You did … offer an original solution to the postwar problem of being German in The Tin Drum, and that is never to grow past the age of three. Your protagonist Oskar Matzerath is a freak whose “mental development is complete at birth,” and who decides to remain two-and-a-half feet tall for the rest of his life. In this absurd condition, Oskar encounters the horrors of the Second World War like an undersized Simplicissimus, leaving death and madness around him. I never finished your book; I think I stopped after Oskar’s mother killed herself by eating the most disgusting fish in the world.
Monday, April 09, 2012
Well put …
… Spengler — An Open Letter to Günter Grass.
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This story sure is stirring the pot. Persona non grata isn't enough. How about retracting a Nobel Prize: An effort to reverse the Nobel Academy award to Gunter Grass. Here's a quote:
ReplyDelete"Gunter Grass received the Nobel Prize in part for his apparent protest against the Holocaust, his country’s persecution, then extermination of the Jews. Except, as things now come to light, Gunter Grass is not that which he self-represents."
I'm thinking that Israel might reverse the persona non grata thing, in order to tar and feather. Here's Haaretz:
An undesirable policy: German author Gunter Grass, a Nobel laureate for literature, did no more than write a poem. The State of Israel, through its interior minister, reacted with hysteria.