Reading 1001 discussion

Read 2013
The story is about a small person (dwarf) named Oskar Matzerath who decides to quit growing at age three. We first meet him in a mental hospital where he is being held for a murder. Oskar is obsessed with red and white drums which he uses to tell his story. He also can cut glass with his screams. It is also the story of pre-war Poland and Germany, the rise of Hitler, defeat of Poland and defeat and partition of Germany. I am going to take a quote from the 1001 Books 2006 edition because I could never have come up with this on my own, “Oskar is the voice of an asocial, those Nazis considered to belong to life unworthy of life. Grass draws on the picaresque tradition to map out his dwarf drummer’s journey through a brutal and brutalizing era in European history, but he also reinvents the traditions of popular culture despised by the Nazis as degenerate art. Fairy tales, the carnivalesque, the harlequin, the mythological trickster--all jostle and combine in the The Tin Drum to reveal the deathlike inhumanity of the rationalization of racial hygiene. I can say that looking back, all that is there. I also can say that the author is extremely talented wordsmith. Here is one example, ...and there deposited the hollow metallic cylinder, slightly tapered at the front end, which had lodged a lead kernel until someone with a curved forefinger had exerted just enough pressure to evict the lead projectile and start it on its death-dealing change of habitat. (all to say an empty cartridge that someone had shot from a gun).

Another example of his writing, “when every male who could stand halfway erect was being shipped to Verdun to undergo a radical change of posture from the vertical to the eternal horizontal”.

“China crying out for a bull” and

“even bad books are books and therefore sacred”

I just wish I could have liked it but I couldn’t. I didn’t like reading it and audio was just a way to bulldoze my way to the end. I didn’t like the sexual innuendos. They were quite clever though. Oskar had no redeeming qualities and most of the characters were grotesque. I can’t recommend that anyone should read this book but if you really like reading all kinds of magical realism, and you have an interest in the history of Poland and post war Germany perhaps you would like to tackle this one.

I hated the first book I read by this author, so I went into this one with much lower expectations. Well, I actually enjoyed this book. Sure, Oskar is awful, and so are most of the other characters, but the book is well-written, with lots of highly quotable passages, and genuinely funny scenes. The overall novel is still a bit heavy, but far more readable and entertaining than most of the longer German novels I've read so far.
I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads, though I'd go for 4.5 if we had half-stars.

Rating: 4 stars

This is the story of Oskar Matzerath, a dwarf with an obsession for toy drums, who relates his story from incarceration in a mental institution. Oskar is far from a likable character and he is an unreliable narrator. He becomes a dwarf by choice and rebels against his fathers ambitions for him in the grocery business.

This book is very complex with lots of symbolism. It is essentially is the story of the dramatic changes that occurred during the 20th century.

I got to visit Gdańsk, the main setting of the novel, a couple of years ago. It was part of Germany during the Grass' childhood, but is now part of Poland. That area has had a complicated history over the last few hundred years.

I gave this book 4 stars. Oskar was an awful and creepy character in a lot of ways (especially his weird misogyny and bizarre ideas about being born a complete adult despite staying incredibly childish): and I liked that he was grotesque not because of his dwarfism, but because of all the ways he is alike other awful men.

I like how his sense of dwarf supremacy mimics the ridiculousness of the Nazi ideology of racial supremacy. I also found his adventures through this era to be interesting.

Oskar is an example of the unreliable POV if ever there was one.

Pre-2016 review:

*** 1/2

Oskar Matzerath refused to grow up any further once he reached three. Armed with his red and white tin drum and a voice that can pierce glass, he meanders in this picaresque novel through pre-war Danzig, then a Free City, its residents and his family; their lives throughout the German invasion; his semi-exile with a troupe of dwarfs entertaining the German army; his return and dealings with the Dusters, a band of hoodlums akin to the Resistance; his exile in Dusseldorf where he became a jazz celebrity to finally be interned in a psychiatric institution. Imbued with magical realism, this novel depicts many aspects of life in Danzig (now Gdansk) under the struggle between German and Polish influences and, to some extent, some events of the author's life. At times, it felt like I was reading the script of a Fellini movie, with its grotesque and malformed characters. I quite enjoyed this book and was ready to give it four stars when I finished the second part; however, the third and last part, away from Danzig after the war, was so-so and not as magical as the first two parts.