Franz Xaver Kroetz: The Emergence of a Political Playwright by Richard W. Blevins (review)

Book Reviews 141 critics, often fascinated by abstract theories or seemingly perfect methods. too frequently forget: that literature and theater do not exist as the subject of critical methods, but come into being as the human expression ofprofoundly human experience. FRANCO ZANGRILLl, BARUCH COLLEGE, CUNY RICHARD W. BLEVINS. Frallz Xaver Kroetz: The Emergence afa Political Playwright. New York: Peter Lang Publishers 1983. Pp. 295. Franz Xaver Kroetz caused a sensation on the West German theater scene with the premieres of his plays Harlfliickig and Heimarbeit in 197I. These brutally naturalistic dramas portrayed the problems of society's poor and underprivileged, those whose inarticulateness and entrapment within a morality deformed by a capitalistic economy resulted in self-destructive acts of violence. In recent years, Kroetz has come te mistrust the effectiveness of this dramaturgy and moved towards a more positive realism. His continued success has been astonishing in light of what he describes in a 1980 interview as the difficulties realistic authors face when asserting themselves against the more resigned and self-reflecting "new subjectivism" which has pennealed West Gennan theater since the mid-seventies. In Gennan theater, he states with some uneasiness, there exists little between "abstract" and "naturalistic." What links these seemingly disparate trends in contemporary Gennan theater is a common attitude towards language: the inadequacy of language to reflect and portray social reality. The "politicization" of the theater that began in the sixties was followed by a growing skepticism in the power of theater to effect social change. Contemporary German tbeater is a reflection on the modern chasm between language and social reality, on the relationShip between theater and politics. This issue is as central to a Handke as it is to a Kroetz. For a playwright whose intentions are as expressly political as they are for Kroetz, the issue is particularly problematic. Through his precise and detailed portrayals of the everyday problems of working-class citizens, Kroetz hopes to expose the destructive mechanisms ofcapitalistic West Gennan society. Richard Blevins's book focuses on the sociopolitical substance of Kroetz's plays, and on the extent to which they succeed or fail in realizing the author's intentions. Tracing Kroetz's political development from "angry young man" to active member of the West German Communist Party, Blevins undertakes to discuss the effect of this development on his quite considerable artistic production between 1968 and 1978: some thirty plays (including TV scripts and mdio plays), a collection of interviews with Bavarian workers, a report on fanning conditions in the GDR, as wen as extensive essays, speeches, and interviews. Blevins organizes his material according to the various stages which reflect the particular aesthetic questions confronting the author as his political intention became more defined and as he responded to critical reaction: the brutal naturalism and dramaturgy of ucompassion" of the early plays, the experiments with Brechtian and agitprop techniques, the return to the '42 Book Reviews working class and a modified brand of proletarian realism which portrays average workers who possess a greater ability 10 articulate their problems and are capable of some positive development. Criticism of Kroetz generally falls into two main categories: that which deals with Kroetz's oeuvre as a whole, focusing on the "development" described above, and that which concerns itself primarily with detailed analyses of the linguistic mechanisms and dialogue structures of individual plays. Belvins's approach is the fonner, and although one must admire the exhaustive effort involved in dealing with Kroetz's artistic and theoretical output in its entirety, such an approach necessarily suffers the drawbacks of the comprehensive overview. Blevins's central thesis, that "the fundamental issues and basic subject matter of Kroetz's plays have remained constant" (p. 9), and that "virtually all of Kroetz's dramas are both naturalistic and political" (p. 92), would benefit from a greater awareness of just how heavily these plays depend on Kroetz's manipulation of language/dialogue for their formal and thematic unity. (Much of the literature based on this recognition is conspicuously absent from Blevins's bibliography.) The most widely acclaimed of Kroetz's plays seldom point as directly or explicitly as Blevins would have us believe to the real social and political forces...