Günter Grass's "Der Butt": Sexual Politics and the Male Myth of History

by Philip Brady (Editor), Timothy McFarland (Editor), John J. White (Editor)

Although G nter Grass's novel Der Butt was one of his most important and best-known works, it has not received the critical acclaim enjoyed by his other novels. These seven essays address the complexity of Der Butt's criss-crossing themes and nebulous narrator, who, throughout the story, fluctuates between a bizarre past and the present. Based on a series of discussions that explore the key issues and techniques of Der Butt, the essays present individual perspectives on Grass's artistry and provide new insight into the meaning of the heart of the novel: the interplay of history and sexual warfare.

244 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 1990

About the author

Philip Brady's most recent book is To Banquet with the Ethiopians: A Memoir of Life Before the Alphabet (Broadstone Books). By Heart: Reflections of a Rust Belt Bard (University of Tennessee Press, won a ForeWord Magazine Gold Medal, and Fathom, a collection of poems appeared from WordTech Press.

His memoir, To Prove My Blood: A Tale of Emigrations & the Afterlife appeared from Ashland Poetry Press in 2003, and Weal (Ashland Poetry Press, 2000) was the 1999 winner of the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press. Maxin Kumin chose his first book, Forged Correspondences (New Myths, 1996), for Ploughshares Editors’ Shelf. Brady also co-edited, with James F. Carens, Critical Essays on Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Twayne Publishers, 1998).

Brady earned his BA from Bucknell University, MAs from the University of Delaware and San Francisco State University, and a PhD from Binghamton University. He has won an Ohioana Poetry Award, five Ohio Arts Council Individual Artists Awards, Thayer and Newhouse Fellowships from New York State, and residencies at Yaddo, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland, Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain, Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and the Soros Centre for the Arts in the Czech Republic. Brady has taught at the National University of Zaire, University College Cork, and on Semester at Sea.

Currently, he is Executive Director of Etruscan Press and a professor of English at Youngstown State University, where he directs the YSU Poetry Center and plays in the New-Celtic band, Brady’s Leap. He also serves on the low-residency MFA faculty of Wilkes University.