The Tin Drum [Paperback]

Having been impressed with Mr. Grass's recent work, Crabwalk, I finally decided to give The Tin Drum a try. I'm glad I did. Let me explain why.

In my studies of the Nazi era, I was always struck by comments that observers from that time made about how banal the evil of it all was. Yet much of the propaganda from that period (such as The Triumph of the Will) that we can see today makes the Nazis seem like mythic figures. What were the observers trying to say? I finally felt like I understood the point through reading The Tin Drum. Reading about distant battles while living in Germany before the bombing became great seems a lot like reading about attacks on coalition troops in Iraq now. Going to party meetings seems a lot like how people here go to lodge meetings now.

In the first 100 pages, I kept wondering why Mr. Grass had chosen to write the novel in the form of an autobiography of an insane dwarf pretending to have a mental age of 3 who had been convicted of a murder he did not commit. Eventually, it hit me. He needed a narrator who could not be considered complicit in what the Nazis did, or we could not trust his voice. In addition, how can you portray banal evils as insane unless you see them through the eyes of an "insane" person who makes all too much sense? Once I accepted the brilliance (perhaps even the inevitability of his choice), I settled back and really began to enjoy the story. Then I began to realize that it is our childish instincts to want to control everything in our lives that leads to our separation from the richness that we can provide one another. So Mr. Grass was also sharing an important psychological point in choosing Oskar as his narrator.

What made the book special for me was Mr. Grass's ability to continually show how our connections to one another are the potential for goodness, while our instincts to take advantage of one another are the evil we must overcome. Oskar Matzareth, the narrator, is a thinker . . . yet ultimately his point is that we must carefully examine what we think about. Otherwise, false ideas will lead to fatal consequences.

I was very impressed by the way that the plot was constructed so that each time society acted in divided ways Oskar himself or someone close to him was harmed.

What will stay with me the longest are the amazing descriptions of fictional people and events: His grandmother's skirts, the horse's head with the eels emerging from it, his "father's" death during the Soviet invasion, Jan Bronski's obsessive search for skat cards during the attack on the Polish post office and Oskar's reaction to the statue of Jesus coming to life will always be with me.

I found myself wishing that I could read German like a native. The satirical humor is usually savage and quick to kill its object. I fully absorbed the lesson before the blood could even begin to emerge from the butt of the satire. As I read the book, I wondered how many times I missed compelling humor because it didn't translate well into English.

At the end of the book, I found myself searching for a novel to compare The Tin Drum to . . . in order to help other readers decide if this book is for them. In the end I could find no one book. Instead, The Tin Drum can best be described as a combination of reverse sort of Gulliver's Travels, Candide and Don Quixote set in the context of German/Polish Danzig through the end of World War II and in West Germany thereafter. So there's a fundamental darkness to the book that is missing from the other three.

I came away wondering how I can stay connected with others now while retaining the ability to see and act on the events around me as a detached, objective observer. Mr. Grass has raised quite a challenge for us all.

Oskar is selective in what he tells us. For example, we know his alleged father can "turn feelings into soup", but we don't know his function in the Nazi party. We know about every nurse Oskar meets, but his encounters with the military are kept to a minimum. The pre and post-war situation is almost just a background, and Oskar rarely comes upfront and comments about the horror of the times. He expresses his feelings through his drum, interrupting party speeches and causing mayhem on the streets by breaking windows with his voice. The insanity of the world is not seen on a grand scale, but through the demise of individual characters.

He has a great eye for catching all the little nuances of humanity, and the characters Oskar describes are unforgettable in their quirks. After reading the first paragraph about the saving grace of the four potato colored skirts, you won't be able to put it down. My favorite chapter is "On the Fibre Rug," but you'll have to make it to the end for that one.

This book is a thoroughly enjoyable and witty read. No book has ever made me laugh so much, or writhe so much in discomfort. It's magical, it's real, it's perceptive, it's a must read.