A Dubious Past. Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism by Elliot Y. Neaman (review)

Reviews thies, was interned in Austria. After the war, Joyce and his family returned to Trieste, but it was not the same, and after some months they moved to Paris. The years inTrieste were over, but as McCourt argues convincingly, Trieste and the people, experiences, cultures, politics, and life there had an undeniable impact on Joyce's greatest works and on Joyce. The Years ofBloom is a fact-filled, engaging book that anyone who is at all interested inJoycewould find worth reading , rfc Elliot Y. Neaman. A Dubious Past. ErnstJünger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism. Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism 19. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 31 5p. Daniel P. Reynolds Grinnell College It has been three years since ErnstJünger died at the age of 103. Elliot Neaman's book on the life and work ofthis controversial figure is a timely reminder ofthe confusion over Jünger's place among German authors of the 20th century, illustrated by the numerous debates over Jünger's complicity with fascism that persisted until his death. As Neaman's biography makes clear, the Jünger problem promises to take on even greater complexity after his death, particularly in an era when ideological lines traditionally demarcating right from left become increasingly blurred—a point argued persuasively in Neaman's final chapter. Those looking for a definitive assessment ofJünger's significance as awriter and as a voice for conservative forces within Germany will not find it in Neaman's treatment, and that is precisely what recommends his book. Carefully documented and meticulously argued, Neaman succeeds in explaining whyJünger is likely to remain one of German literature's most ambiguous figures. Neaman dispenses very early with the suspicions that a study ofsuch a dubious figure as Jünger tends to arouse. He makes clear that his goal is neither to recuperate Jünger for the German literary canon, nor to offer a final condemnation ofJünger among the ranks ofinfamous Germans ofthe 20th century. Rather, Neaman hopes to account for the persistence ofcontroversy and success that are inextricably linked in Jünger's biography, confounding both critics and his supporters . His approach to Jünger is as fair as one could hope to encounter, balancing every critical statement with a careful explication ofJünger's literary texts in the context of their concurrent political climates. Neaman's success in this balancing act comes at a price that some readers may find too high. He does not assess Jünger's volumes in terms oftheir particular lie— FALL 2001 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * MS erary achievement, leaving this task entirely to the critics and scholars whom he cites. This omission will prove a source ofdisappointment for readers looking for insight into the place ofJünger's literary output along the horizon of modern German literature. Neaman's most significant contribution is his treatment of Jünger's complex relations with the fringes of right-wing European intellectual circles. However, this approach leads him to relegateJünger's texts to the status of political allegories that serve to illustrate the ideological frontlines between Marxism , Conservatism, and Fascism at various moments in recent history. He neglects any thorough discussion ofcontemporary literary developments, referring to the other writers only in passing. Ofthe many contemporary writers who might have served as valuable points ofreference forJünger as an author, only Gottfried Benn and Heiner Müller receive any sustained attention in Neaman's book. Contemporaries such as Erich Maria Remarque, Bertolt Brecht, and Thomas Mann receive scant attention. The occasionally random sequence of topics and subheadings also presents hurdles to the reader, particularly those less familiar with Jünger's works. But despite the lack of clear transitions, the book adheres to a roughly chronological sequence in which several themes are repeated: Jünger's ambiguous place within both modernism and the conservative revolution of the Weimar era, the notion ofpost-histoire as a vehicle for approaching Jünger's politics, the consistency of Jünger's aloofaestheticism, and the facility with which various incongruous political movements have successfully appropriatedJünger's texts for their own competing aims. Neaman's book thus represents a...