There is no American counterpart to Germany’s critical impresario, Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Known, with a rather pointed admiration, as the “literature pope,” Reich-Ranicki, or MRR, revitalized the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s book section in the 1970s during his fifteen-year tenure as literary editor. In 1988 he became a household name with his hour-long televised talk-show “Literarische Quartett” (Literary Quartet). Six times a year for thirteen years, he and three other critics discussed five books, usually contemporary works, but occasional classics as well. Against all odds and expectations, the show was a success, regularly drawing more than 700,000 viewers. Forefinger waving, MRR could make and break a book with a single word—most often his signature “Herrrrlich!” (wonnnderful!) or “Grössslich!” (horrrrible!).

Reich-Ranicki is best known for his terse, incisive, even pitiless judgments. He wrote that “[c]ourage and strength of character are not among the most conspicuous virtues of the esteemed writer Christa Wolf” in 1987, three years before she published What Remains, her only fiction explicitly critical of her government, a story she had waited a decade to publish—that is, until it was safe to do so—and five years before the extent of her association with the Stasi was revealed. After the fall of the Wall, MRRmanaged to salt her wound indirectly, inflicting new wounds on others, by pointing out that most of the East German writers then complaining about the ruthlessness of the Western publishing industry were braver than they were readable. Wolf, by implication, was one