- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
Other Sellers on Amazon
$16.16
+ $3.99 shipping
+ $3.99 shipping
Sold by:
PURE BOOK SALES
Sold by:
PURE BOOK SALES
(456 ratings)
97% positive over last 12 months
97% positive over last 12 months
Only 2 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates
and
Return policy
$16.18
+ $3.98 shipping
+ $3.98 shipping
Sold by:
Planet Bookstore
Sold by:
Planet Bookstore
(15163 ratings)
83% positive over last 12 months
83% positive over last 12 months
Only 2 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates
and
Return policy
$16.18
+ $3.99 shipping
+ $3.99 shipping
Sold by:
Black Books Store 16
Sold by:
Black Books Store 16
(220 ratings)
94% positive over last 12 months
94% positive over last 12 months
Only 2 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates
and
Return policy
Add to book club
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club?
Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Flip to back
Flip to front
Follow the Author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
OK
The Tin Drum Paperback – Bargain Price, April 8, 2010
by
Gunter Grass
(Author),
Breon Mitchell
(Translator)
|
Gunter Grass
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author?
Learn about Author Central
|
Book 1 of 1: Danzig Trilogy
|
Price
|
New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$0.00
|
Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Audio CD, Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$25.97 | $19.49 |
Enhance your purchase
-
Print length600 pages
-
LanguageEnglish
-
PublisherMariner Books
-
Publication dateApril 8, 2010
-
Dimensions7.9 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
Choose a new release
Explore popular titles in every genre and find something you love. Try it free with trial
Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
-
Apple
-
Android
-
Windows Phone
-
Android
|
Download to your computer
|
Kindle Cloud Reader
|
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Cat and MousePaperback
The Tin DrumGnter GrassPaperback
Dog YearsGünter GrassPaperback
Midnight's Children: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)Paperback
The Flounder (Helen & Kurt Wolff Book)Günter GrassPaperback
Danzig Trilogy Of Gunter Grass: A Study of the Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse, and Dog YearsPaperback
Get everything you need
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)Paperback
Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)Paperback
Berlin Alexanderplatz (New York Review Books Classics)Paperback
Midnight's Children: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)Paperback
A House for Mr. BiswasPaperback
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Penguin Classics)Paperback
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Cat and MousePaperback
Dog YearsGünter GrassPaperback
Midnight's Children: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)Paperback
The Magic MountainPaperback
CrabwalkGünter GrassPaperback
Austerlitz (Modern Library (Paperback))W.G. SebaldPaperback
Special offers and product promotions
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
G�NTER GRASS was born in Danzig, Germany, in 1927. He is the widely acclaimed author of numerous books, including The Tin Drum, My Century, Crabwalk, and Peeling the Onion. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.
BREON MITCHELL is a professor of Germanic studies and comparative literature and the director of the Lilly Library at Indiana University.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Wide Skirt
GRANTED: I’M AN INMATE in a mental institution; my keeper watches me, scarcely lets me out of sight, for there’s a peephole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can’t see through blue-eyed types like me.
So my keeper can’t possibly be my enemy. I’ve grown fond of this man peeping through the door, and the moment he enters my room I tell him incidents from my life so he can get to know me in spite of the peephole between us. The good fellow seems to appreciate my stories, for the moment I’ve finished some tall tale he expresses his gratitude by showing me one of his latest knotworks. Whether he’s an artist remains to be seen. But an exhibition of his works would be well received by the press, and would entice a few buyers too. He gathers ordinary pieces of string from his patients’ rooms after visiting hours, disentangles them, knots them into multilayered, cartilaginous specters, dips them in plaster, lets them harden, and impales them on knitting needles mounted on little wooden pedestals.
He often plays with the notion of coloring his creations. I advise him not to, point toward my white metal bed and ask him to imagine this most perfect of all beds painted in multiple hues. Horrified, he claps his keeper’s hands to his head, struggles to arrange his somewhat inflexible features into an expression of manifold shock, and drops his polychrome plans.
My white-enameled metal hospital bed thus sets a standard. To me it is more; my bed is a goal I’ve finally reached, it is my consolation, and could easily become my faith if the administration would allow me to make a few changes: I’d like to have the bed rails raised even higher to keep anyone from coming too close.
Once a week Visitors Day disrupts the silence I’ve woven between my white metal bars. It signals the arrival of those who wish to save me, who find pleasure in loving me, who seek to value, respect, and know themselves through me. How blind, nervous, and ill-mannered they are. Scratching away at my white bed rails with their nail scissors, scribbling obscene, elongated stick figures on the enamel with ballpoint pens and blue pencils. My lawyer, having blasted the room with his hello, routinely claps his nylon hat over the left-hand bedpost at the foot of my bed. This act of violence robs me of my inner balance and good cheer for as long as his visit lastsand lawyers always have plenty to say.
Once my visitors have placed their gifts on the little white oilcloth-covered table that stands beneath a watercolor of anemones, once they’ve laid out some future plan to save me, or one already under way, once they’ve managed to convince me, by their tireless attempts to rescue me, of the high quality of their brotherly love, they find renewed joy in their own existence and depart. Then my keeper arrives to air out the room and gather up the string from the gift wrappings. Often after airing he finds time, sitting by my bed and disentangling the string, to spread a silence so prolonged that in the end I call the silence Bruno, and Bruno silence.
Bruno MünsterbergI’m talking about my keeper now, I’m done playing with wordsbought five hundred sheets of writing paper on my behalf. Should this supply prove insufficient, Bruno, who is unmarried, childless, and hails from the Sauerland, will revisit the little stationery shop, which also sells toys, and provide me with whatever additional unlined space I need for my recollections, which I hope will be accurate. I could never have requested this favor of my visitors, my lawyer, or Klepp, say. The solicitous love prescribed for me would surely have prevented my friends from anything so dangerous as bringing me blank paper and allowing my incessantly syllable-excreting mind free use of it.
When I said to Bruno, Oh, Bruno, would you buy me a ream of virgin paper?” he looked up at the ceiling, sent his finger pointing in that same direction to underline the comparison, and replied, You mean white paper, Herr Oskar.”
I stuck with the word virgin and told Bruno to ask for it that way at the shop. When he returned later that afternoon with the package, he seemed a Bruno lost in thought. He stared long and hard a few times at the ceiling, that source of all his bright ideas, and then announced, That word you recommended was right. I asked for virgin paper and the salesgirl blushed bright red before she gave me what I wanted.”
Fearing a long conversation about salesgirls in stationery shops, I regretted having emphasized the paper’s innocence by calling it virgin, and said nothing, waited till Bruno had left the room. Only then did I open the package with the five hundred sheets of paper.
I lifted the resilient stack for a moment and tested its weight. Then I counted off ten sheets and stored the rest in my bedside table. I found the fountain pen by my photo album in the drawer: it’s full, it won’t fail for lack of ink; how shall I begin?
You can start a story in the middle, then strike out boldly backward and forward to create confusion. You can be modern, delete all reference to time and distance, and then proclaim or let someone else proclaim that at the eleventh hour you’ve finally solved the space-time problem. Or you can start by declaring that novels can no longer be written, and then, behind your own back as it were, produce a mighty blockbuster that establishes you as the last of the great novelists. I’ve also been told it makes a good impression to begin modestly by asserting that novels no longer have heroes because individuals have ceased to exist, that individualism is a thing of the past, that all human beings are lonely, all equally lonely, with no claim to individual loneliness, that they all form some nameless mass devoid of heroes. All that may be true. But as far as I and my keeper Bruno are concerned, I beg to state that we are both heroes, quite different heroes, he behind his peephole, I in front of it; and that when he opens the door, the two of us, for all our friendship and loneliness, are still far from being some nameless mass devoid of heroes.
I’ll begin long before me, for no one should describe his life who lacks the patience to commemorate at least half of his grandparents’ existence before detailing his own. To all of you forced to live confusing lives beyond the confines of my mental institution, to all you friends and weekly visitors who have no inkling of my store of paper, I introduce Oskar’s maternal grandmother.
My grandmother Anna Bronski sat in her skirts late one October afternoon at the edge of a potato field. You could have seen how expertly my grandmother raked the limp potato tops into tidy piles that morning, ate a hunk of bread at noon smeared with dripping and sweetened with syrup, dug through the field one last time, and sat at last in her skirts between two nearly full baskets. Before the upturned and inwardly tilted soles of her boots, flaring up asthmatically from time to time and sending a flat layer of troubled smoke across the slightly tilted crust of the soil, smoldered a potato-top fire. The year was eighteen ninety-nine, she sat in the heart of Kashubia, near Bissau, nearer still to the brickworks, this side of Ramkau she sat, beyond Viereck, facing the road to Brentau, between Dirschau and Karthaus, with her back toward the black forest of Goldkrug she sat, shoving potatoes under the hot ashes with the charred tip of a hazel stick.
If I’ve singled out my grandmother’s skirt for special mention, making it clear, I hope, that she was sitting in her skirtseven calling the chapter The Wide Skirt”it’s because I know how much I owe to that article of clothing. My grandmother didn’t wear just one skirt, she wore four, one atop the other. Nor did she wear one top skirt and three underskirts; she wore four so-called top skirts, each skirt wore another, but she wore all four, according to a system of daily rotation. The skirt on top the day before descended one layer on the next, her second skirt became the third. The skirt that yesterday was third now nestled right against her skin. Yesterday’s inmost skirt now clearly showed its pattern, which was none at all: my grandmother Anna Bronski’s skirts all preferred the same standard potato color. It must have suited her.
Aside from their color my grandmother’s skirts were distinguished by a lavish expanse of material. They formed broad arcs, billowed when the wind rose, fell slack when it had had enough, rattled as it passed, and all four flew out ahead of her when the wind was in her stern. When she sat down, my grandmother gathered her skirts about her.
In addition to the four skirts that permanently billowed, drooped, draped, or stood stiff and empty by her bed, my grandmother possessed a fifth. This skirt differed in no way from the four other potato-colored ones. And this fifth skirt was not always the same fifth skirt. Like its brothersfor skirts are masculine by natureit too was subject to rotation, was one of the four skirts she wore, and like them, when its time had come each fifth Friday, it descended into the washtub, hung Saturday on the clothesline at the kitchen window, and lay when dry on the ironing board.
When, after one of these housecleaning-baking-washing-and--ironing Saturdays, having milked and fed the cow, my grandmother climbed into the tub, tendered something to the suds, let the tub water sink once more, then sat in her grandly flowered towel ...
GRANTED: I’M AN INMATE in a mental institution; my keeper watches me, scarcely lets me out of sight, for there’s a peephole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can’t see through blue-eyed types like me.
So my keeper can’t possibly be my enemy. I’ve grown fond of this man peeping through the door, and the moment he enters my room I tell him incidents from my life so he can get to know me in spite of the peephole between us. The good fellow seems to appreciate my stories, for the moment I’ve finished some tall tale he expresses his gratitude by showing me one of his latest knotworks. Whether he’s an artist remains to be seen. But an exhibition of his works would be well received by the press, and would entice a few buyers too. He gathers ordinary pieces of string from his patients’ rooms after visiting hours, disentangles them, knots them into multilayered, cartilaginous specters, dips them in plaster, lets them harden, and impales them on knitting needles mounted on little wooden pedestals.
He often plays with the notion of coloring his creations. I advise him not to, point toward my white metal bed and ask him to imagine this most perfect of all beds painted in multiple hues. Horrified, he claps his keeper’s hands to his head, struggles to arrange his somewhat inflexible features into an expression of manifold shock, and drops his polychrome plans.
My white-enameled metal hospital bed thus sets a standard. To me it is more; my bed is a goal I’ve finally reached, it is my consolation, and could easily become my faith if the administration would allow me to make a few changes: I’d like to have the bed rails raised even higher to keep anyone from coming too close.
Once a week Visitors Day disrupts the silence I’ve woven between my white metal bars. It signals the arrival of those who wish to save me, who find pleasure in loving me, who seek to value, respect, and know themselves through me. How blind, nervous, and ill-mannered they are. Scratching away at my white bed rails with their nail scissors, scribbling obscene, elongated stick figures on the enamel with ballpoint pens and blue pencils. My lawyer, having blasted the room with his hello, routinely claps his nylon hat over the left-hand bedpost at the foot of my bed. This act of violence robs me of my inner balance and good cheer for as long as his visit lastsand lawyers always have plenty to say.
Once my visitors have placed their gifts on the little white oilcloth-covered table that stands beneath a watercolor of anemones, once they’ve laid out some future plan to save me, or one already under way, once they’ve managed to convince me, by their tireless attempts to rescue me, of the high quality of their brotherly love, they find renewed joy in their own existence and depart. Then my keeper arrives to air out the room and gather up the string from the gift wrappings. Often after airing he finds time, sitting by my bed and disentangling the string, to spread a silence so prolonged that in the end I call the silence Bruno, and Bruno silence.
Bruno MünsterbergI’m talking about my keeper now, I’m done playing with wordsbought five hundred sheets of writing paper on my behalf. Should this supply prove insufficient, Bruno, who is unmarried, childless, and hails from the Sauerland, will revisit the little stationery shop, which also sells toys, and provide me with whatever additional unlined space I need for my recollections, which I hope will be accurate. I could never have requested this favor of my visitors, my lawyer, or Klepp, say. The solicitous love prescribed for me would surely have prevented my friends from anything so dangerous as bringing me blank paper and allowing my incessantly syllable-excreting mind free use of it.
When I said to Bruno, Oh, Bruno, would you buy me a ream of virgin paper?” he looked up at the ceiling, sent his finger pointing in that same direction to underline the comparison, and replied, You mean white paper, Herr Oskar.”
I stuck with the word virgin and told Bruno to ask for it that way at the shop. When he returned later that afternoon with the package, he seemed a Bruno lost in thought. He stared long and hard a few times at the ceiling, that source of all his bright ideas, and then announced, That word you recommended was right. I asked for virgin paper and the salesgirl blushed bright red before she gave me what I wanted.”
Fearing a long conversation about salesgirls in stationery shops, I regretted having emphasized the paper’s innocence by calling it virgin, and said nothing, waited till Bruno had left the room. Only then did I open the package with the five hundred sheets of paper.
I lifted the resilient stack for a moment and tested its weight. Then I counted off ten sheets and stored the rest in my bedside table. I found the fountain pen by my photo album in the drawer: it’s full, it won’t fail for lack of ink; how shall I begin?
You can start a story in the middle, then strike out boldly backward and forward to create confusion. You can be modern, delete all reference to time and distance, and then proclaim or let someone else proclaim that at the eleventh hour you’ve finally solved the space-time problem. Or you can start by declaring that novels can no longer be written, and then, behind your own back as it were, produce a mighty blockbuster that establishes you as the last of the great novelists. I’ve also been told it makes a good impression to begin modestly by asserting that novels no longer have heroes because individuals have ceased to exist, that individualism is a thing of the past, that all human beings are lonely, all equally lonely, with no claim to individual loneliness, that they all form some nameless mass devoid of heroes. All that may be true. But as far as I and my keeper Bruno are concerned, I beg to state that we are both heroes, quite different heroes, he behind his peephole, I in front of it; and that when he opens the door, the two of us, for all our friendship and loneliness, are still far from being some nameless mass devoid of heroes.
I’ll begin long before me, for no one should describe his life who lacks the patience to commemorate at least half of his grandparents’ existence before detailing his own. To all of you forced to live confusing lives beyond the confines of my mental institution, to all you friends and weekly visitors who have no inkling of my store of paper, I introduce Oskar’s maternal grandmother.
My grandmother Anna Bronski sat in her skirts late one October afternoon at the edge of a potato field. You could have seen how expertly my grandmother raked the limp potato tops into tidy piles that morning, ate a hunk of bread at noon smeared with dripping and sweetened with syrup, dug through the field one last time, and sat at last in her skirts between two nearly full baskets. Before the upturned and inwardly tilted soles of her boots, flaring up asthmatically from time to time and sending a flat layer of troubled smoke across the slightly tilted crust of the soil, smoldered a potato-top fire. The year was eighteen ninety-nine, she sat in the heart of Kashubia, near Bissau, nearer still to the brickworks, this side of Ramkau she sat, beyond Viereck, facing the road to Brentau, between Dirschau and Karthaus, with her back toward the black forest of Goldkrug she sat, shoving potatoes under the hot ashes with the charred tip of a hazel stick.
If I’ve singled out my grandmother’s skirt for special mention, making it clear, I hope, that she was sitting in her skirtseven calling the chapter The Wide Skirt”it’s because I know how much I owe to that article of clothing. My grandmother didn’t wear just one skirt, she wore four, one atop the other. Nor did she wear one top skirt and three underskirts; she wore four so-called top skirts, each skirt wore another, but she wore all four, according to a system of daily rotation. The skirt on top the day before descended one layer on the next, her second skirt became the third. The skirt that yesterday was third now nestled right against her skin. Yesterday’s inmost skirt now clearly showed its pattern, which was none at all: my grandmother Anna Bronski’s skirts all preferred the same standard potato color. It must have suited her.
Aside from their color my grandmother’s skirts were distinguished by a lavish expanse of material. They formed broad arcs, billowed when the wind rose, fell slack when it had had enough, rattled as it passed, and all four flew out ahead of her when the wind was in her stern. When she sat down, my grandmother gathered her skirts about her.
In addition to the four skirts that permanently billowed, drooped, draped, or stood stiff and empty by her bed, my grandmother possessed a fifth. This skirt differed in no way from the four other potato-colored ones. And this fifth skirt was not always the same fifth skirt. Like its brothersfor skirts are masculine by natureit too was subject to rotation, was one of the four skirts she wore, and like them, when its time had come each fifth Friday, it descended into the washtub, hung Saturday on the clothesline at the kitchen window, and lay when dry on the ironing board.
When, after one of these housecleaning-baking-washing-and--ironing Saturdays, having milked and fed the cow, my grandmother climbed into the tub, tendered something to the suds, let the tub water sink once more, then sat in her grandly flowered towel ...
Start reading The Tin Drum on your Kindle in under a minute.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Choose a new release
Explore popular titles in every genre and find something you love. Try it free with trial
Product details
- ASIN : B004H8GMDA
- Publisher : Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 8, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 600 pages
- Item Weight : 1.1 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#8,593,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,913 in German Literature (Books)
- #59,802 in Deals in Books
- #285,219 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
305 global ratings
How are ratings calculated?
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2019
Verified Purchase
We follow the life of Oskar, a man born at the end of WWI in Danzig and growing to maturity in character though not in size, during the tumultuous period between the world wars and through WWII. The bizarre events of Oskar's life and fantasy world intertwine seamlessly with the political and military events of the period and place, Poland and Germany. Many readers will be put off by the book's length, over 500 pages, but being folded into Oskar's fantasy world is anything but tedious. Don't miss the fabulous film version of the novel starring David Bennent filmed in 1979. The imagery captures the feel of the book perfectly.
15 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2020
Verified Purchase
The Tin Drum, published in 1959, is set in Poland and Germany during the rise of Nazism and World War II, but it views this history through a lens (or perhaps more accurately, a fun-house mirror) of absurd humor and obscure metaphor. It is also surely one of literature’s strangest coming-of-age novels, since it features a protagonist who literally refuses to come of age. German author Günter Grass was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999 largely on the strength of this, his best-known work. The Tin Drum has been critically acclaimed as a masterpiece of modern literature, but it is a tedious ordeal to read.
The Tin Drum is the story of Oskar Matzerath, who is born in 1924 in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Oskar relates his story thirty years later from his bed in a mental hospital. Much like the city in which he was born, Oskar’s heritage is a mixture of Kashubian, Polish, and German. His mother has two lovers, and which of them is Oskar’s biological father is a matter of speculation throughout the book. At the age of three, two momentous events occur in Oskar’s life. First, he is given a tin drum as a birthday present. This drum becomes his lifelong companion and primary means of self-expression. Second, Oskar makes a conscious attempt to stop growing, thus suspending his physical development.
The Tin Drum occasionally provides a vivid glimpse of life in Danzig and Düsseldorf during the 1930s and ‘40s, but more often than not Grass opts for deliberately weird, disturbing, and satirical imagery that steers the narrative down a more comical and frivolous path. For example, Oskar discovers that he has the power to shatter glass with his screams. This is pleasantly surprising the first time it happens, but Grass trots out the same image ad nauseam, to the point where Oskar is developing this talent to ridiculous and tedious lengths. Meanwhile, members of the supporting cast begin committing suicide in bizarre ways, further divorcing the story from reality. As he grows up, Oskar becomes precociously horny, and despite his childlike appearance women seem to find him irresistible. This results in a number of sex scenes, all of which have something disgusting about them, such as his partner smells bad or is asleep during the act. Even in its repulsive or tragic moments, the novel is really too whimsical to be offensive, but it seems to constantly invite the reader to laugh at jokes that just aren’t very funny.
If The Tin Drum has a saving grace, it is Grass’s inventive use of language. He plays with words and phrases the way an innovative jazz musician experiments with notes and keys. This would be quite admirable were the book not so inordinately long and relentlessly repetitive. The novel feels like a self-indulgent exercise by an author more interested in hearing himself talk than in conveying anything meaningful to the reader. On the bright side, the 2009 translation by Breon Mitchell does an outstanding job of interpreting Grass’s complex verbal gymnastics into readable English prose.
Though normally I wouldn’t make such a recommendation, before you spend 20+ hours reading this book you might want to watch the movie to see if this story is really your cup of tea. The film adaptation only covers roughly the first two-thirds of the book, but is otherwise mostly faithful to the text. If you like the film and think you want to tackle the novel, be prepared that Grass’s gratuitous wordplay draws out every scene to five times its necessary length.
The Tin Drum is the story of Oskar Matzerath, who is born in 1924 in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Oskar relates his story thirty years later from his bed in a mental hospital. Much like the city in which he was born, Oskar’s heritage is a mixture of Kashubian, Polish, and German. His mother has two lovers, and which of them is Oskar’s biological father is a matter of speculation throughout the book. At the age of three, two momentous events occur in Oskar’s life. First, he is given a tin drum as a birthday present. This drum becomes his lifelong companion and primary means of self-expression. Second, Oskar makes a conscious attempt to stop growing, thus suspending his physical development.
The Tin Drum occasionally provides a vivid glimpse of life in Danzig and Düsseldorf during the 1930s and ‘40s, but more often than not Grass opts for deliberately weird, disturbing, and satirical imagery that steers the narrative down a more comical and frivolous path. For example, Oskar discovers that he has the power to shatter glass with his screams. This is pleasantly surprising the first time it happens, but Grass trots out the same image ad nauseam, to the point where Oskar is developing this talent to ridiculous and tedious lengths. Meanwhile, members of the supporting cast begin committing suicide in bizarre ways, further divorcing the story from reality. As he grows up, Oskar becomes precociously horny, and despite his childlike appearance women seem to find him irresistible. This results in a number of sex scenes, all of which have something disgusting about them, such as his partner smells bad or is asleep during the act. Even in its repulsive or tragic moments, the novel is really too whimsical to be offensive, but it seems to constantly invite the reader to laugh at jokes that just aren’t very funny.
If The Tin Drum has a saving grace, it is Grass’s inventive use of language. He plays with words and phrases the way an innovative jazz musician experiments with notes and keys. This would be quite admirable were the book not so inordinately long and relentlessly repetitive. The novel feels like a self-indulgent exercise by an author more interested in hearing himself talk than in conveying anything meaningful to the reader. On the bright side, the 2009 translation by Breon Mitchell does an outstanding job of interpreting Grass’s complex verbal gymnastics into readable English prose.
Though normally I wouldn’t make such a recommendation, before you spend 20+ hours reading this book you might want to watch the movie to see if this story is really your cup of tea. The film adaptation only covers roughly the first two-thirds of the book, but is otherwise mostly faithful to the text. If you like the film and think you want to tackle the novel, be prepared that Grass’s gratuitous wordplay draws out every scene to five times its necessary length.
5 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2018
Verified Purchase
The amazing drum playing and glass shattering screams of Oskar Mazerath at age three represent some of the most striking notions of this great masterpiece. A wonderful novel that never ceases to cause a tremendous shock, a wave of amazement and sheer delight in reading the skillful language of the author.
10 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2019
Verified Purchase
It's The Tin Drum. Uhm...Gunter Grass. Schleprock- you don't find yourself accidentally confronted by the novel, or the movie, unless you knew what you were looking for. Write a review of The Tin Drum, how dare you? How dare I?
5 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2019
Verified Purchase
utterly confused with current translation . found it a difficult and boring read. including am sorry i recommended to others.
7 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2020
Verified Purchase
The more one gets into the story the more one appreciates the interplay between characters and how expressive the story line advances with only a toy drum carrying the story line. It is no wonder this became a first time best seller. The ability of creating a story line from a boy who never spoke because he had nothing to say and relating a life time of characters and experiences from an institution is exceptional.
One person found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2019
Verified Purchase
I bought this copy of The Tin Drum due to its being a new translation. This is my favorite novel and my fifth time reading it.
5 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2021
Verified Purchase
As I read this book I at times thought of how profound it is! The night of Kristelnacht and the defense of the Polish Post Office, the beginning day of World War Two and the Troup at the Pillboxes, are all incredible, spellbinding scenes. But then I would be assailed by Oskar and the Dusters destroying the images of Christ and Mary in the church, by the scene of the horsehead on the beach and the scene of Oskar in the nurse’s wardrobe. I would then think: how pornographic, how gross and how irreverent this book can be! But upon reflection those even objectionable scenes have their deeper meanings and on balance add to the richness of the book.
This book truly deserves to be ranked among the great novels of the twentieth century.
This book truly deserves to be ranked among the great novels of the twentieth century.
Top reviews from other countries
Sheffielder
4.0 out of 5 stars
Peters out, but well worth reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 7, 2018Verified Purchase
Deservedly famous though this book is, I couldn't help feeling that the bulk of Book 3 was superfluous; it seemed to involve numerous retellings of what had gone before, with far less of the oddness that makes the earlier sections so gripping. Nonetheless, worth reading.
3 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Robbo
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not for me
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2019Verified Purchase
This is supposed to be something of a classic (which is why I bought it) but I couldn't persuade myself to 'wade' past the half way point. Drivel!
3 people found this helpful
Report abuse
nick justin
4.0 out of 5 stars
The book had a large piece of packing cardboard FULLY glued across the front cover!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 2, 2019Verified Purchase
Apart from the fact that the book had a large piece of packing cardboard FULLY glued across the front cover, it's al there and a VERY good deal...
One person found this helpful
Report abuse
RICHARD T.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful new translation (2009) making this even more of a must read novel.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2020Verified Purchase
Re-read this treasure of a book again after 40 years and it is even more engrossing the second time arou d especially as the new 2009 translation adds in some missing themes and incorporates more of Grass's unique literary rhythm and style than the original English translation. A must read!
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Looks great.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 2, 2018Verified Purchase
is defiantly the right book
One person found this helpful
Report abuse
Highly rated by customers
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1