RICHARD GILMAN
421
plays have almost nothing in common with the dramas of classic
naturalism, Zola's, say, or Hauptmann's . Above all, they do not
share traditional naturalism's dream of a quasi-scientific imperiuin,
its enslavement by what Delacroix called' 'the fetish for accuracy that
most people mistake for truth."
By the same token, Kroetz's work protects itself through its
internal dispositions, its sense of mysterious fatality and inassuage–
able pain, from the charge of sensationalism, 'of an intention simply
to shock, although the accusation continues to be made. His plays
are as far from
Tobacco Road
or any newer mode of sexual "frank–
ness" on the stage as it is possible to pe; they may seem to be dealing
with some of the same materials and ambiances, but the difference
is of the order of that between C.S. Forester's and Joseph Conrad's
treatment of the sea, an absolute difference of size, mind, and moral
imagination.
In fact, the disturbance Kroetz has caused, as well as the wel–
come given to him by more discerning minds, go far beyond the
immediate physical data of his plays to the broader implications of
his style and the esthetic and cultural significance they radiate. The
truth is that his breaking of moral and social taboos,
hi~
unhygienic
displays and feral anecdotes, are in the service of a far more subversive
vision than they mount up ro in themselves; his presence speaks of
a wider imaginative change
in
German theater-so often a force for
change
in
the universal stage-than one could discover by a recount–
ing of his "stories. ' ,
Homeworker
was one among a number of unsettling new plays
that appeared
in
Germany at the end of the sixties and the beginning
of the seventies and were the work of a wholly new generation of
German-speaking dramatists ofwhom Kroetz is likely the most gifted
and surely the most original. Men
bor~
during or just after the war,
the group includes Martin Sperr, Wolfgang Bauer, and Jurgen Fass–
binder (who is better known in the United States for his
films),
and
while they differ widely among themselves
in
matters of style and
sensibility they also share certain deep affinities. They are all to one
degree or another left-oriented
in
politics; they employ vernacular
speech
in
preference to any sort of literary language; they have set
