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The Tin Drum (The Danzig Trilogy #1)

by Günter Grass, Ralph Manheim (Translator)

3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 · rating details · 15,508 ratings · 708 reviews

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass is a classic of Western Literature. Sardonic in tone and exuberant in its condemnation of the late 20th century world and its values, The Tin Drum is a picture of a world in upheaval. Told through the eyes of dwarf, it was Grass's first novel and it catapulted him to fame.The Tin Drum is a portrait of German society from the 1930s to the 1950s....more The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass is a classic of Western Literature. Sardonic in tone and exuberant in its condemnation of the late 20th century world and its values, The Tin Drum is a picture of a world in upheaval. Told through the eyes of dwarf, it was Grass's first novel and it catapulted him to fame.The Tin Drum is a portrait of German society from the 1930s to the 1950s. The narrator of the story is Oskar Matzerath. He tells his story from the confines of an insane asylum where he is being held for a murder he did not commit. The fact that it is Oskar who is sane and the world that is mad is inconsequential because this is a world where values are inverted, the tragic is comic and the insane are sane. The narrative technique of the novel is based on the surrealistic style of the earlier German writer Franz Kafka and is closely related to the magic realism we find in the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie. Unnatural occurrences, essentially metaphoric events, are written as natural occurrences.Born in the free city of Danzig on the Baltic coast, it is on his third birthday that Oskar makes a momentous decision. By sheer force of will, he decides he is not going to grow any more. Already possessing the full mental faculties of an adult, Oskar is complete inside and out, free from the constraints and patterns of the rest of the world by being able to chose his own destiny. It is this assertion of Oskar's individuality over what the state or society expects him to be that makes The Tin Drum a modern classic andsucha strong statement against a German society that has in its history so blindly conformed to a state-sponsored notion of thought and decorum. The later period of Oskar's life is crammed with absurdist details#58; the death of his mother from a diet of fish, a diet started after witnessing a horrible scene of eels being pulled from the head of a dead horse. Another, the death of Oskar's friend Herbert Truczinski as he attempts to make love to a wooden ship figurehead. Finally, there is the death of his father and he tries to hide his Nazi affiliation from the invading Russians by swallowing a pin that Oskar has forced into his hand#58; each event in this period being dramatically metaphoric. After the war, Oskar moves to Dusseldorf in West Germany. It is there that he is charged with he murder of Sister Dorothea Kongetter. Oskar submits to being found insane and atones for guilt not truly his.The Tin Drum is a mock epic of Germany, through rise, fall, and rebirth; a chronicle of both Western Europe's, and the world's, madness as it convulses and becomes inverted, where tragedy and comedy live intertwined. It is a masterful world of surrealism, which will shock, amuse, and cause one to reflect.(less)

Paperback, 592 pages

Published May 12th 1980 by Vintage (first published 1959)

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Apr 04, 2007 Tia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Your [intellectual] inner beast.

Shelves: amongthebestiveread

I had an intense reaction to this book. I friggin hated it. Or, rather, I loved to hate it, while I was reading it. It was an assignment in a Postmodern Lit. class, and everyone in the class liked the protagonist but me. I thought he was awful. I couldn't believe they enjoyed him, much less admitted to enjoying him. But some part of me must have understood.

...That was the point. This is a story I felt in my stomach. It was so full of perversion, of the grotesque, and I was 20 and a "good girl" a...more

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Sep 29, 2011 Noce rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

GRRRRRR come GRass

Del fatto che Gunter scrivesse bene ci si accorge subito.
Soprattutto quando passa dalla prima alla terza persona con la leggerezza con cui il barista di fiducia, ti chiede se “oggi il croissant lo vuole alla marmellata o al cioccolato?”.
L’idea di basare la storia su un cambio di prospettiva è decisamente estrosa, e verrà persino ripresa in una famosa scena di un film altrettanto noto di fine anni ’80, in cui un insegnante di lettere invita i suoi studenti a salire sul banco, pe...more

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Jan 23, 2008 Jamie B. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jamie by: Nathan, 'A Novel Idea' bookclub

Shelves: favorites

The plot, characters, and setting are all top-notch, but what makes Drum a stellar read is its tone. A reviewer might have described it as 'sardonically irreverant' had not Waiting for Guffman been the source of the phrase. Dripping with arrogance and wit against a macabre backdrop, The Tin Drum follows our sturdy-at-three-feet protagonist Oskar from his vivid recollections of his own birth through Hitler's occupations of Danzig, DE and Oskar's familial Poland through many other no doubt excitin...more The plot, characters, and setting are all top-notch, but what makes Drum a stellar read is its tone. A reviewer might have described it as 'sardonically irreverant' had not Waiting for Guffman been the source of the phrase. Dripping with arrogance and wit against a macabre backdrop, The Tin Drum follows our sturdy-at-three-feet protagonist Oskar from his vivid recollections of his own birth through Hitler's occupations of Danzig, DE and Oskar's familial Poland through many other no doubt exciting and bleak adventures that I haven't yet encountered in reading.

A tangent on the tone: Oskar's concern for his selfish desires while bullets are firing around him, etc. make me laugh, but also make me remember in different contexts how I reacted to the most horrific events of my own lifetime. I kept a diary in middle school and took great care to document events like the OKC bombing with the utmost reverance and professionalism. But the truth was, the day of the bombing sucked because we had to wait outside in our show choir dresses in the rain because some kid called in a copycat bomb threat to our school the same day. And that's the side of the story that The Tin Drum presents; that's what separates this story from so many others written with similar subject matter and makes this one the diamond in the rough.

Quickly, one other observation-or-tangent before I get back to reading (or watching Letterman): I've been reading up on my Greek and Roman gods to get better at crosswords, and just the other day, I read the story of Cupid. Cupid (aka Eros), the god of Love, is depicted as a child, like a tiny cherub. Cupid was a mama's boy (mama = Venus) and never left her side. Venus was worried that her son would never grow, but some wise god or other told her that Cupid would never grow until he himself found love. And until then, Cupid was a michievous god: he would shoot his arrows at people to make them fall in love, yes, but he would often shoot at people who were mismatched or who didn't want to fall in love. He was never without his arrows and went on, rooted somewhere between love and mischief, until he fell in love with-- oh, I forget who it was. But you can see the parallels! I believe that Grass's Oskar is the story of Cupid told through a series of anecdotes set in WWII Germany. I bet Grass as a young child was obsessed with the story of Cupid and his struggle between right and wrong the way young Oskar is obsessed with reading the contrasting material of Rasputin and Goethe. And in art, Cupid is repeatedly depicted as a young (naked) boy of 3 or 4 with fair skin and shiny golden locks...exactly like Oskar and exactly like the semblance of Jesus upon which Oskar is fixated. I have to believe that Grass-the-author married his own childhood obsession with the mischeivous physically stunted Cupid with a tongue in cheek account of his own wartime experiences and yielded one of the greatest works of the twentieth century. But hey, it's just a theory.(less)

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Feb 11, 2008 Dan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My reaction to finishing this book was 'thank god that's over'. I thought it was interesting in the abstract, but at times I couldn't stand reading it. The unreliable main character Oskar, decides to stop growing at the age of three . He refuses to speak, and communicates by banging on his titular drum. I gather this is supposed to reflect German societies refusal to accept the realities of the rise of Nazism and their complicity in it. But I don't really care. My problem with the book wasn't th...more

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Jun 26, 2011 Fahad rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favorites

تنبيه: فيما يأتي كشف لأحداث الرواية.

الطبل الصفيح

قرأت الرواية ومن ثم شاهدت الفيلم الألماني الذي صنع منها سنة 1979 م، وحاز على أوسكار أفضل فيلم أجنبي، وقام بدور أوسكار فيه (دايفد بينيت) وأخرجه المخرج الألماني فولكر شلوندرف، فلذا سأتحدث عن الرواية والفيلم معا ً.

في البداية علي أن أعترف بأن القراءة لغونتر غراس متعبة، فخلاف أن الرواية تتمدد في نسختها العربية على 687 صفحة، تندر فيها الحوارات، وهذا يعني بنيان متراص يرويه لنا بأسلوبين (أوسكار ماتسرات) بطل الرواية وصاحب الطبول الصفيحية – لم يكن طبلا ً و...more

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Jul 24, 2010 Maureen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone, with enthusiasm

Recommended to Maureen by: Tom Carson

Shelves: anti-war, novel

The world portrayed in The Tin Drum is brutal and harsh, and, at the same time freakishly strange. There is an aspect to violence that disconnects from everyday reality. In this book, seen through the eyes of its diminutive hero, it becomes downright surreal. Though the tone may be fantastic, Grass does a better job of capturing life under Nazi rule than anything else I have ever read. Even in translation, his language is dazzling, and one thing is certain: after reading what happens at the end...more

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May 17, 2007 Karl rated it 2 of 5 stars

I learned that I don't find eccentric midgets that make highly stylized allusions to archaic information and literature very interesting, but that I do like it when eccentric midgets kill their fathers and have lots of sex. So ultimately this book taught me I am shallow; goodbye Harpers, hello National Enquirer.

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Jan 29, 2010 Venus rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

طبل حلبی اثری است فلج کننده،خواننده را در چنگال خود میکیرد و آنگاه با سر در پنداب زندگی دهشتزا رهایش میکند

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Sep 24, 2009 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am not sure how to rate this book. I am not sure if I like it or hate it. It is just out of this world and Gunter Grass (Nobel Prize in Literature awardee) is just in his own league.

The book is about a midget who refused to grow up. He decided to stop growing up at the age of 3 when he also started to beat his drum. His story as a child (Book 1) coincides with the pre-holocaust period in Poland. The scenes that struck me here the most are the 5-layer skirt of his grandmother where his grandfa...more I am not sure how to rate this book. I am not sure if I like it or hate it. It is just out of this world and Gunter Grass (Nobel Prize in Literature awardee) is just in his own league.

The book is about a midget who refused to grow up. He decided to stop growing up at the age of 3 when he also started to beat his drum. His story as a child (Book 1) coincides with the pre-holocaust period in Poland. The scenes that struck me here the most are the 5-layer skirt of his grandmother where his grandfather hid before they got married and where Oskar (the midget) used to hide too and the death of the Oskar’s mother from eating eels. The image of the horse with the head of eels is said to have been the symbol for the Nazi period and it is the best image that marked the critics’ mind about this book.

Book 2 happened during the holocaust when Oskar got the job in the traveling circus. Aside from playing drums his singing voice can also break glass. So, he became a famous carnival attraction. If in Book 1, he had his first love, Maria, in Book 2 he had his Roswitha. Maria ended up as the 2nd wife of his presumptive father while Roswitha was killed in the accident. Oskar survived the holocaust because he is not a jew. Also in this part of the book, Oskar became a father to Kurt without the child knowing. Unfortunately, the kid did not end up as a midget like Oskar.

Book 3 is the post-holocaust period and Oskar became a nude model and later a jazz player. The little story that struck me here most is the story of Gerhard and Genrud what happened in the restaurant that Oskar partly owned. It is a sweet story of a young couple. Gerhard has no beard while Genrud (a lady) has wispy beard. They felt weird about themselves so it got into in the middle of their feelings for each other. Oskar’s ladylove in the part of the book is a nurse (he has a thing for nurses) Sister Dorothea.

How do you then rate a book with this kind of impossible but one of a kind plot? It is not as likeable as the story of Buendia family spanning 6 generations in Gabriel Garcia Marquez masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is not as political and definitely not futuristic as George Orwell’s 1984. It is not strike-to-the-core as the story of the Joad’s family in the poverty-stricken California in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It lacks the ethereal beauty of Antoine Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince. These are so far the four of the classic books that I really, really enjoyed.

I spent 4 days reading this 500+ page book. Since page 1, I knew I would rate this 4 or 5 stars and that rating was sustained in every page of the book. But when I closed the book, I thought of giving this a star. The reason is that I am not sure if I like the impossible plot and the strange characters. I could not relate myself to any of the characters. I lacks that human touch. The nearest scene that could be heartwarming was the death of Oskar’s poor mom. However, she is sleeping with two men (the two presumptive fathers of Oskar) and their sexual encounters are explicitly described in the book. No wonder the German authorities banned this book for quite sometime before it got the interest of the rest of the world and finally led to Gunter Grass recognition as a literary talent.

This is just one of its kind. This is probably what Jillian calls as an epiphany – a revelation of something good or in this case an introduction of a new – and a good one - taste. I am now looking forward to reading more Grass books.
(less)

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Aug 19, 2008 Tyler rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone

Recommended to Tyler by: Author's Nobel Prize

Describing this book's good points is hard, so I'll start with the echoes. This book of overlapping situations gives off echoes even past its last page. People, places and things all have echoes.

A work of magical realism about a demented dwarf shouldn't appeal to me. Descriptions of the book as “humorous” or “hilarious” are odd, because nothing about war is funny. Nor are Germans funny. But I read the book anyway. Grass writes with wit and sometimes dry humor, but adjectives describing The Tin...more Describing this book's good points is hard, so I'll start with the echoes. This book of overlapping situations gives off echoes even past its last page. People, places and things all have echoes.

A work of magical realism about a demented dwarf shouldn't appeal to me. Descriptions of the book as “humorous” or “hilarious” are odd, because nothing about war is funny. Nor are Germans funny. But I read the book anyway. Grass writes with wit and sometimes dry humor, but adjectives describing The Tin Drum as "funny" are a little imprecise.

The narrative moves us through situations from the twenties to the fifties, and the situations move us from persons to persons. By the end, the author has built a panorama of human complexity, showing us the nuances found among people, or even within a single person.

Whoever likes the eye-catching first sentence will like what follows. The German quest for precision brings out superb storytelling. The plot moves with measured time and composed detail. Chapters and paragraphs emerge from the whole like tasty morsels, and readers can lose themselves in the vignettes. Grass’s rendering of the mundane consistently mesmerizes: A breakwater you can imagine yourself standing on; a package of fizz powder you can feel yourself holding; a room you can see yourself standing in. Even a ménage à trois you can imagine yourself a part of somehow.

As well as situations, the human face shows its many aspects in characters, each drawing out some facet of experience. One character, the blue-eyed Jan, personifies human vulnerability. Another, Leo, represents the fragility of identity – he may not even be real, or he may be part of the protagonist, Oskar. Yet another character, Lucy, may be one of the most terrifying in fiction, precisely because we do in real life find ourselves observed by triangle-faced, fox-eyed, black-haired girls exuding uncertain intentions.

The tone is like that of no other novel. An existential din shifts the tide of history from abstract forces onto the millions of people whose personalities actually move that tide. The Tin Drum expresses the people who appear in its pages, not the forces they live under. The book as a whole has its own tone as well, revealing an ever-more-present sense of living in a vacuum. That vacuum is the antagonist that the protagonist must somehow defeat. Now the drum begins to make sense.

People searching for a way out of the vacuum cause the echoes. Those echoes originate in their thoughts – our thoughts. Let's be glad the author doesn’t try to put the thoughts into words -- it can't be done. But if words can't describe a catastrophe such as World War II, the magical element allows us to feel our way along the echoes of that disaster. And the realism of the book allows us to construct an unknowable future from an unthinkable past. (less)

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May 28, 2010 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: re-read, spring-2010, dodgy-narrator, wwii, published-1959, noir, nobel-laureate, magical-realism, satire, nazi-related, paper-read, fradio, radio-4x

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 02, 2011 umberto rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This is another book (I read nearly seven years ago) with its missing review and rating. It's a bit difficult to recall what I said here since I can't find the book itself to consult except its Thai translation entitled, 'กลองสังกะสี'. Therefore, my GR friends, please forgive me if my review's not met any of your literary expectations. One of the reasons is that my review'd focus on trying to answer the key question above the right corner there: What did you think?

I think this novel's worth read...more

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Mar 02, 2012 E. Thomas rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I like bawdy jokes and tall tales, but 560 pages of orifice-poking whimsy rather tries the patience. Benny Hill came to mind, to a soundtrack of Herp Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. I'm not fond of galumphing picaresque novels (Catch-22, Midnight's Children). They buttonhole the reader with a twitchy, houndstooth-jacketed geezer whose manic quips are meant to underline that, behind the grin, behind the indefatigable displays of logorrhea and alliterative giddiness, lies PATHOS. For a while it se...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Dracu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-books

"What more shall I say: born under light bulbs, deliberately stopped growing at age of three, given drum, sang glass to pieces, smelled vanilla, coughed in churches, observed ants, decided to grow, buried drum, emigrated to the West, lost the East, learned stonecutter's trade, worked as model, started drumming again, visited concrete, made money, kept finger, gave finger away, fled laughing, rode up escalator, arrested, convicted, sent to mental hospital, soon to be acquitted, celebrating this d...more

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Jan 24, 2010 Rachel Kowal rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow. This took me a while to get through, but I'm glad I read it. The Tin Drum has all the makings of an imaginative mythology brimming with magical realism. It contains botched romances, mistaken/questionable paternity, death by eels, an insane asylum, a freak circus, a strange chronology, a severed finger, and one unforgettable (and unreliable) character and storyteller - Oskar Matzerath.

At times, The Tin Drum reminds me of a darker and more convoluted version of John Irving's A Prayer for Owe...more

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Aug 26, 2009 matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fictions-of-the-big-it, social-crit, worldly-lit, shaggy-monsters

Wonderful template for modern magic realism. I picked this up in the bookstore and was immediately hooked by the first hundred pages or so. Than it began to cool off for me, right between the 200-300 mark and then it came round the bend strong.

Some of the prose here is just un-fucking believable. Moving, 'darkly funny'(even though that proud distinction has been overused to within an inch of its life, to the point of utter meaninglessness) and satire with a furious moral imperative which never s...more
Wonderful template for modern magic realism. I picked this up in the bookstore and was immediately hooked by the first hundred pages or so. Than it began to cool off for me, right between the 200-300 mark and then it came round the bend strong.

Some of the prose here is just un-fucking believable. Moving, 'darkly funny'(even though that proud distinction has been overused to within an inch of its life, to the point of utter meaninglessness) and satire with a furious moral imperative which never submits to self-righteousness naivete or pedantic pap.

I can absolutely see how Rushdie read this and how it made him want to be a writer. The language is SO alive- so sharp and so acute and so assured and vibrant and completely clear-eyed about the kind of world it (and, let's face it, WE) inhabit in various ways. Grass does that thing which many great modern (and others not so modern) have mastered: the ability to do a vivid, lively storyline with all the clangor and misery and casual, grotesque cruelty of everyday life (particularly under, uh, fascism) and not blink. Accepting a certain kind of horror and really laughing in the face of it, calling it out on its fundamental absurdity and refusing to lose one's critical sense and redemptive humor in the process. As a German writing in the aftermath of the long nightmare his country had fallen into, Grass achieved something mighty wonderful in having accomplished a book like this.

Moral ambiguity without excusing anyone (we didn't know what was going on, we were just following orders, etc) or engaging in insufferable moralization is a real imaginative accomplishment, one which I think anyone who approaches the book with a curious mind and open heart can celebrate.

His vision is so strong- for a first novel it's remarkably confident and dead-on. The narrative gets very surreal in places, rather unexpectedly (fizzy packets in the bellybutton as sublimated sex? Whaa?) but somehow he makes it no only believable but inevitable in some way. Oskar is a completely fascinating creation- wise, laconic, exuberant, suspicious, innocent, damaged, arrogant, sweet, and a little perverse.

I haven't seen the movie- yet- but I'm chomping at the bit.

This one is worth the ride- 600 pages or so, nightmarish Nazi subject matter, complex and unresolved plot points, straining of credulity, etc- and will get inside your head!(less)

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Jan 15, 2009 Micha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Günter Grass's 'Die Blechtrommel' is like an onion or, better said, a rose, since the onion analogy is dreadfully overused nowadays. Also, it gives a wrong impression about the mounting importance of the successive layers. Rose petals are more appropriate as they are identical, democratic. One petal covers another only in terms of its visibility. In this way, 'Die Blechtrommel' is first an adventure novel. Following the wild escapades of the self-willed three-year-old Oskar, the novel takes read...more Günter Grass's 'Die Blechtrommel' is like an onion or, better said, a rose, since the onion analogy is dreadfully overused nowadays. Also, it gives a wrong impression about the mounting importance of the successive layers. Rose petals are more appropriate as they are identical, democratic. One petal covers another only in terms of its visibility. In this way, 'Die Blechtrommel' is first an adventure novel. Following the wild escapades of the self-willed three-year-old Oskar, the novel takes readers from pre-war Danzig to post-war Düsseldorf, introducing them along the way to presumptive fathers, circus dwarfs, Jazz musicians, charcoal wielding artists, countless nurses, and a fisher who uses a horse-head as his bate. This is only a small fraction of the eccentric cast that inhabits the mad world of this 800-page tome. Again and again Grass proves his boundless inventiveness.

Though fictional, bordering on magic realistic at times, 'Die Blechtrommel' is firmly grounded in its historical context: the Second World War. Written in 1959, the war was still fresh on Grass's mind. The time had come to reconcile himself with the tragic past of his fatherland through his art. Interestingly, though the war is omnipresent in 'Die Blechtrommel,' it is rarely dealt with in a direct manner. Rather, the war is trivialized, marginalized. Only by implication does the reader know what is happening. It is deeply unnerving to realize that, although Oskar light-footedly walks right through the Kristallnacht, D-Day, and the razing of Danzig to its ground by the Russians, the reader hardly takes notice of the horrendous events. Grass paradoxically makes the reader more aware and not less aware of the war by playing it down.

More than downplay, Grass makes the war seem laughable, silly, and harmless. At one point, for instance, Oskar witnesses his neighbor being raped by three Russians. Not only is Oskar unperturbed and uninterested - he rather watches a line of marching ants - but the woman seems to enjoy the sexual abuse. In this way, 'Die Blechtrommel' is a darkly comic novel in the vein of Heller's 'Catch 22.' Both novels are deceptively light and frivolous in tone. Even when Oskar murders, which he undeniably does, if indirectly, the scenes are endowed with a certain false lightness and humor. This misplaced comedy is unsettling and acts well as a critique of the war.

In creating a deliberate and mindful, yet uncaring, a childlike and innocent, yet perverse, manipulative and downright malevolent, protagonist, Grass sets himself up for a lot more than an anti-war novel. What we have here is also a schelmenroman or picaresque novel, in the tradition of Grimmelshausen. Oskar is a rascal, looking from below down upon the adult world. Already after birth he thinks their way of life to be empty and dissatisfying and tries to reenter the womb, but alas! the umbilical cord is cut. Instead, he decides to remain a three-year-old to elude the responsibilities of grownups. As such, with tin drum in hands and an ability to shatter glass with his voice, he wanders around Danzig and causes mischief. For Oskar life is a game. Seeing that life includes sex, Oskar soon lusts after women and becomes father with sixteen. Following the tradition of the schelmenroman, Oskar, the rascal, eventually comes to see the world in a more favorable light.

This sense of slow and painful growth in Oskar, which takes place over the course of thirty years, renders 'Die Blechtrommel' a bildungsroman, if not in its traditional form. Initially, the novel can be seen as the opposite, an anti-bildungsroman, as it thwarts the genre by denying development. Oskar's growth is not only complete physically, he is also mentally and spiritually fully developed since birth. In this way, 'Die Blechtrommel' declares that the bildungsroman, the epitome of German Enlightenment literature, is out-of-date and overtly idealistic. Grass sees no progress, no development in the modern world, which at his time had been ravaged by two successive world wars. He is no pessimist, however, and allows for Oskar to resume his physical growth at the end. Thus, though grudgingly, 'Die Blechtrommel' is a bildungsroman.

Given that the novel stretches itself out over so many years and pages, the designation of family saga may also apply, though obviously not in the manner of, say, a Márquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.' Nonetheless, 'Die Blechtrommel' builds up its very own family trees, which grow and branch and end abruptly with the passing of four generations and a prodigious amount of funerals.

There's my fairly objective description of the highly complex, multi-layered 'Die Blechtrommel.' Do I think Grass succeeded in doing what he presumably set out to do? Yes. Do I like what he set out to do? Not particularly. The reason is simple. His name is Oskar. I've heard from many people that while reading 'Die Blechtrommel' one develops a love-hate relationship with the little guy. His actions are contemptible, but in the end one cannot help but like him. Not so for me. It's not that I hate Oskar, it's that I do not feel anything for him. I enjoyed his story, immensely so at times - the Onion Cellar was hilarious - but I could not help to feel detached. The pointlessness of his actions was frustrating and made me want to slap him in the face at times. I understand that Oskar is a 'schelm' and as such is supposed to be unlikable. But I couldn't even dislike him. My personal issues with Oskar, however, do not diminish my respect for what Grass has accomplished here. To return to my first analogy, I do not regret having pulled rose petal after rose petal from the rose that is 'Die Blechtrommel.' For a rose it is.(less)

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Jan 22, 2008 Elise rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book took me FOREVER to finish. I'd read it, get maybe forty pages in, then put it down for several months, forget what I'd read, start all over, get forty pages in, etc. This went on for maybe five years. I finally resolved to finish it, powered through with all my might and mein, found it distasteful, royally disliked it, but continued even still because I wanted to be able to close the damn thing once and for all and give it a scathing review on Goodreads.

No such luck. While the book is...more

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Jul 25, 2007 Lorenzo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: german, aaa-my-library

On summer 2002 I've had my first holiday paid with my own money made working in an estate agency.

Destination Berlin. Yeah! Ja!

Stefania a friend of a friend of mine had given me the keys of her house in Fredrichshain, the quarter where former medium hyerarchies of the communist DDR used to live. A quarter of nice half restored buildings with green courtyards and wooden stairs. In Fredrichshain nobody seemed to speak English, only German and Russian. Great, isn't it?

I thought to find at least a h...more

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Dec 29, 2008 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone

I read this book for the second time because I love it so much and because I wanted to study the way the author fashions sentences for the benefit of my own writing. He is a master of the active voice, the unreliable narrator and (in my opinion) magic realism. You can just get lost in the writing--during some passages I get the sensation of frosting being spread on a cake.

It reminds me in some ways of Lolita, another example of beautiful writing and great desperate, doomed emotion. (Also both ar...more

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Sep 04, 2009 Rebecca rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Even though I read a translation, the translator deserves serious praise beceause the language and style of this book were spectacular. The style was simultaneously responsible for keeping me going through the long 500+ pages of text, and also prolonging my reading to 5 months. I couldn’t read the book unless I was in a state of mind that could minutely focus on each sentence as it deserved. It was a lot of work.
The book also included quite a few images that will stay with me for a long, long t...more

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Mar 25, 2008 Lucia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an epic, and great, work of fiction. I love how strong the voice of the individual comes through in this book - it is uncompromising in resisting conformity. Scenes like the onion cellar, the eels on the beach, the post office standoff are told so well, in the way that memory actually works. They really capture the fusion of reality - the objective movement of events in time, with the emotional charge that only hindsight really recognizes. I also loved how complex the book is and how man...more

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Dec 29, 2007 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

My reaction through much of this book was, "Whoa! This is pretty messed up." So much crazy stuff happens that it's hard to get past this initial reaction (it's even crazier than the movie, which by necessity had to cut out a ton of this monster of a novel). But there is meaning lurking behind the crazy stories, and it's easy to see why this was such a sensation when it was first released - it's interesting to read now in light of the recent Grass controversy (his history with the Waffen SS). Eve...more

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May 13, 2013 Philip Glennie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Of the many things that fascinate me about "The Tin Drum," its parallels with James Joyce's "Ulysses" are especially arresting. I find these parallels not only in Grass' and Joyce's attention to details like dates and street names, but also in Grass' use of formal experimentation, which announces Joyce's influence fairly explicitly in my mind. On several occasions, Grass writes entire sections of his book using many of the techniques Joyce uses in "Ulysses." These techniques include but are not...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Marc L rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: german-literature

Exuberant, meanderend, grotesk... dat zijn alvast drie treffende omschrijvingen voor dit zelf neergeschreven/gedicteerd levensverhaal van Oskar Matzerath, of liever Oskar Bronski, of beter nog Oskar Koljaiczek, de jongen die als driejarige besluit niet meer te groeien en het grootste deel van zijn leven met een blikken trommel door de volwassen wereld stapt. De setting: het tussen Polen en Duitsland slingerende Danzig (die ambiguïteit is typerend) in de periode 1930-1945 en het naoorlogse Düssel...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Yoka rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Een geweldig boek vol humor en absurde, surrealistische verhalen. Oskar, een jongen die zijn geboorte al bewust meemaakt en dat ook weet na te vertellen, besluit op zijn derde niet meer te groeien. Hij heeft geen zin in allerlei onderzoeken die hij zal krijgen omdat hij niet meer groeit. Daarom besluit hij van de trap te vallen zodat dat als oorzaak van zijn groeistop kan worden beschouwd. Oskar gaat schreeuwen wanneer iemand zijn trommel wil afpakken en kan hierdoor ramen laten barsten. Een sch...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Max rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: european-history

The Tin Drum describes people in the free city of Danzig going about their everyday lives with all their faults and flaws exposed against a backdrop of the Hitler era, WWII, terror and atrocities. Most are German, some are Polish and a few are Jewish in this time of racial hatred. Within this political and social context, the author paints a series of vignettes of people often sexually focused, having affairs, playing cards, going to church, tending to business, stealing and fishing among other...more The Tin Drum describes people in the free city of Danzig going about their everyday lives with all their faults and flaws exposed against a backdrop of the Hitler era, WWII, terror and atrocities. Most are German, some are Polish and a few are Jewish in this time of racial hatred. Within this political and social context, the author paints a series of vignettes of people often sexually focused, having affairs, playing cards, going to church, tending to business, stealing and fishing among other routine activities. Salient historical events such as Danzig’s local Kristallnacht riots, executions of Polish defenders against German takeover and the toll of the war itself are mixed in with the personal stories. When the Russian soldiers arrive the Germans are evicted from Danzig and the story continues in post war West Germany.

Supposedly a novel of many symbols, most are probably lost on me. Some however are obvious. Why would any rational three year old want to grow up in the world Grass describes. Thus the protagonist and narrator, Oscar, decides to stop growing at three years old and doesn’t start again until WWII is over when he turns into a hunchback. He is a perverted and destructive persona gifted with special powers who occupies a 37 inch tall body and somehow seems to be above it all while being very much a part of almost everything.

The inclusion of magical realism and black humor sets a strange tone to the novel. Oscar is sarcastic and droll as he recounts the story, but his unreality makes it difficult to identify with him and the characters he depicts. This is where the novel fell short for me. In spite of its creativity, in spite of its historical relevance and insightful portrayals of ordinary people during this difficult time, the absurdities of the protagonist and his flippant characterizations of everyone else always kept me at a distance. It’s as if this novel is both too depressing to be funny and yet too funny to be taken seriously. Thus the book always felt a bit like a fairy tale, not quite a real time and place, but of course it was so sadly a very real time and place.
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Jul 27, 2012 Biblionomicon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Zugegeben, ich bin Insasse einer Heil- und Pflegeanstalt, mein Pfleger beobachtet mich, läßt mich kaum aus dem Auge; denn in der Tür ist ein Guckloch, und meines Pflegers Auge ist von jenem Braun, welches mich, den Blauäugigen, nicht durchschauen kann."(Seite 7)

Das, Herrschaften, ist ein fulminant wuchtiger erster Satz in einem nicht minder gewichtigen Roman von Format, der Appetit auf mehr macht. Es dämmert einem recht schnell, warum "Die Blechtrommel" zur Zeit ihres Erscheinens so viel Wirbe...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Monthly Book Group rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Complex and somewhat disjointed, the novel is based on the life of Oscar Matzerath who decided at the age of three to stop growing by throwing himself down stairs. He communicates through his tin drum and by means of other “gifts”. He considers himself as both Jesus and the devil. Oscar is an inmate of a mental institution.

It is a mélange of fact and fiction, partly autobiographical, dealing with guilt and loss in equal measure. It was published in 1959 and translated into English by Ralph Manh...more Complex and somewhat disjointed, the novel is based on the life of Oscar Matzerath who decided at the age of three to stop growing by throwing himself down stairs. He communicates through his tin drum and by means of other “gifts”. He considers himself as both Jesus and the devil. Oscar is an inmate of a mental institution.

It is a mélange of fact and fiction, partly autobiographical, dealing with guilt and loss in equal measure. It was published in 1959 and translated into English by Ralph Manheim a couple of years later to international acclaim.

It had proved to be a difficult read for most. Some had read the book before and found that a second reading helped them to better appreciate and understand the complexity of the book. Everyone recognized and admired the quality of the writing but there was a unanimous view that the book was too long, and that it was episodic with several chapters almost standing alone as if short stories.

The group puzzled over how the book had been conceived and whether or not it had been planned. While chronology gave it some structure it was pointed out that there remains a randomness and lack of coherence. One member described the writing as a “creative ferment of ideas and images” but also applauded the imaginative use of wordplay eg “brain explodes on to page”. Most were impressed by the imagery, sarcasm, and moral ambiguity that pervades the novel and serves to add layers of complexity to what is a very complicated story.

Some members remarked on the book’s pervasive sense of futility and on the use of humour that often had an unpleasant edge. They considered the book to be overrated, better received by people outside Germany than by German people themselves. It was suggested that the reason that the book was so warmly welcomed by the English speaking community was because it acknowledged guilt and expressed shame about Germany’s role through the events of the war and postwar years…

This is an extract from a review at: http://www.monthlybookgroup.com/ Our reviews are also to be found at http://monthlybookgroup.blogspot.com/

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Jan 26, 2012 Ian Zimmerman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a much more famous novel than some people realize. This was the direct inspiration for Midnight's Children and Owen Meaney. Oscar Matzerath is the main character and represents the nation of Germany during the WW2 era. He is not a demon or some kind of monster, but he is selfish, vain, at times cruel, and very lacking in empathy. He doesn't directly murder anyone, but he looks away with complete indifference whenever something bad happens. He gives his uncle over to the SS and runs to th...more

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About Günter Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author and playwright.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). Since 1945, he has lived in West Germany (now Germany), but in his fiction he frequently returns to the Danzig of his childhood.
He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum, a key text in European magic realism. His works frequently have a strong left wing,...more Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author and playwright.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). Since 1945, he has lived in West Germany (now Germany), but in his fiction he frequently returns to the Danzig of his childhood.
He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum, a key text in European magic realism. His works frequently have a strong left wing, socialist political dimension, and Grass has been an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 2006, Grass caused a controversy with his disclosure of Waffen-SS service during the final months of World War II.

Grass was born in the Free City of Danzig on 16 October 1927, to Willy Grass (1899-1979), a Protestant ethnic German, and Helene Grass (née Knoff, 1898-1954), a Roman Catholic of Kashubian-Polish origin. Grass was raised a Catholic. His parents had a grocery store with an attached apartment in Danzig-Langfuhr (now Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz). He has one sister, who was born in 1930.

Grass attended the Danzig Gymnasium Conradinum. He volunteered for submarine service with the Kriegsmarine "to get out of the confinement he felt as a teenager in his parents' house" which he considered - in a very negative way - civic Catholic lower middle class. In 1943 he became a Luftwaffenhelfer, then he was drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and in November 1944, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, into the Waffen-SS. The seventeen-year-old Grass saw combat with the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg from February 1945 until he was wounded on 20 April 1945 and sent to an American POW camp.

In 1946 and 1947 he worked in a mine and received a stonemason's education. For many years he studied sculpture and graphics, first at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, then at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He also worked as an author and travelled frequently. He married in 1954 and since 1960 has lived in Berlin as well as part-time in Schleswig-Holstein. Divorced in 1978, he remarried in 1979. From 1983 to 1986 he held the presidency of the Berlin Akademie der Künste (Berlin Academy of Arts).(less)

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Quotes from The Tin Drum

“Granted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.” — 24 people liked it

“Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.” — 10 people liked it

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The Tin Drum (The Danzig Trilogy #1)

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