RJ Eskow writes to Gunter Grass -- Time to reconsider Judith Miller

[understandinglife]

An Open Letter to Günter Grass

October 11, 2005

Dear Sir: I was told today by your US publisher that you will not comment on the Judith Miller case, or on the petition you signed in support of her. That is a disappointment to many Americans who hold both you and your work in the highest regard. In 2003 you declared that you "stand with" the "many Americans who ... are horrified by the betrayal of their founding values." Please stand with us again.

There are many who believe that Ms. Miller, working with allies inside the Bush Administration, actively collaborated in distorting vital facts in order to trigger the war you so eloquently condemned at the time. At a minimum, the stories Ms. Miller published in the New York Times -- stories we now know were based on incorrect information -- contributed significantly to create a climate of support for that war within the US.

A prosecutor is now investigating whether government officials illegally revealed confidential information about an intelligence officer for propaganda reasons, and/or as an act of vengeance for her husband's disclosure of State deception. Such an act would be government suppression and punishment of a source, not the protection of one. Nevertheless, Ms. Miller declined to cooperate with the investigation for many weeks -- an act for which she was honored with your signature on a petition of support.

<clip>

I recognize that it may seem presumptuous for someone like me to address you in this manner. I'm neither a statesman nor a man of letters. Please understand that I write this letter in all appropriate humility. In the spirit of the words you wrote two years ago, I ask you today: Please reconsider your public support for Ms. Miller in this matter.

Link:

http://nightlight.typepad.com/nightlight/2005/10/an_open_letter_.html

Also at Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/an-open-letter-to-guenter_b_8645.html

I urge all of you to write to Mr Grass and/or his publishers and support Mr Eskow's call for a statement from Gunter Grass on this very important matter.


Peace.

[Hissyspit]

1. Excellent

nominated

[understandinglife]

4. Thank you. I hope many write to Grass or/and his publisher.

Peace.

[MADem]

2. To save some time, and respond to the inevitable question

"Who the hell is Günter Grass?" I offer the following link re: the 1999 Nobel Prize winner in Literature:
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1999/grass-bio.html

Günter Grass was born in 1927 in Danzig-Langfuhr of Polish-German parents. After military service and captivity by American forces 1944-46, he worked as a farm labourer and miner and studied art in Düsseldorf and Berlin. 1956-59 he made his living as a sculptor, graphic artist and writer in Paris, and subsequently Berlin. In 1955 Grass became a member of the socially critical Gruppe 47 (later described with great warmth in The Meeting at Telgte), his first poetry was published in 1956 and his first play produced in 1957. His major international breakthrough came in 1959 with his allegorical and wide-ranging picaresque novel The Tin Drum (filmed by Schlöndorff), a satirical panorama of German reality during the first half of this century, which, with Cat and Mouse and Dog Years, was to form what is called the Danzig Trilogy.

In the 1960s Grass became active in politics, participating in election campaigns on behalf of the Social Democrat party and Willy Brandt. He dealt with the responsibility of intellectuals in Local Anaesthetic, From the Diary of a Snail and in his "German tragedy" The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising, and published political speeches and essays in which he advocated a Germany free from fanaticism and totalitarian ideologies. His childhood home, Danzig, and his broad and suggestive fabulations were to reappear in two successful novels criticising civilisation, The Flounder and The Rat, which reflect Grass's commitment to the peace movement and the environmental movement. Vehement debate and criticism were aroused by his mammoth novel Ein weites Feld which is set in the DDR in the years of the collapse of communism and the fall of the Berlin wall. In My Century he presents the history of the past century from a personal point of view, year by year. As a graphic artist, Grass has often been responsible for the covers and illustrations for his own works.

Grass was President of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin 1983-86, active within the German Authors' Publishing Company and PEN. He has been awarded a large number of prizes, among them Preis der Gruppe 47 1958, "Le meilleur livre étranger" 1962, the Büchner Prize 1965, the Fontane Prize 1968, Premio Internazionale Mondello 1977, the Alexander-Majakowski Medal, Gdansk 1979, the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize 1982, Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie 1994. He has honorary doctorates from Kenyon College and the Universities of Harvard, Poznan and Gdansk....

[bobbieinok]

3. in the 60s and 70s his novel The Tin Drum was considered the best

German novel about the Nazi era......I don't know if it still is