SOURCE: A review of Children Are Civilians Too, in The Saturday Review, New York, Vol. LIII, No. 13, March 28, 1970, pp. 38-40.

In the following essay, Schwarz asserts that most of Böll's early stories depict the dreariness of war

Heinrich Böll has written short stories, Novellen, novels, radio plays and drama, but his true talent lies in telling stories. His first "novel," Adam, Where Art Thou, is really a series of terse short stories, held together by a theme—the little man in war—rather than by central characters. In Böll's radio plays several stories are usually told by a commentator to amplify the dialogue. His Irish Journal likewise consists of a sequence of stories about life in Ireland.

Much less convicting than these early works are Böll's ambitious novels, Acquainted with the Night, Billiards at Half-Past Nine, and The Clown. Here Böll revels in...