Hans Egon Holthusen's repeated invocation to "meine Brüder in Apoll" (my brothers in Apollo) and his long-standing affiliation with the journal Merkur give rise to the suggestion that this classically oriented poet, critic, essayist, and novelist operates within a tradition defined at least in part by heroic proportions and expectations. Mercury-like, Holthusen has served for decades as a messenger between the cultures of Germany and America, all the while striving to mediate in both quasi-political and scholarly capacities between a traditional aesthetic and an increasingly radical definition of literature. His place in modern German letters is anchored no less by a modest amount of superior poetry than by the meticulously crafted essays collected, as of 1988, in eight volumes. Holthusen's best-known title, Der unbehauste Mensch (The Homeless Man, 1951), captured the imagination of a generation of postwar readers, but today it ill defines one whose home in contemporary...