Customer Reviews

The Tin Drum

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
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Following the generally accepted premise that great novels deserve to be re-translated every generation or so, Breon Mitchell has tackled the most important postwar German novel, and one which had already been translated by Ralph Manheim brilliantly into English not long after it appeared in German in 1959.

But now a half-century has passed, and Mitchell's skills are awesome, indeed. He has leapt courageously into the deep end of Guenter Grass' linguistic inventiveness, some of which looks at first as if it will defy translation at all. But Mitchell has succeeded beyond any bilingual reader's expectations. THE TIN DRUM is still far richer in its original German, but Mitchell has rendered its wealth anew, and those readers who have yet to discover this masterpiece in English will be rewarded.

Dr. Richard J. Rundell
Professor of German
New Mexico State University

In this review, I have little to say. Grass' masterpiece "The Tin Drum" is legendary not only for its haunting story, but the vast amount of scholarly interpretation and analysis. I will not attempt to tackle any of that here.

What I can say is this. I have an older translation of "The Tin Drum" which I thought very good. And it is very good. But, in reading portions of this new translation, I get the odd feeling that I am reading a vaguely different and more layered story. This is not to denigrate the older edition I have, but this new translation is obviously much better. As I read, I am simply getting "more" out of the book than what I remember from the first time I read it, and I really don't think it is a function of my own personal experiences or age allowing some greater understanding, but a richer, more faithful translation. It's nothing I can put my finger on with precision, but it's there. This edition is simply a better version of a classic masterpiece.

The binding is solid and I am having no difficulty with any printer's errors or shoddy construction values.

Enthusiastic recommendation without reservation.

The Tin Drum is one of my favorite novels and, I think, one of the great novels of the 20th Century. It is profound and mysterious, funny and disturbing, innovative and original. Grass created the epitome of the unreliable narrator, yet the story he tells reveals fundamental truths about human nature: about love and betrayal, ecstasy and fear. Moreover, the story is so intense, so moving, in a sense so miraculous, the reader wants to believe it, even knowing that it comes from a delusional man who describes physically impossible events. Oskar is one of the grand creations of modern literature: a mentally disturbed man whose story can't be trusted, but who clearly suffered through tragic events that would drive anyone mad, and who arrived at a more insightful understanding of life than most "sane" people will ever know. If ever a novel deserved 5 stars, this one does.

This was one of the huge German novels of the 20th century, in a class with Alexanderplatz, or Zauberberg, or Radetzkymarsch, or Prozess. When it came out it was a sensation, mostly for its unusual openness about all kinds of things that were considered taboo or `in bad taste'. The 50s in Germany were a time of odd prudishness, especially when compared to the 20s. Of course the 12 years from 33 to 45 had shifted all values and perceptions.
Published in 1959, Blechtrommel covers roughly the period from the beginning until the middle of the century, with most of it set in the second quarter century.
Its big subject is Germany and its relations with Poland. For that purpose it is ideally located in Danzig/Gdansk, a Baltic Sea port that changed its nationality a few times: it has been German, it has been a `free city', and it has been and is Polish. This kind of shifts and changes always comes with trouble between the involved ethnic groups. And trouble there was plenty.

On a micro level, we have the story of Oskar, the tin drummer, as told by the man himself. Born in the 20s, he is an early developer, intellectually mature at birth, and quickly able to decide that his `father' is not his real father, and that he dislikes his petit bourgeois milieu so strongly that he stops growing by an act of willpower at the age of 3. Oskar is a dwarf with an intellectual mind. His father is a Nazi and Oskar is a miniature `inner emigrant'. His real father, he thinks, is his mother's Polish cousin. He rejects the term resistance for the minor disturbances that he causes. His first skill is drumming, and he can upset any public music by imposing a waltz on a march etc. His second skill is: he can destroy glass by his voice, and he uses that for all kinds of mischief.

Grass has been called one of the fathers of `magical realism'. However, for all its imagination, I have to admit that I find the writing disappointingly dry. Grass is no magician with the German language. I am not sure, of course, how his translators handle him. I re-read the tin drum now with a sense of curiosity but little enchantment.

Grass has been politically active, supporting the Social Democrats since Willy Brandt's time in the 60s/70s, but more or less splitting off since the reunification. He argued against that. His status as a moral authority has been somewhat diminished after he outed himself rather late in his life as a former Waffen SS volunteer. Had he not kept that secret for decades, his image might not have been damaged by it. It has nothing to do with the quality of the book, of course.

Unless I miss the point of the book entirely, 'The Tin Drum' was Gunter Grass' attempt to write the post-war German people into existence. In this way, the two authors I'm reminded of most after reading Grass' magnum opus is Haruki Murakami and Thomas Pynchon, both of whom, one could argue, tried to do the same thing for their respective countrymen in a time of shifting cultural mores. But, agree with those comparisons or not, there's no doubt that with 'The Tin Drum', Grass was addressing the cultural identity of Germany both before and after the war - guilt, anger, fear, shame, memory; at the same time he was also reconnecting to the rest of the world by drumming home our similarities.

And drumming, of course, is the primal communication method that the main character Oskar uses to tell his story. Oskar, self-aware at birth, who made the conscious decision to physically remain in a three-year-old's body as his mind matured normally, hears as his mother's first words a promise to make him a present of a tin drum on his third birthday. From there, Oskar relates the story of his life and the people who surrounded him, whom one might suspect symbolize the different types who populated Weimar Germany first, and the National Socialist state later. In the final days of the war, after all his remaining family members are gone, Oskar finally relinquishes his drum, at the same time shedding his cherubic three-year-old persona for the trollish appearance he would take on as an adult. (One might suspect these are symbols for the innocence and naiveté of the German people up to the end of the war, and of the ugly truths of adulthood they were forced to confront afterward, but there are so many different expressive symbols packed into 'The Tin Drum' that you could spend years unraveling them.)

Reading Grass' novel in 2011, it was difficult for me to understand its classic status at first. A friend of mine implied that upon its publication, 'The Tin Drum' had an enormous impact by breaking taboos on sexual content and addressing the collective emotions of the German people with regard to the war - which makes sense to me. Unfortunately, coming to it now, the precise elements that may have caused a stir back then have lost much of their power. What's left to judge then is Oskar's story as a universal story, as well as Grass' adroitness as a storyteller.

From previous reviews (and from the Nobel Committee), it would seem as though the jury has returned a positive verdict on both counts - frankly, though, I found the book nearly interminable. While there are some brief passages I thought were very well done (the death of the toy merchant Sigismund Markus, for one), overwhelmingly Grass takes his narrative style to ridiculous lengths in order to stretch it into the metaphorical and allegorical shape he requires. It seems to me that when an author indulges in magical realism, as in this case a story of a boy who refuses to grow, then all other elements of human interaction need to spring naturally and realistically henceforth from this initial impossible idea. Too often I thought Grass manipulated his characters to bring about contrived resolutions, or to illustrate a particular insight. The more that I noticed this, the less interest I had in the narrative, to the point that I no longer cared much about the ideas that he tried to highlight, or about deciphering the symbolism in order to glean those insights.

I learn something from everything I read, and 'The Tin Drum' is no exception. But I'm most receptive when I feel as though the author is trying to communicate with me on an equal footing - to share a universally valid experience. Any author's singular talent of transmitting that experience through the written word does not automatically augment the insights they have, yet by heavy use of symbols and allegory to reflect his view of the post-war German cultural identity, that is precisely the impression that I get while reading 'The Tin Drum' - that Grass is graciously trying to enlighten me.

Obviously, your mileage may vary. There were several interesting passages in the book, and I also felt that the final third was much better than the previous chapters, though I can't say why, since Grass never departed from the formula with which he began. Still, my overall impression was disappointment at best, though there are far too many positive responses to the book to flatly 'not' recommend it. I would, however, strongly suggest that anyone interested read the first chapter or two if possible before committing. Now that I've finished, I can see that the reservations I felt after reading that same small sample held true over the course of the entire book. Perhaps those opening chapters will be as effective as a litmus test for you as they were for me.

This is the only translation of the book that I have read, so I can't comment on the profficiency of Breon Mitchell as compared to Ralph Manheim, though I never noticed anything that seemed remarkably out-of-place or unclear.

Gunther Grass is a very whimsical writer, almost on a par with Columbian writer Gabriel García Márquez. In the Tin Drum, Grass sets up a bizarre premise of a child who stops growing at age three, owing to a bump on the head, and develops the fantastical ability to enchant people with his drumming, as well as the gift of shattering glass with his unique voice. Grass then puts him through a whole series of adventures - he joins a band of street thugs and then the circus and meanwhile is the naive participant in a whole series of sexual escapades. The whole story is linked back to his grandmother who hid his grandfather under her five skirts to hide him from the police after he set fire to a factory. Geneaology always predetermines one's destiny - at least in pre-war Poland.

All this takes place against the build-up to World War II, in which Danzig, the region where our hero is born, becomes German once again. There seems to be a sense of fatalism about this as well. Because this bit of territority has gone back and forth for hundreds of years between Germany and Poland, Oskar's entire family seems resigned to being German and speaking German, or being Polish and speaking Polish, depending on who happens to be in power. There is also the secondary theme around the innate cunning people who are in continual flux must develop to survive. These people are horse traders basically and can sell anything. They thrive via an underground, informal economy no matter which language they are required to speak or which army they answer to. They remind me a lot of the dirt poor characters Faulkner created to populate his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississipi.

Just finished reading the Tin Drum, and immediately wanted to relay my feelings, as it felt quite triumphant to conquer this complex and unique work.
It is difficult to describe for the fact that it seemed so different from regular books. Oskar is writing from the Mental Hospital, he is a weird creation of a person, small, just over 3' tall, in the 3rd book in this book, he begins to grow, becoming just over 4' tall and his age at 30. He is small, but claims to fully mentally developed. He can singshatter glass, his voice can crumble glass, cut holes in it, and with this power he causes some problems as a child.

The chapters each take a new adventure or story, never quite knowing what's next. Things happened that almost defy description. I found it to be very complex reading. Other books I have read lately that would fall into the complex category would be "One hundred years of Solitude" and "Anubis Gate." Both of these completely different than the Tin Drum, but very unique and special in a mind expanding way.

The Tin Drum also gave me some wonderful history of Germany back in the 1930's-1940's, as I am beginning to understand the excitement of being able to travel back in time through reading of wonderful books written in particular times in history and really understand what those times were like, even if it is a fiction of extreme originality.

A book like this can only make the reader a better one, it stretches the readers thinking in a new way, creating something new, all while entertaining the reader to feel as though they are reading for the first time. This is truly a work of art.

I've read Grass' "Cat and Mouse" and his memoirs, and respect a body of work honored recently by the Nobel Prize for literature. This is the book that made his reputation, and I looked forward to reading it. Surprisingly, I hated it.

In part, I'm just prejudiced against the whole "magical realism" style perfected by the likes of Grass and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm amazed this was a best seller; it's not the kind of book that one can really enjoy reading. It may be necessary to read it for a good education, but it's not the kind of book to read for fun.

The problem is that the lead character, who stops growing at the age of 3 on the eve of the Nazi takeover, is so unpleasant. The problem may well be that a lot is lost in translation -- I don't have the benefit of appreciating Grass' use of language and all the subtleties that this brings. What the English reader is left with is the tale of an obnoxious little lout about the trivialities of his life. To complicate matters, he's insane and telling his tale later in life; his recount is not always reliable. If I really cared about the character, this might be an intriguing device.

What is interesting about the book is the brilliance of Grass' metaphor. I think that Oskar stands for the bulk of Germans who went along with the Nazi regime. They all in a sense behaved like docile children and failed to take the responsibility necessary to oppose the regime. The banging of the drum does not appear to have much value, until later in life when Oskar develops skill as a jazz drummer. I'm not sure exactly where Grass is going with the drum metaphor, though Oskar's ability to break glass seems to represent the infamous "night of the broken glass" and the great guilt felt by Germans for the oppression of the Jews.

The best part of the book is the scene where the Russians show up and corner the family in their home. The Nazi father's death in the course of swallowing his party pin to hide it from the Russians seems fitting, as does Oskar's desire to bring that death about. But the father is not a monster and has some redeeming virtues. Then there are some extraordinary passages about Oskar's observations, while all this horror is going on, about a line of ants going about their business -- perhaps putting into perspective, in the grand scheme of things, even the most horrific events of human history. It is an extraordinary scene, exceptionally well conceived and written.

On the whole, though, the book will bore you to tears.

This book is quirky, funny, sad, and political. All things I enjoy in a book. At times you like the main character, at other times, you pity him or even look at him in disgust. But you are always enjoy being a voyeur in this little man's life.

That is what a writer is. The bigger ones also may pass a hint at the future. And they are the survivers, for they have to do the difficult job of explaining the matters. They could have done this or that and led a hypothetical life. But they have to defy the expectations of others. Else they will not be able to achieve what they have. And we will not have issues to talk about. What will shape the societies if the writers and artists were all alike, apart from a path-breaking scientific discovery or a natural catestrophy?
The book is good. Yet not perfect of course, for it brings to the fore the human problems. It is a book of a German person, which is the only competitive economy of Europe today. So there is something inherently different about the people the book talks about. For the people too much used to reading main-stream books published in English, whether by native speakers of the language or those who adopt it - all of them, hopefully, not hoping to beat the natives in English language use - The tin Drum will prove difficult to taste and digest, more so for the fact that it was translated from German. Bearing with it will reveal a great deal-apart from the secrets the authors has retained and selectively revealed in the due course. After all, he is always bigger than his creations.