustache, far from being a stable stereotype, turns out to be a masking device behind which a variety of forces are at work, as Heinz-Ludwig Arnold was able to observe way back in 1971. Anyone familiar with the Nobel laureate's rapidly expanding output will respond with interest to the underlying thesis of the present volume, and will rnpresent (when reading his diary). Given the outcome of Die Rdttin, Braun can argue that 'the author's future death overrides his present control of the text' (p. 120).