SHOW YOUR TONGUE <i> by Gunter Grass (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $34.95; 214 pp., illustrate)</i>

“The work startles both in its density of detail and in its overarching anticipation of its own self-chosen task. The spectacle of Third World Poverty--its gaudy declaration of need--is by now surely too familiar a Western stereotype to generate any sense of novelty, but Grass’ powerful meditation explodes the stereotypical in order to address the nature of the cliches in which he may be complicit.”