The Multiple Man

This is a man blasted by fate from the beginning and stamped with an inexplicable sign, goiter or clubfoot or conspicuous portwine stain. Like a Sicilian with the mol occhio who dries up a mother’s milk or brings down chandeliers with his mere presence, or the albino who can divine water, the afflicted man in our midst is likely to become a mythological beast, commanding both fear and respect. Enigma or pariah, to assert himself normally he must penetrate humanity’s childish and primitive interest in his deformity. Public hangman; the possessor of a grotesque Adam’s apple; a man locked in a cellar all of his childhood and turned loose, with all the advantages of a moron, in a European city—these are the subjects of three new novels that look at the world through the eyes of the touched, the set-aside.

Cat and Mouse, by Gunter Grass.

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Guy Davenport

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National Review

This is a man blasted by fate from the beginning and stamped with an inexplicable sign, goiter or clubfoot or conspicuous portwine stain. Like a Sicilian with the mol occhio who dries up a mother’s milk or brings down chandeliers with his mere presence, or the albino who can divine water, the afflicted man in our midst is likely to become a mythological beast, commanding both fear and respect. Enigma or pariah, to assert himself normally he must penetrate humanity’s childish and primitive interest in his deformity. Public hangman; the possessor of a grotesque Adam’s apple; a man locked in a cellar all of his childhood and turned loose, with all the advantages of a moron, in a European city—these are the subjects of three new novels that look at the world through the eyes of the touched, the set-aside.

Cat and Mouse, by Gunter Grass.