Life Sentences

"But you saw with your own eyes," exclaimed Elon. He noted that Grass realized immediately that the Americans treated their black soldiers as inferior, but "it took you a year to decide the Nazis were criminals."

"I was a stupid young boy, who had only his fantasies, his stories," Grass said.

Grass made no excuses for himself, but it wasn't enough for Elon. Afterwards, the novelist shrugged. "I wasn't sure he read the book," he said of Elon, while endlessly autographing copies.

The next night, Grass ventured to a Barnes & Noble. All the seats were filled 45 minutes before the event was to begin. During the Q&A a man stood up: "You let us down. I used to quote you as a moral force." He asked for an apology.

"There are so many judges in this world. You are one of them," Grass said.And then he said he was sorry.

A woman stood up. She spoke with a German accent. "Your books have been important in my life," she said. "They gave me a way to understand my father."

The 20TH CENTURY ON TRIAL

At the New York Public Library, Grass was first scheduled to appear alone.

The event quickly sold out. Then Norman Mailer was added to the bill, and another library auditorium was opened up for those who didn't mind watching the proceedings via closed-circuit TV. This too sold out. The library dubbed the evening, "the 20th century on trial." It's a spectacle that clearly hasn't lost its appeal in the 21st.

Scottish novelist Andrew O'Hagan interviewed both writers separately before bringing them onstage together6/27/07. He didn't waste much time digging into Grass. "You criticized individuals for their Nazi pasts. Did you ever stop and say, I shouldn't be indulging in this?" he asked in incredulous tones.

As usual, Grass didn't spare himself -- he implied that joining up was the rebellion of "a nasty boy" against a father he despised -- but O'Hagan, like Elon, would not relent.

Support came finally from Mailer, who looked small and round and frail, kind of like the aged Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings. Mailer noted this might well be one of his last public appearances. The ability to hear was going, he said, and the rest of him wasn't doing too well either. But the mind was as lucid as ever. He snapped off quips ("at my age, you have to cling to your enjoyments, and paranoia is one of them"), and ruminated on his failure to win the Nobel Prize.

It wasn't politics that soured his chances, he declared; it was stabbing his second wife with a pen knife in 1960. "The Swedes are very intelligent people and they're proud of their prize, and they're damned if they want to give their prize to a guy who is a wife stabber and as sour and bitter as I am, and I don't think I can blame them," he said.