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In October, we will be reading The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass.
Please post your comments and questions in this thread.
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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.
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 ;)
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:
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.
Janine:Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
Damn! I don't read live writers...
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by 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 .
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
Should I cross over my principles because of this book? :) Help!
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'.
Yes do :)Quote:
Originally Posted by bazarov
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 :)
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.
Thank you engineer, I am going to library right now...:)Quote:
Originally Posted by manolia
Gladys, glad to see you...AGAIN!:lol:
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.
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...Quote:
Originally Posted by bazarov
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.
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?
hehe i've been having the same problem..and hoping someone else might bring up a topic :DQuote:
Originally Posted by mickitaz
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
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 kind of principle would be then if you brake it whenever it suits you?Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
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.
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)
Got my book today!
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!
Quote:
Originally Posted by 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?
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
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.
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?Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
I agree with what you say, but like i said above i am not sure about the masculine part.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gladys
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
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.
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).
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
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!
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.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by barbara0207
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
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.
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?Quote:
Originally Posted by barbara0207
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gladys
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.
With 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.Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gladys
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.
I'm at page 400.
Oscar seems to show loyalty to no one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
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).Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
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?Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
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?Quote:
Originally Posted by manolia