October / Germany Reading: The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass

[Scheherazade]

http://wiredforbooks.org/images/GuenterGrass2.jpg

In October, we will be reading The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass.

Please post your comments and questions in this thread.

[manolia]

I saw the movie based on this book a few months ago and it was really good. I'll start reading the novel as soon as i finish the one i am currently reading ;)

[Jozanny]

As of this afternoon, in terms of the way I am feeling, I confess I do not feel like starting the novel over again, for two reasons. I am on another reading schedule, one, and two, I'd argue that Grass makes gratifying demands on the reader, but to do them justice would throw me further off my own plotted points more than I'd like, so that I nearly finished it a year and a half ago, as I mentioned during the nominating phase, I will leave as a fait accompli.

What I may do is riff through certain notable and extraordinary passages which remain with me, when the rest of you get to them, and see if you can help me solve some puzzles.

I think it is one of the greatest novels ever written, even if Nazism in some way necessitated that someone like Grass would have to have been brought into existence to write it, if he had not already existed to write it anyway.

Oy!:alien:

[Janine]

I am heavy into reading "The Idiot", so I don't know if I can start another novel right now; also a few of us in that thread plan to continue discussing it. It requires more time to do so.

One question for now, is "The Tin Drum" a long novel?

Hi manolia, I want to see the film also. I heard it was good and glad to hear you second that idea.

[Jozanny]

One question for now, is "The Tin Drum" a long novel?

Janine:

It runs about 560 pages, depending on the translator, I suppose, or the original German, for the fluent--but it is a dense read, and the average American would probably do well to have a study guide. I have six years of university behind me, and I want a good critical analysis to take me by the hand as a companion text for it.

[bazarov]

Damn! I don't read live writers...

[Janine]

Janine:

It runs about 560 pages, depending on the translator, I suppose, or the original German, for the fluent--but it is a dense read, and the average American would probably do well to have a study guide. I have six years of university behind me, and I want a good critical analysis to take me by the hand as a companion text for it.

Thanks so much Jozanny, for the information. In that case, I think I shall pass for this month. I don't own the book and actually I want to read some critical analysis on "The Idiot" when I am done reading it. I can't really read too super heavy (dense) books back to back anyway. I need a bit of a break in-between. Plus I would still like to read the Shakespeare play for the fall or this month "Merry Wives of Windsor". I may catch up eventually.

[Jozanny]

I do not want to seem overly strident on this matter, and I hope no one will take it this way, especially as my participation will most likely not be full fledged, but I think, having read the novel once, that if Sche or any member can find a free access teaching guide, it would assist a great deal. I spent the last 15 minutes looking, and can't find significant guides except for a few passages here (http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/tin-drum-grass-gunter).

I will keep trying. Maybe it is not that important, but it is to me because I know I could not grasp all the conceits Grass tosses at the reader. It is akin to a game of Twister with a devil.:p

[bazarov]

Should I cross over my principles because of this book? :) Help!

[Gladys]

After 50 pages, I've learned that every second sentence in 'The Tin Drum' is barbed in some way. So reading is slow.

It has begun as a personal history lesson. I'm not yet hooked, although the Dostoevsky I read last month, 'The Insulted and Injured', dragged for a hundred pages before daylight. I remain optimistic.

And like you, Bazarov, I rarely 'read live writers'.

[manolia]

Should I cross over my principles because of this book? :) Help!

Yes do :)
I've read about 200 pages and i can't put it down :nod: It is brilliant, full of black humour and irony.. i love it :)

[bouquin]

The Tin Drum has been on my TBR list for a long time, I've made up my mind to read it for this month.

I'm wondering if those of us who are reading it in English all have the same translator, mine is Ralph Manheim.

[bazarov]

Yes do :)
I've read about 200 pages and i can't put it down :nod: It is brilliant, full of black humour and irony.. i love it :)

Thank you engineer, I am going to library right now...:)

Gladys, glad to see you...AGAIN!:lol:

[Scheherazade]

My library is having trouble with their computers, which means no online access to their database... So I could only today go to the library and order a copy. Hopefully it will be available by next week and I will be able to start reading.

[Etienne]

Should I cross over my principles because of this book? :) Help!

You should cross over your principles because of many books. What difference can it make if the writer is alive or dead? The book stays the same...

[mickitaz]

I also, am about 200 pages into the book. I find Grass' vocabulary, similies, and metaphor's an abundant feast for the mind. The only problem I have... where to begin for a focus of discussion. Perhaps I will need to read on before I can find a starting point.

[bouquin]

I'm on page 95, the too-detailed descriptions tend to slow me down. But I'm enjoying the story all in all. I love the irony and the scathing humor.
How about kicking off the discussion with Anna Bronski's wide skirt (Book 1, Chapter 1)? Was/Is the wearing of 4 layers a traditional thing in those parts?

[manolia]

I also, am about 200 pages into the book. I find Grass' vocabulary, similies, and metaphor's an abundant feast for the mind. The only problem I have... where to begin for a focus of discussion. Perhaps I will need to read on before I can find a starting point.

hehe i've been having the same problem..and hoping someone else might bring up a topic :D


I'm on page 95, the too-detailed descriptions tend to slow me down. But I'm enjoying the story all in all. I love the irony and the scathing humor.
How about kicking off the discussion with Anna Bronski's wide skirt (Book 1, Chapter 1)? Was/Is the wearing of 4 layers a traditional thing in those parts?

I don't think it's a traditional thing but part of the satire ;) it makes the funny incident of the encounter between Anna and her future husband even funnier and absurd..this part made me laugh out loud.
Perhaps Grass also wants to comment on Anna's practical nature and also give us a picture of how poor people were at those parts (?)

[bazarov]

You should cross over your principles because of many books. What difference can it make if the writer is alive or dead? The book stays the same...

What kind of principle would be then if you brake it whenever it suits you?

[Etienne]

But there are good principles and there are (with no insult meant) dumb ones. The dumb ones should be broken whenever one likes it.

Actually my point is that you should simply scratch this "principle"... just a friend's suggestion.

[Gladys]

As a Johnny-come-lately to reading, my first fabulous feast involved the novels of Patrick White, a dead Australian author. His first nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature (finally awarded in 1973) followed his 1961 novel, 'Riders in the Chariot', which deals, in part, with a German Jew. Mordecai Himmelfarb, a professor of English, flees Nazi Germany after Kristallnacht, only to suffer crucifixion in Australia while working on the assembly line at an outer-suburban, bicycle factory.

At page 95 of 'The Tin Drum', published in 1959, I am beginning to see pleasant similarities in style and approach between the two writers. Irony flows steadily.

[manolia]

Ok so what do you guys think about the two incidents that take place inside the church? (the first involves Oskar and little jesus and the second Oskar's "gang" and the fake ceremony)

[Scheherazade]

Got my book today!

[Gladys]

Read quickly, Scheherazade.

I'm at p.260, and adored the reference to Jan Bronski:

It was a skat card - the seven of spades. Many allusions in few words!

[bouquin]

hehe i've been having the same problem..and hoping someone else might bring up a topic :D



I don't think it's a traditional thing but part of the satire ;) it makes the funny incident of the encounter between Anna and her future husband even funnier and absurd..this part made me laugh out loud.
Perhaps Grass also wants to comment on Anna's practical nature and also give us a picture of how poor people were at those parts (?)




What does the skirt symbolize, if it does at all? And why 4 layers? The narrator avers that "skirts are masculine by nature." What is the basis for this reasoning and would you agree with it?

[Gladys]

What does the skirt symbolize, if it does at all? And why 4 layers? Anna's skirt protects Koljaiczek, and later Oskar, from a threatening world. The four layers act like the multi-layered armour-plating of an army tank - very masculine.

Security is important for pygmy Oskar, whose immediate family is ambiguous. Even his paternity problematic. So he hides his ability to speak and, later, to read. As a teenager, he fancies being considered a 3-year-old. Drumming, he finds, helps too.

[manolia]

What does the skirt symbolize, if it does at all? And why 4 layers? The narrator avers that "skirts are masculine by nature." What is the basis for this reasoning and would you agree with it?

Having read 2/3 of the book by now i think that indeed the skirt symbolizes something. Oskar in more than one instances wants to hide under his grandma's skirts. Her skirts are quite appealing to him. He even cherishes their buttery smell. I don't know how far you are in your reading, but there is a scene (possible spoiler) where Oskar pictures a family reunion inside his grandma. So grandma-skirts and all- is quite an important person for Oskar..her four skirts kind of reminds me a warm and protective womb (well, not a masculine figure)..i don't know what do you think?


Anna's skirt protects Koljaiczek, and later Oskar, from a threatening world. The four layers act like the multi-layered armour-plating of an army tank - very masculine.


I agree with what you say, but like i said above i am not sure about the masculine part.

[barbara0207]

What does the skirt symbolize, if it does at all? And why 4 layers? The narrator avers that "skirts are masculine by nature." What is the basis for this reasoning and would you agree with it?

The German language has three articles: der (masculine), die (feminine), das (neuter). Just like in French or Latin, gender is arbitrary with things. So it's 'der Rock' - the skirt.

But of course, that's only the language side. Associations here are the tanks as mentioned above, ancient Greeks wearing togas, Roman soldiers, Scottish men etc. Certainly they stand for protection, but there may be something else. If you hide under these skirts, you don't have to see what is going on outside.

[Scheherazade]

What a breath-taking start! Finding it hard to put it down (*shakes her fist at her RL obligations*)

Couple of questions...

Why does Oskar refers himself as "Oskar" every now and then?

He made himself stop growing up? :-/ Sounds like a desperate attempt to rationalise/explain an undesirable condition ("It did not happen to me... I made it happen")

We can talk about the drum forever and ever, I guess.


Has anyone read Owen Meany? The size and the voice reminded me of Owen... (not one of my favorite characters... nor books).

[Jozanny]

What a breath-taking start! Finding it hard to put it down (*shakes her fist at her RL obligations*)

Couple of questions...

Why does Oskar refers himself as "Oskar" every now and then?

He made himself from growing up? :-/ Sounds like a desperate attempt to rationalise/explain an undesirable condition ("It did not happen to me... I made it happen").

My take, Sche, on Oskar objectifying himself, is that it is meant to jar the reader as to Oskar's reliability, in terms of telling his own story. I accept that the first person narration may be held suspect, but Oskar is not a *classical* unreliable narrator, not in the Jamesian sense of psychological instability, at least to me.

When it is safe, I'd like to look at Oskar's mother and the eels; I will try to read the winds on when I can jump in here.:p Perhaps barbara can help me interpret certain episodes which simply elude me as an American reader. The take on the skirts is interesting!

[barbara0207]

Why does Oskar refers himself as "Oskar" every now and then?

He made himself from growing up? :-/ Sounds like a desperate attempt to rationalise/explain an undesirable condition ("It did not happen to me... I made it happen")



In this context one should note that the first person narrator starts with a confession: He admits that he is an inmate of an asylum. (Could anyone please quote the translated sentence? I've only got the book in German. Thanks.)

Oscar's first statement makes him a highly unreliable narrator. With this first sentence the author asks the reader to question everything Oskar says. So I think you are quite right to ask that question, Scheh, and I would have given a similar answer. Oskar wants to make us believe that refusing to grow was an act of protest, against his family, especially his father, and against the regime and that he needs his drum to express himself/his protest, eg when he disturbs the Nazi meeting by confusing the march music with his waltz rhythm. But is there really anything behind this so-called protest?

[Jozanny]

Oscar's first statement makes him a highly unreliable narrator. With this first sentence the author asks the reader to question everything Oskar says. So I think you are quite right to ask that question, Scheh, and I would have given a similar answer. Oskar wants to make us believe that refusing to grow was an act of protest, against his family, especially his father, and against the regime and that he needs his drum to express himself/his protest, eg when he disturbs the Nazi meeting by confusing the march music with his waltz rhythm. But is there really anything behind this so-called protest?

barbara, I agree with everything you post here, except, even in translation, I think Oskar's refusal to grow is more than a symptom of his own instability, which is why, to me, his voice is doing double duty here--yes, his birth and life is a magician's trick, but it is also an extended metaphor for German national immaturity, so the unreliable narrator is making significantly reliable observations.

[bouquin]

What a breath-taking start! Finding it hard to put it down (*shakes her fist at her RL obligations*)

Couple of questions...

Why does Oskar refers himself as "Oskar" every now and then?

He made himself from growing up? :-/ Sounds like a desperate attempt to rationalise/explain an undesirable condition ("It did not happen to me... I made it happen")

We can talk about the drum forever and ever, I guess.


Has anyone read Owen Meany? The size and the voice reminded me of Owen... (not one of my favorite characters... nor books).




I too became immediately interested in Oskar's habit of sometimes citing himself in the third person in the course of his narration. It gave me the impression that his story-telling is a kind of rough sketch (although for a rough sketch, it is rather dense), that he is just rambling on on the pages and leaves of ream paper that his keeper Bruno has provided him, without much thought or particular demands as to nouns, pronouns and the like. And I also think that it is in keeping in some way with his apparently being a psychiatric case: sometimes Oskar is he in the flesh, sometimes he is sort of detached to the person and speaks of him like some character other than himself.

I have read A Prayer for Owen Meany (I think it was discussed in the forum here last year?). There seems to be some uncanny similarities between Oskar and Owen. I'm wondering if John Irving did in fact get inspiration and influence from Gunter Grass when he wrote his book.

[Gladys]

Oscar's first statement makes him a highly unreliable narrator...Oskar wants to make us believe that refusing to grow was an act of protest…Mad or not, Oskar, like all of us, has reasons for what he says and does. His reasons, however feeble, are meticulously revealed through internal monologue and narrative. Are our reasons sane?

At p.350, I can’t judge whether Oskar's birth and life is 'an extended metaphor for German national immaturity', but it seems likely that the precocious infant has intuited something terrifying or distasteful about the people or culture around him. So he opts out.

As Bouquin says, 'sometimes he is sort of detached'.

[Jozanny]

Mad or not, Oskar, like all of us, has reasons for what he says and does. His reasons, however feeble, are meticulously revealed through internal monologue and narrative. Are our reasons sane?

At p.350, I can’t judge whether Oskar's birth and life is 'an extended metaphor for German national immaturity', but it seems likely that the precocious infant has intuited something terrifying or distasteful about the people or culture around him. So he opts out.

As Bouquin says, 'sometimes he is sort of detached'.

Well, unless we literally want to see Oskar as a sufferer of achondroplasia (dwarfism), and I really don't, I think his character is an incarnation born out of irrational zealotry, but for me that is the easy part of the novel, which I readily admit is difficult to a near point of deterrence, which is in part why I am not fully rereading it with the club--but I am not fully cognizant on the eels, and that episode is an important part of the book, sinister and humorous both, as Grass manages. There are other highlights, too.

As to the drum, which Sche says we could talk about forever, :p, it is at once instantly accessible and distracting. Drumbeats certainly keep brownshirts marching, but they also deafen, and disrupt.

[Gladys]

I am not fully cognizant on the eelsWith the perspicacity of an infant, Oskar sees the unpleasant in life: being Jewish, Polish, an arsonist, an adulterer, a dwarf, a heartless child, a gang member, a bully, a brownshirt, a patriot, a coward, a war victim, a paedophile, and an eel. So rather than live, Oskar flirts with life.

Likewise, his mother Agnes, a nurse in WW1, sees something in eels – in death, in decay, in ugliness, in foreignness, in food, in life – that repels and terrifies her. She attempts to assimilate but dies in the attempt. Will Oskar do better?

[Jozanny]

Likewise, his mother Agnes, a nurse in WW1, sees something in eels – in death, in decay, in ugliness, in foreignness, in food, in life – that repels and terrifies her. She attempts to assimilate but dies in the attempt. Will Oskar do better?

I'd like to look at a passage of text should I be able to find the time to do so over the weekend. I don't have a scanner, which would be useful in this instance. Maybe it's just me, but certain things nag me, and are flagged, as if I've allowed the import to get away, and Grass does very much evoke a certain fairytale quality to his extraordinarily vivid accounts.

[Scheherazade]

I have read only 1/3 of the book so far but I am not sure if Oskar is 'an extended metaphor for German national immaturity'. On the contrary, I think he is symbolizing the opposition, whose efforts were immature and insignificant. In the face of Nazi movement, their efforts were ridiculous (childsihly weak) such as trying to disrupt their parades with feeble drumming.

The repeated use of "Oskar" for self makes me think of some kind of SPD. Is he actually trying to distance himself from "Oskar"?

Eels are interesting... Wondering if they symbolize something like our failures and/or sins (church going and eels sort of coincide). The mother used to eat eels fine till she was forced to view the reality of their catch. She was leading a life far from perfect (sinful?) with her affairs and willingness to accept little gifts from other guys. When she started attending the Church, I think, she has actually realised the extent of her "sins" and was unable to cope with it (and probably it was too late for her to make any ammends). Hence, even though she is disgusted by the site of eels, she eats them till she dies; similarly, even though she realises her "sinful" ways, she carries on till she dies (pregnancy being a result of her affair).

Should note here that I don't like reading the sparknotes and such for my leisure reading so my theories might be well off the mark and not learned enough for some; please accept my apologies.

[Gladys]

I'm at page 400.

I am not sure if Oskar is 'an extended metaphor for German national immaturity'. On the contrary, I think he is symbolizing the opposition, whose efforts were immature and insignificant. Oscar seems to show loyalty to no one.


The repeated use of "Oskar" for self makes me think of some kind of SPD. Is he actually trying to distance himself from "Oskar"? Similarly, Oscar eschews responsibility for his own behaviour, although his conscience might bother him later (e.g. the execution of his 'father', Jan Bronski; and maybe his 'step-father', Alfred Matzerath).


Eels are interesting... Wondering if they symbolize something like our failures and/or sins If sins, Agnes had recourse to the absolution of Father Wiehnke. Is there explicit evidence that Roman Catholicism ultimately failed her? Of course, the horse’s head connotes death: the wages of sin. Are the eels, Satan's emissaries from Hell?

[Gladys]

Ok so what do you guys think about the two incidents that take place inside the church? (the first involves Oskar and little Jesus and the second Oskar's "gang" and the fake ceremony)
Grandson of an arsonist, Oskar has little respect for authority or symbols of authority - except perhaps the dwarf Bembra. He mocks and undermines law and order, both secular and religious, yet he himself becomes a charismatic gang leader with divine pretensions. Is there some parallel here with Adolf Hitler?

[mickitaz]

Wow. Okay, step away for a couple of days; and you miss out! ;)

I also was wondering what the significance was to Oskar refering to himself as "Oskar". Since he is in an asylum, perhaps this is just a symbolic reference to his detachment from reality. Or rather than providing a subjective view on the stories he references, he feels this provides an objective view.

[manolia]

Grandson of an arsonist, Oskar has little respect for authority or symbols of authority - except perhaps the dwarf Bembra. He mocks and undermines law and order, both secular and religious, yet he himself becomes a charismatic gang leader with divine pretensions. Is there some parallel here with Adolf Hitler?

Hmmm..good point. There may be a paralllel.
In that case what does Bembra symbolise? Why is he so important..in the beginning when Oskar and Bembra first meet, they instantly recognise one another as being of the same kind and Bembra says that he stopped growing up when he was about 10 years old or something. I wonder if that also has a historical significance. What was the historical background when Bembra stopped growing up? Was it WW1, but we never get to learn his real age, only that he looks ancient. Yet Bembra becomes an official Nazi entertainer and he convinces Oskar to follow along. But also he claims that it is better to play in front of the stage and not under it..I was thinking about it a lot.

[bouquin]

What a coincidence, I was on holiday in Normandy last month and had the opportunity to take photos of some of the WW2 German bunkers that dot the landscape there.... the concrete pillboxes of Corporal Lankes.


http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=161&pictureid=1986


http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=161&pictureid=1987


http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=161&pictureid=1985


http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=161&pictureid=1278


http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=161&pictureid=1988

[Gladys]

.... the concrete pillboxes of Corporal Lankes. The pillboxes are bigger than I imagined.

Now at p.450. Son Kurt is selling lighter flints. Having failed to follow in the footsteps of his drummer father, Kurt takes after his great grandfather, the arsonist Joseph Koljaiczek/Wranka/Colchic.

I'm hooked but am finding the mass of descriptive narrative and internal monologue heavy going.

[Jozanny]

Thank you for those images bouquin! I think the pill boxes went over my head at the time, though I am not positive. Wish I could stop everything else and join in, but my writer's block is over, and even though I may not score any pitches for a while, given the economic implosion, I have been getting back to work. Back on topic though, broadly: Perhaps the very richness of the exposition is a detraction, now that I think about it. I am a fairly educated reader, as I assume the rest of you are, and like Gladys, I was hooked to the story, but the novel exhausted me, mentally and to some degree, emotionally.

I may come back at a later date and add some things, since I know where to find you :).

[SleepyWitch]

I have read A Prayer for Owen Meany (I think it was discussed in the forum here last year?). There seems to be some uncanny similarities between Oskar and Owen. I'm wondering if John Irving did in fact get inspiration and influence from Gunter Grass when he wrote his book.

yep, John Irving did base Owen on Oskar. I don't quite remember whether he studied German Lit, but at any rate he took a term abroad in Vienna (Austria).

this discussion makes me want to read the book again (but I haven't got the time to do it at the moment) :( I read it in school and liked it a lot. if I can find it I might have a look at it, despite my exam preparation...

[manolia]

Eels are interesting... Wondering if they symbolize something like our failures and/or sins (church going and eels sort of coincide).

Or they can simply be a phallic symbol :D

(it does coincide with the story)

[bazarov]

I gave up.

[bouquin]

Thank you for those images bouquin! I think the pill boxes went over my head at the time, though I am not positive. Wish I could stop everything else and join in, but my writer's block is over, and even though I may not score any pitches for a while, given the economic implosion, I have been getting back to work. Back on topic though, broadly: Perhaps the very richness of the exposition is a detraction, now that I think about it. I am a fairly educated reader, as I assume the rest of you are, and like Gladys, I was hooked to the story, but the novel exhausted me, mentally and to some degree, emotionally.

I may come back at a later date and add some things, since I know where to find you :).




I too was left exhausted. If that is the intention of the novel then it certainly succeeded as far as I'm concerned! It was a relief to finish reading it; The Tin Drum is one of those works that, at the end, doesn't make me crave for more. I usually cry over stories whose principal characters are young ones who are left to fend for themselves but I must admit that I just couldn't establish any emotional bond with Oskar.

[Gladys]

It was a relief to finish reading it...I must admit that I just couldn't establish any emotional bond with Oskar. At p.550, I've found the last 100 pages the least enthralling - more of the same and rather slow moving. Isn't a good book supposed to improve as you approach the end? Nevertheless, there's now a faint hint of something novel. I shall tackle the ending with great expectations.

As for establishing an ‘emotional bond with Oskar’, I feel I understand but rather dislike him. Still, I'm far from sure.

[Gladys]

[Oskar's] birth and life is a magician's trick, but it is also an extended metaphor for German national immaturity. Though still at p.550, on waking in the night, a jigsaw fell into place. Here's the view of a 6th generation Australian of pure German descent:


Oskar is your middle-of-the-road German born in the aftermath of WW1. He comes from a typical German extended family, with its smattering of Polish, Russian and English contamination. Naturally, there's the odd agitator/arsonist in the family tree and a full measure of emotional, sexual and marital ambiguities.

Like so many Germans, Oskar curtails his ethical and social development at three-years-old. Rather than participating positively in the world around him, he makes sporadic intrusions through drum-beats or high-pitched vocalisations before retreating under the four skirts of his German grandmother, Anna Bronski. While Oskar has mixed fortunes in avoiding the ravages of war, in imitation of the Fuhrer, he briefly assumes messianic leadership a gang.

Following WW1, Oskar, like many Germans, was aware of a Zeitgeist that was to culminate in Hitler's Third Reich. An optimal response was to consciously restrict physical development and social behaviour to the level of a late-developing 3-year-old, so as to avoid responsibility and culpability for events substantially outside of one's control.

Over the years, several memorable incidents continue play on Oskar's mind. Not least, the curious incident of slimy eels devouring a horse’s head…a horse’s brain. His mother Agnes was blessed with a Good Friday vision of the true state of the German psyche, although it was too much, too soon. Of course, Oscar and Matzerath saw nothing, but the sensitive Jan Bronski 'though weak, led Agnes away'.

After WW2, Oskar and many Germans, with stunted development, chose to grow into adulthood: as Bebra observes, Oskar is no longer three-foot-tall. But four-foot-two is hardly adult stature, nor is his altered behaviour exactly mature.

I’ll read on, today.

[Gladys]

I finished on the weekend. It’s a cryptic book that keeps one thinking, but I found the reading rather a chore. Here’s a few thoughts that seem to have settled.

Kurt, Oskar’s son and the new generation in Germany, is doing fine, top of the class. Young Maria, Kurt’s mother, is comfortably married to her boss. Oskar approaching thirty, has also survived, but being older, saw too much. He chooses to climbs Jacob’s Ladder to incarceration for murder, though not the ones he was accessory to. Oskar is haunted by the black witch of past decades, and the possibility of an unjust exoneration and release. Shunning just such a possibility, his ‘German’ mother, Agnes, suffered and died for sins, some of which were her own.

Joseph Koljaiczek/Wranka/Colchic, Oskar’s fiery Polish grandfather, first escaped to the sanctuary under his wife’s skirts, and is said to have escaped from a lethal threat to a great American dream. Jan Bonski, Oskar’s father of uncertain nationality, died in a most reluctant defence of Poland. Matzerath, Oskar’s presumptive German father, choked on his Nazi allegiance in dying for his country. Anna Bronski, Oskar’s grandmother, who had afforded him long-standing, material security, was herself concealed behind an Iron Curtain.

Let us not forget Meyn, the sadistic trumpeter; Albrecht Greff’s creative suicide; the war contribution of a dwarf troupe; Herbert’s violent liaison with Niobe; the informer Lucy Rennwand; nurses; Raskolnikov and repentance; the Polish Mr. Fajngold and his ‘family’; the brazen, creative Corporal Lankes; Bruno and string; poor Victor, the myopic Jew, executed in an on-going search for post-war German identify; and many others.

So these were the German people in the first half of the twentieth century, murky syntheses of Rasputin and Goethe?

Or I have missed something more important?

[Scheherazade]

I am taking a break from this book because I have started to read fewer and fewer pages.

[Gladys]

Are Bouquin and I alone in finishing the book in October?

The discussion was so spirited early.

[Jozanny]

Gladys,

I am very impressed with your analysis. Since I may be a prisoner of unfortunate circumstance for some time, maybe I will reread, closer if I can, and at least add some highlights. Perhaps there is something to be said for approaching difficult novels with caution. TD is very readable, even in translation, but it is hard to understand, much like James's very late masterworks.

[Gladys]

it is hard to understand, much like James's very late masterworks. Jozanny, a relative studied the far-from-late 'Washington Square' at high school this year. Both Literature classes at the school and their teachers believed the book was about a girl, jilted by a gold-digger, finding herself!

[Jozanny]

It has been a long time since I've read Washington Square, mmm. When I am under stress I tend to latch onto James, so maybe I will download a nice font e-text, since I don't own my own copy. I have a fairly decent James library, including his travel writings (which for some reason I have never finished!) but I do not own it all, and actually do not want to read his letters extant--odd I guess, about that, but since I am not a professional scholar, owning an edition of his letters seems too much to me. Some mystery should be left.

On topic: And this is just off the top of my head, but for me the most remarkable episode in TD is The Onion Cellar. The chapter brought me to tears, and it is still vivid, even though I did not do any rereading for this discussion. It made the entire novel worth it for me.

[Gladys]

...for me the most remarkable episode in TD is The Onion Cellar. The chapter brought me to tears... The importance of remorse:


One couple, Gerhard and Gudrun, wept for each other's facial hair - he, Gerhard, had none and she, Gudrun, had to shave her beard in vain...

Once the customers were done weeping, Oskar's band provided a transition back to normal life. Scholle was forever happy, Klepp laughed at the tears, and Oskar was one of the few in the world who could still cry without onions. Schmuh, for his part, never used his onions, but instead shot sparrows...

[Jozanny]

The passage you cite reminds me why I feel I must buy a critical companion to the novel at some point--Grass seems to always be alluding to fairy tales--isn't there something with killing sparrows in it in Grimm? And the facial hair too seems to warn the reader, recall something, though I've never read Goethe. Isn't that a terrible admission? :)