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The greatest German novel since the end of World War II, The Tin Drum is the autobiography of Oskar Matzerath, thirty years old, detained in a mental hospital, convicted of a murder he did not commit. On the day of his third birthday, Oskar had "declared, resolved, and determined [to] stop right there, remain as I was, stay the same size, cling to the same attire" (striped pullover and patent-leather shoes). That same day Oskar receives his first tin drum, and from then on it is the means of his expression, allowing him to draw forth memories from the past as well as judgments about the horrors, injustices, and eccentricities he observes through the long nightmare of the Nazi era. As that era ebbs bloodily away, as drum succeeds drum, Oskar participates in the German postwar economic miracle -- working variously in the black market, as an artist's model, in a troupe of traveling musicians. With the onset of affluence and fame, Oskar decides to grow a few inches, only to develop a humpback. But despite his newfound status (and stature), Oskar remains haunted by the deaths of his parents, afflicted by his responsibility for past sins -- and so assumes guilt for a murder he did not commit as an act of atonement and an opportunity to find consolation.The rhythms of Oskar's drums are intricate and insistent, and they lead us, often by way of shocking fantasies, through the dark forest of German history. Through Oskar's piercing, outspoken voice and deformed little figure, through the imaginative distortion and exaggeration of historical experience, a pathetically hilarious yet startlingly true portrayal of the human situation comes into view.
The setting is Danzig during World War II. The narrator recalls a boyhood scene in which a black cat pounces on his friend Mahlke's "mouse"-his prominent Adam's apple. This incident sets off a wild series of events that ultimately leads to Mahlke's becoming a national hero. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
Günter Grass's "Danzig-Quintet" by Katharina Hall Pdf
This study extends the long-established notion of Grass's 'Danzig Trilogy' to that of the 'Danzig Quintet' - a literary project of epic proportions, which explores the evolution of Germany's relationship to its Nazi past over a period of forty years. The interlocking stories of Die Blechtrommel (1959), Katz und Maus (1961), Hundejahre (1963), örtlich betäubt (1969) and Im Krebsgang (2002) are mediated by the memory and language of seven first-person narrators. Using the dual conceptualisation of memory developed by Freud and Lacan - 'reliving' versus 'recollecting' the past - the author shows how these narrators' accounts assert the reality of the Holocaust (as well as German wartime suffering), while highlighting the reluctance of ordinary Germans to admit their involvement in the Nazi regime. This delineation of the complex relationship of three generations to their history is deepened by the intertextual nature of the quintet. Using the theory of Peter Brooks, Umberto Eco, Shoshana Felman and Hayden White, the study explores how Grass's textual strategies encourage the reader to view all five works as one overarching narrative, while simultaneously avoiding any literary or historical closure. In the process, the study places each book in the context of its moment of production, and also considers the implications of Grass's belated admission, in August 2006, that he served with the Waffen-SS during the final months of World War Two.
The Politics of Remembrance in the Novels of Günter Grass by Alex Donovan Cole Pdf
This manuscript argues for the importance of Günter Grass as a political thinker in addition to his status as a novelist and public intellectual, capable of forming ethical responses to contemporary issues like neoliberalism and place of the petit bourgeoisie in social life. I define Grass’s trajectory as a thinker through his novels and speeches. Primarily, I draw attention to the role memory plays in Grass’s thought: that his work represented an intellectual and aesthetic response to the role Nazism continued to play in West German politics in the post war era. To Grass, Nazism represented a resurgent threat unaddressed following the end of World War II. Later, Grass amended his concept of memory politics to address neoliberal capitalism, reiterating his radicalism and affirming the need for German society to resist the rise of extreme ideologies.
Günter Grass and His Critics by Siegfried Mews Pdf
A comprehensive narrative overview and analysis of the criticism of the controversial German author's works. When the Swedish Academy announced that Günter Grass had been awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, it singled out his first novel The Tin Drum (1959, English translation 1963) as a seminal work that had signaled thepostwar rebirth of German letters, auguring "a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction." Nearly fifty years after its publication, the novel's significance has been generally acknowledged: it is the uncontested favorite among Grass's works of fiction on the part of reading public and critics alike, yet its canonical status tends to obscure the decidedly mixed and even hostile reactions it initially elicited. Along with The Tin Drum, Grass's impressive body of literary work since the 1950s has spawned a cottage industry of Grass criticism, making a reliable guide through the thicket of sometimes contradictory readings a definite desideratum. SiegfriedMews fills this lacuna in Grass scholarship by way of a detailed but succinct, descriptive as well as analytical and evaluative overview of the scholarship from 1959 to 2005. Grass's politically motivated interventions in publicdiscourse have kept him highly visible, blurring the boundaries between politics and aesthetics. Mews therefore examines not only academic criticism but also the daily and weekly press (and other news media), providing additionalinsight into the reception of Grass's works. Siegfried Mews is Professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Günter Grass was Germany’s foremost writer for more than half a century, and his books were and remain best-sellers across the world. The Tin Drum was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1979, and the memoir Peeling the Onion astounded readers by revealing Grass had been drafted into the military wing of the SS, a ruthless component of the Nazi war machine, in the closing months of World War II. Grass also wrote memorably about the German student movement, feminism, and German reunification, and was a key influence on magical realist authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie, as well as on the popular novelist John Irving. Günter Grass is the first biography in English of this Nobel Prize–winning writer. Julian Preece introduces both Grass’s key works and political activities, chronicling his interaction with major figures from literary and public life like holocaust poet Paul Celan, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and cofounder of the Red Army Faction Ulrike Meinhof. From Grass’s campaigning as a citizen for the anti-Nazi resistor and Social Democrat leader Willy Brandt to his more recent invectives against free-market capitalism, Preece places Grass’s fiction and public work in the context of Cold War European politics and post-unification Germany, painting an indelible portrait of a writer who reinvented the postwar German novel and redefined the role of literary commitment.
This is a uniquely authoritative study of German history between the mid-eighteenth century and the formation of the Bismarckian Reich. This is an extensive account of social and cultural, as well as political developments and shows that the creation of a Prussian-led nation-state should not be seen as 'natural' or inevitable.
Günter Grass and the Genders of German Memory by Timothy Bruce Malchow Pdf
The first book to examine the connection between gender and memory in Grass's oeuvre, which is especially timely in light of current concerns about male privilege.
“A final book like no other” from the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Tin Drum: poetry and meditations on writing, aging, and living until the end (The Irish Times). In spite of the trials of old age, and with the end in sight, Günter Grass weaves his life’s reflections together into a witty and elegiac swansong: love letters, soliloquies, jealous musings, social satire, and moments of happiness long to be shared. As the inimitable German fabulist lives his remaining days, his passion for writing spurs in him new life. His final work is a creation filled with wisdom and defiance. In a striking interplay of poetry, lyric prose, and drawings, this diverse assemblage is a moving farewell gift—a sensual, melancholy summation of a life fully lived. “Elegant musings on dying and, most poignantly, living.” —Kirkus Reviews “A glorious gift, a final salute true to the singular creativity of the most human, and humane, of artists.” —The Irish Times “A thoughtful, uncompromising meditation on death and aging . . . He describes loss, change, and memory with a combination of melancholy and wit.” —Publishers Weekly
The Cambridge Companion to Günter Grass by Stuart Taberner Pdf
Günter Grass is Germany's best-known and internationally most successful living author, from his first novel The Tin Drum to his recent controversial autobiography. He is known for his tireless social and political engagement with the issues that have shaped post-War Germany: the difficult legacy of the Nazi past, the Cold War and the arms race, environmentalism, unification and racism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999. This Companion offers the widest coverage of Grass's oeuvre across the range of media in which he works, including literature, television and visual arts. Throughout, there is particular emphasis on Grass's literary style, the creative personality which inhabits all his work, and the impact on his reputation of revelations about his early involvement with Nazism. The volume sets out, in a fresh and lively fashion, the fundamentals that students and readers need in order to understand Grass and his individual works.
Here, Gunter Grass writes of great events and seemingly trivial ones, of technical developments and scientific discoveries, of achievements in culture, sport, of megolamania, persecution and murder, war and disasters and of new beginnnings.
The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature tells the story of two old men in Berlin -- one a former East German cultural functionary, the other a former mid-level spy -- observing life in the former German Democratic Republic after the fall of the Wall in 1989. Grass weaves a deeply human story laced with pain and humor in equal measure.
Gunter Grass and his wife, Ute, spent six months in Calcutta, 1987-1988. Throughout, Grass kept a diary in words and drawings that record everyday sights: the poverty, the heat, the resigned anxiety of those who no longer have anything to wait for. Showing one's tongue in Bengali is an experession of shame. And shame is what Grass, as a man and as a citizen of one of the most prosperous countries in the world, feels about the human condition in India. -- taken from p. 4 of cover.