Heinrich Böll belongs to a generation of German writers whose lives are inextricably linked with the historical, social, moral and spiritual collapse of their country. Their individual destinies fused with her political fate. Whether older or younger, they have all grown up in the turmoil of Nazidom, becoming conscious of the world and of themselves either during the war, under the steaming political pressures of a war machine running wild, or in the depressurized aridity during the post-war years, surrounded by a landscape of total defeat, of ruined cities, ruined lives and guilt-complexes. Romantics they may have been; realists they all had to become. This is, perhaps, the main reason why, regardless of form and substance, their primary interests lay from the outset in politics, or rather in the consequences of the political act as reflected in the lives and minds of human beings, however far they may have been from the political center. Thus it would be safe to assume that, excluding their Eastern European counterparts, theirs is the most politically-minded generation in Europe today. Here, however, the similarities end. For while, for instance, Günther Grass or Uwe Johnson, experimenting with style, form, and subject matter are, willy-nilly, forced to struggle not only with the complexities of their age but also with their respective experiments, Böll developed an artistic approach that is nearer in style, tone, and mood to a Fontane or a Thomas Mann than to his own contemporaries. I am tempted to add, although I am aware of the dangers of oversimplification, that the main difference between Böll and Grass lies in the fact that while Grass sees politics as affected by life, Böll sees life as affected by politics. He proceeds, without fireworks yet with an imposing self-assurance rooted in his philosophy and craftsmanship, to show us the whole sometimes amusing, sometimes frightening panorama of contemporary German society; we are at the very source of his powers. (p. 572)

Yet the past—the war and Nazism—concerns Böll only to the extent that it is, inevitably, the background of the present. Unlike Grass, he is not, in [18 Stories] at any rate, preoccupied with the responsibilities and guilt-complexes of the nation and the individuals. In his frame of reference, the immediate past of the country does not signify the point of absolute zero, but rather one of the coincidentia oppositorum, where in the blinding light of the Stalin-candles, phenomena, social as well as moral and psychological, showed their very essence with utmost clarity. Thus, in the proper perspective of historical continuity, the present becomes suddenly and stunningly alive, teeming with the people of the Wirtschaftswunder. It is, then, against the twilight world of the economic miracle, where there are no great tensions and what is at stake is not life itself but perhaps only a new Mercedes 220, that Böll's irony and satire is directed. For it is "like a bad dream" but nevertheless it is true that a man, despite his initial reluctance, may and can be induced by his wife to bribe "the chairman of a committee which places contracts for large housing projects" so as to earn an additional "20,000 marks"; it is like a bad dream, but nevertheless it is also true that the chairman of the committee is perfectly willing, in fact expects, to be bribed for as little as 2,600 marks not only with the connivance but with the active help of his wife. What makes Böll's story so menacingly real is, of course, not its theme—it is as ancient as literature itself—but its atmosphere; the well-furnished comfortable apartment, the French cognac and the eighteenth-century crucifix, the pleasantries exchanged during, and the cigars after, dinner, the tacit acceptance of complicity, the self-evident naturalness of a late-night telephone conversation that results in an even better deal and, consequently, in a small rise in the sum of the bribe. In short, the smoothness of the operation reflects its everyday character. And yet, by the end, it becomes suddenly clear that the moment of a common transaction is, in fact, a turning point in the life of the narrator. His uneasy reluctance to go along with the instructions of his efficient wife (which, incidentally, did not prevent him from learning quickly the "rules of the game") turns into a disquieting foreboding: the deal is on but his marriage may not survive it…. Without fire and brimstone, without moralizing or passing judgment, Böll introduces a new equilibrium between the crass immorality of society and the yet unborn but already stirring awareness of a human being. Man perhaps can be saved, if he is willing to save himself or, rather, to understand what is beyond understanding. It all depends on our choice.

Some of Böll's characters seem to be perfectly aware of the dilemma; they react to it in a variety of ways. The man whose job is "to throw away" spends his mornings separating "the circulars from the letters" in "the basement of a respected establishment" which is "entirely devoted to destruction," to the throwing away, that is, of an immense amount of wasted human effort; and although it took him "years to invent my profession, to endow it with mathematical plausibility," he is bound to realize that "the mere throwing away of mail as such has almost ceased to interest me," and instead he now devotes his energies "to calculations concerning wrapping paper and the process of wrapping," for "this is virgin territory where nothing has been done, here one can strive to spare humanity those unprofitable efforts under the burden of which it is groaning," only to arrive at the conclusion that "the wrapping is worth more than the content." What is it that the hero of that delightful satire, who decided "to keep away from morality altogether" because his "field of speculation is one of pure economics," is struggling with? The wastes of society or the frustrations of the individual? Undoubtedly both. Yet, deemed not only a "mental case" but, what is worse, "anti-social" on his "punch-card," he has solved the dilemma, at least for himself. Hiding behind the mask "of an educated businessman" he is now able to defend himself and his world from being "thrown away," thus symbolizing the futility of the society—any society—where morality and economics are kept apart.

From the indirect solution to the direct one; from the man who "throws away" to the man who "collects" tape-recorded silences in order to defend his integrity and dignity, Böll's probing into the depths of our contemporary triumphs and humiliations continues uninterrupted. For Murke, the young, intelligent, though perhaps a bit arrogant, hero of that devastating, bitter and clever satiric tour de force, "Murke's Collected Silences," it is glaringly obvious that the impact of his particular "vegeance" on hypocrisy and on the sham-values of society is limited and, in a way, ineffectual; yet it is, nonetheless, completely satisfying. From morning to evening, in the building of the radio station where Murke is working as a member of the cultural department, friendships are born, pomposity is deflated, the name of God is replaced by the more neutral-sounding 'Higher Being' twenty-seven times on a tape-recorded lecture and, as if only by chance, Murke gets his revenge together with some newly-acquired silences. He can now go home, sit back and listen to them. But is the coincidence between his triumph and the world's humiliation wholly coincidental?

Hardly. A Catholic whose belief is anchored not so much in the tenets of the faith as in what C. S. Lewis calls "a dogmatic belief in objective values," Böll views the trials and tribulations of his characters with love, understanding and compassion yet without sentimentality and illusion. Accordingly, his understanding of human motives does not necessarily mean their acceptance or justification, but is invariably based on the metaphysical reality of fundamental value-categories. Primarily, his interests lie in the emergence and evolution of a human consciousness that will eventually include in itself a greater and more encompassing reality; a reality permeated with truth. Unlike Graham Greene's "heroic" Catholicism that perennially struggles with the bonds of faith only to prove their boundlessness, Böll's religion is a quiet and warm-hearted affair, transcending his politics and transforming his bitterness. It enables him to see beyond the relativity of the human condition.

Maybe the time has come when we can—without being called fossilized reactionaries—recognize the merits of writers who are not committed, unflinchingly, to experimenting but only to conveying the landscape and meaning of everyday life, as they perceive it. Heinrich Böll belongs to them—with commendable success, one must add without hesitation. (pp. 573-75)