“Günter Grass: Bad
Boys and Fairy Tales”
Leonard’s walk through the works of Gunter Grass. He
declares Grass’s Tin Drum trilogy a
masterwork, but is both impressed and discouraged that the rest of Grass’
novels were so blatantly about his political experiences. Leonard writes:
Against
the shameful fatherland…Gunter Grass-pariah, traitor, Dennis the Menace-sticks
out his Tin Drum (1959). He will wash
the taste of shame out of the mouth of the German language. This seems to me
exemplary.
This essay is chock full of references that I don’t
recognize. It would take me a week to even find them all in Wikipedia. If I
need this depth of understanding of Germanic philosophy, history and folk ore
to “get” Grass, I think I’ll have to pass.
Good Grass quote from Local Anesthetic (1969): Bring
rational “doesn’t prevent you from being stupid.”
New word: Unsterblichkeitsbedurfnis = German for
metaphysics.
New
learning: Group 47 was a band of German writers (from both the East and the
West) who met, briefly, after the war (in 1947)…Grass was a member.
Scary kid from the film version of Tin Drum:
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