Understanding Peter Weiss /

Cohen has recently published two related books on Peter Weiss: Versuch "uber Weiss' ""Asthetik des Widerstands" (1989) and Bio-bibliographisches Handbuch zu Weiss' ""Asthetik des Widerstands" (Hamburg, 1989). With this new monograph in the series "Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature" and translated beautifully by Martha Humphreys, Cohen's immense knowledge of Weiss's oeuvre--including Weiss's work as filmmaker and painter--is available in English. The book is what the title promises: an in-depth understanding of one of postwar Germany's most important figures. As is appropriate, Cohen is at his best in the chapters on the famous plays, Marat/Sade, The Investigation, and the monumental novel, The Aesthetics of Resistance. Cohen's approach is best labeled critical Marxism, and it yields extremely valuable insights when it confronts Weiss's own literary Marxism, as in the analyses of the plays about revolution--Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, Viet Nam Discourse, Trotsky in Exile, and H"olderlin--and especially in the discussion of Weiss's two dramatic versions of Kafka's The Trial. This book should serve the American public for a long time as a standard reference work on Weiss's oeuvre. Thorough index; excellent bibliographies of the secondary literature and of Weiss's work in German and English translation. R. C. Conard; University of Dayton