DAVID LEHMAN
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his pipe and bushy moustache, and half-lens eyeglasses. To the
Vil–
lage Voice's
Geoffrey Stokes, Grass cut the benign figure of "a little old
watchmaker." To Rhoda Koenig of
New York Magazine,
he was "a
walrus-shaped figure in full worker's-intellectual kit who slumped
aggressively forward clutching his pipe." Taki, the columnist for
The
London Spectator,
demonstrated that the left had no pure monopoly on
abusive subjectivism. According to Taki, "Grass is a fat and unpleas–
ant-looking German, a man whom
[sic]
I suspect must have been
the physical model for the slobs in Fassbinder's fIlms of decadence
and human decay."
One remembered the words of Adam Zagajewski, the Polish
emigre poet, who spoke in Bellow's defense. Bellow had identified a
spiritual crisis peculiar to our time. "Life has been, in the modern
jargon, de-mystified. It has lost its sacredness," he said. Zagajewski
seconded the notion, adding: "There is the danger that spiritual life
may vanish here on earth - not because of atom bombs but because
of stupidity." One remembered, finally, Bellow's own understanding
of what had happened during his confrontation with Grass. For what
Bellow said at the press conference that day seemed a summary judge–
ment on the congress itself. On the one hand, he said, he felt "sym–
pathetic" to those caught in the middle of "a life-and-death struggle"
between the two superpowers; and yes, it was inevitable that U.S.
writers were being put (or putting themselves) on trial. By the same
token, he resented the "stampeding of writers into political boxes."
It
boiled down to a question of language. "What bothers me a great
deal is the abandonment of the writer's language," Bellow said. "You
immediately hear anchorman jargon and the jargon of militant radi–
calism going back to the thirties. The language we use is heavily pol–
luted by politics. And we're forced to speak about life-and-death
matters on these unfavorable terms."
