What a performance. Within a year of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, Gunter Grass, now 73 and contemporary fiction's supreme innovator, unleases this dazzling picaresque. As ever the energy and the tricks are present, and his love of - and fear for - his Germany, a country and a culture in free fall, remains his underlying theme. Yet this new novel is also far less fantastical than his earlier fabulist masterworks. Too Far Afield breathes the same air as his last book, My Century (1999), while also availing of its jaunty prose, speed of thought and frequent note of reflection. Whereas that collection of 100 stories is dominated by the voices of ordinary Germans, men and women, individuals not victims, this new book has a unifying narrative voice acting as witness, even chorus.
Too Far Afield is a big, dense book with a deceptive lightness of touch. It possesses a comic complexity guaranteed to leave you shaky with laughter, if also a little uneasy. It is deliberate, more subtle than slapstick, and the political messages are many. It's a philosopher's book written by a showman drawn to the power of story. Grass wants the reader to have fun, but there are limits. You also have to stop and think. If the American William Gaddis were to write a novel about present-day Germany, or indeed Europe, it would probably resemble this daring odyssey. The marathon narrative, racing along without a dull moment, is also sustained by voices, often engaged in zany dialogues that eventually do make sense. He has assembled some of his most vivid characters; their voices, their preoccupations. There are no freaks, no grotesques this time, although early in the narrative there is a passing reference to "a bumptious little brat" pounding a tin drum.
Although the story takes place mainly in Berlin during the most recent unification, Germany's present situation is consistently juxtaposed against the various chapters of its past. History and literature provide the central groups of references; Hauptmann, Bismarck, Kafka, Kleist, characters from novels real and imagined, walk in and out. At the heart of all this are two old men, both 70, both opposites, who in their contrasting personalities and aspirations evoke a sense of the confusions which make up today's Germany.
Theo Wuttke, better known as "Fonty", is a former East German cultural advisor and one-time war correspondent. He has a literary bent, writes epic letters, enjoys public speaking and sees himself as the reincarnation of a 19th-century Prussian writer known as "The Immortal". Wuttke has gone so far as to almost superimpose the facts of his life upon those of his hero. It's a great routine, bewildering but engaging. Tall and graceful, old Wuttke is as much a man of the 19th century as he is of the 20th, and his fanatical "devotion to the past" is apparent throughout the novel.
Fonty's shadow, Ludwig Hoftaller, is far more basic - a routine spy with a fondness for Cuban cigars and an ability to serve any political master. He has his own agenda "that's the only way we can safeguard our Germany from being overrun by foreigners. The Western European hinterland can be included, but only - as I recently advised my new partners - if Germany receives special status." The pair wander about with everything and nothing in common.
Somehow it's all very funny, even their visit to McDonalds. Some of the most hilarious setpieces take place as they row on the lake. "After a slight sigh Hoftaller said `Ah, Germany', and then he suddenly reached a decision: `Let's change places, Wuttke. I want to row now. You can rest and listen to me for a while. Good God, what times we live in! History's being made every day. In just over a week the fatherland will be united. Bound to turn out badly!' "
Wuttke has a wife, a disgruntled daughter and three absent sons, one of whom is dead. The old man's past is slightly more romantically complicated than might be expected. His wife Emmi is a wonderful portrait of a spoilt lower middle-class snob, while the moaning daughter develops sympathetic sickness each time her father falls ill. Her otherwise dull wedding becomes memorable when the priest begins denouncing his faith. All the while throughout the novel, shrewdly observing and often commenting, is the narrative chorus, the collective voice of the archivists who have worked with Wuttke in his various guises. "We were familiar with Fonty's penchant for dipping deep into the past. The Archives knew which sources he was drawing from. And we knew that he had more than enough landscapes whose chief claim to fame was that they had become battlefields."
The Immortal on whom Fonty has based himself was a hard-working and much exploited chronicler of war. Germany's history, the Immortal's career and Fonty's life become one. At times it seems Fonty may be crazy, or at least very eccentric - particularly when he clambers up on the bronze bench the huge statue of his hero is sitting on - but he's not mad. Madeleine, a French grand-daughter courtesy of a former love, appears on the scene and acts as both muse and conspirator. Many of the domestic interludes have an earthy ritual about them.
Seldom has Grass paid such attention to characterisation and reaped such results. There are wonderful moments, such as when the two old men are approached by a small boy determined to have his shoelaces tied for him. Elsewhere, as Fonty sits on a Tiergarten bench, two young Turkish girls come and stand before him. "For a long time foreignness hovered between Fonty and the Turkish girls . . . Fonty was about to formulate a friendly question to break the silence when one of them said in German, with barely a trace of a Berlin accent: `Would you be so kind as to betray to us what time it is?' "
Change hangs over the book. Fonty's boss, an administrator who keeps sane by roller-skating through the office, is referred to as the Handover Trust head. The sense of transition dogging the edgy years 19891991 is partly evoked by the awareness of the "wall peckers", those souvenir hunters intent on their piece of the Berlin Wall. But the chaos persisted long after the wall disappeared. The city is brought to life throughout the novel whenever the old men pursue their walks and random dialogues. As in My Century, Grass is evoking the diversity of Germany, its continuing awareness of the differences between East and West. An atmosphere of uncertainty is reflected in Fonty's ongoing state of mind following the killing of his boss. As the archivist chorus reports, "It did not escape our notice that since the death of the Handover Trust head Fonty had been in a condition that vacillated between paralyzing doubt and desperate restlessness." Forty years on, in a singularly imaginative literary career, and following Nobel recognition, a far from complacent Gunter Grass continues to surprise. Too Far Afield is lively and engaging; it is also despairing. This cantankerous visionary shaped by history sees all, hears all and captures the fearful apathy of a divided nation's cultural confusion.
Eileen Battersby is the Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
