Dog Years [Hardcover]

Gunter Grass (Author), R. Manheim (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 8, 1965

A novel set in three parts, beginning in the 1920s and ending in the 1950s, that follows the lives of two friends from the prewar years in Germany through an apocalyptic period and its startling aftermath. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Dog Years is a meditation on modern history in the guise of a novel, a study of Germany before, during and after the Second World War, a tale of the interrelated fortunes of two friends, Walter Matern, Aryan, and Eddi Amsel, half-Jew. In its well-nigh stupefying length, in its almost ritual use of distortions, shifting perspectives, and completely unaccommodating, dispassionate weaving of minutiae (at once quaint, brutal, and poetic), and in the terrible geniality of its denunciatory spirit and in its disgusts, it is without doubt one of the most astonishing literary performances since Finnegans Wake. It is also, naturally, one of the most troubling. By comparison, The Tin Drum is a mere roller coaster ride through the Absurd. Grass' technique- a mingling of Beckett, Brecht, and his own half-solemn, half-winking naturalism- Juxtaposes the traditional order of character and situation with quasi-allegorical effects: e.g., the recurrent word play on Heideggerian concepts; the deadpan caricature of mass media, the cool nightmarish descriptions of industry; the quirky, staccato close-ups of front line fighting; above all, the underlying canine metaphor whereby a stud dog, involved in the adolescence of all the participants, fathers der Fuhrer's favorite hound, Pluto, later picked up by Natern on his hellish post-war Journey. Lupus est homo homini etc...??Matern, of course, represents history's adjustable man: protector and tormentor of his "sheeny" friend, battered about the Left and Right ("I was red, put on brown, wore black, dyed myself red. Spit on me..."); Amsel, of course, is his alter ego. Dog Years is a product of the Cold War, in which absolutes boringly teeter on the brink, in which men (who have become sociologized "topics of discussion") scowl at each other or try to touch through a thick universal pane of glass. An important book which will receive an important press. (Kirkus Reviews ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd (November 8, 1965)
• ISBN-10: 0436187817
• ISBN-13: 978-0436187810
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,290,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Danzig, Germany, in 1927, Günter Grass is a widely acclaimed author of plays, essays, poems, and numerous novels. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The amazing conclusion to the Danzig Trilogy, June 11, 2000

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dog Years (Paperback)

First: If you decide to tackle the Danzig Trilogy, Reddick's critical analysis is indispensable. I suggest tackling it the same way I did: read The Tin Drum, start Reddick's book at the same time you start Cat and Mouse (Reddick reads faster than Grass, and you'll get through a lot of Reddick while tackling Grass), and when you've caught up, read Reddick's section on Dog Years and the actual novel concurrently.

Those of you who feel the revelation of anything having to do with a book before you get to that part in the book is a spoiler should probably avoid this technique; Reddick revelas the major "mystery" in Dog Years towards the end of his section on Cat and Mouse. However, one cannot really consider Dog Years a mystery, despite the various things that happen within it; while there are some elements to it that keep the reader guessing, Dog Years is, more than anything, a savage satire on Germany during the WW2 years. And as such, finding out the main mystery-that's-not-a-mystery should not detract at all from one's appreciation of the book itself.

Dog Years can also stand on its own, without being read as a part of the Danzig Trilogy, but the reader's appreciation of many facets of this novel-- most notably Edouard Amsel's character and the satire itself-- are more easily appreciated when you have The Tin Drum and Cat and Mouse under your belt as comparisons. Amsel, the main protagonist of Dog Years, stands as a direct comparison to both Oskar and Mahlke, and his character is more easily understood when those two have already been assimilated by the reader.

The plot of Dog Years is a simple enough one; it charts, through the use of three narrators, the frindship of Edouard Amsel and Walter Matern from grade school through their early thirties. Amsel, the intellectual one, is picked on constantly by his classmates (including Matern) until one day, for no apparent reason, Matern befriends Amsel and chases away the others. It's a typical buddy-relationship in that Amsel is the brains and Matern is the brawn, but we don't get the bonding we've come to expect from seeing too many Hollywood buddy films. The relationship between Matern and Amsel is far more complex than that, and Reddick has done a passable job of interpreting it, one which I won't attempt to recreate here (it would be ludicrous to attempt something that complex in such a forum as a review). In an odd lapse, though-- especially given how much emphasis Reddick has put on Grass' enmity and stire of the Roman Catholic Church in the previous two books-- Reddick seems to have overlooked one of the most obvious interpretations of Amsel's character (and also that of the more minor protagonist Jenny Brunies), as a christ figure. In the novel's central scene, both Amsel and Brunies (who are both made out, in the first half of the novel, to be almost comically fat) undergo a transformation that transforms Brunies into a ballet sensation and Amsel into another character entirely, the omnipotent Goldmouth; while there is no physical crucifixion here, the path taken by Amsel's character through the rest of the novel certainly implies the path of christ after the resurrection, until his assumption into, in this case, Berlin. For the next hundred or so pages, Goldmouth is never actually seen, only referred to in the good deeds he does for others, and he achieves an almost legendary status among the rank and file for his goodness, his power (in postwar germany, his power is in his connections; who he knows), and the fact that no one really sees him much, but everyone is aware of his presence and his acts. However, Reddick, in his attempt to (successfully) parallel Amsel's character with that of Grass himself, never examines this aspect of Amsel.

This lack also leads to Reddick drawing the conclusion that Dog Years is the weakest of the three books, while still proclaiming that as a whole they rank as the finest piece of modern German literature extant today. I feel Reddick is giving Dog Years short shrift here; while the book does, in fact, have its faults, they are faults shared by the other two novels as well, and I came away from Dog Years thinking that, to the contrary, it was the strongest and most absorbing of the three. While it was more difficult than the other two, it was also more rewarding and more absorbing; it's not often I'll put in three months on one novel, but at no time did I feel that it ever stopped moving me along, and at no time did I ever feel that it was time to put the book down for good.

Keeping this seeming oversight of Reddick's in mind, I still have to recommend his book as a perfect accompaniment to Grass' most famous three novels, and all four of them deserve the attention of every serious student of literature.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars His masterpiece, December 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dog Years (Paperback)

As good as 'Tin Drum' but far more accessible and direct in its impact on the darkness and light in the German psyche. The only author from Germany to honestly address the issues of what led to WWII and its aftermath. There is a hilarious and brilliant passage towards the end of the second part of the book which takes a savage poke at Heidegger and German love for abstraction. A gem of a book.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hate it and love it, love it and hate it, January 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Dog Years (Paperback)

Grass uses wonderful, dense, invented words and peppers his novel with wonderful, dense, twisted imagery. Which is why I admire the work and why I was determined to finish the book although it was as intellectually heavy as a brick and occassionally tried my patience. This is not a book for an MTV-hyperactive attention span. More than a reflection of German mentality, it is a journey into the German mind, because so many times it follows a stream-of-consciousness approach. Sometimes it feels as if you're on a rollercoaster ride through the tunnels of a character's mind. Which is why I hated it too. I felt that many times the book became self-indulgent... that is, Grass wasn't writing for the reader but for himself or as a catharsis for his characters.

I only realized Dog Years was part of a trilogy after I bought it, and I enjoyed The Tin Drum much more because I read it after seeing the movie (it relieved the mind from loads of exertion). Although I am immensely relieved to have finally finished Dog Years, I still can't wait to read the other book of the trilogy, Cat and Mouse. Love to hate Grass.