The Tin Drum (Book Review)
I’m going to try Goodreads’ book review embedding feature… so here goes.
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was a major slog to get through, but I can’t deny that the main character, Oscar, the hunchback midget, is hard to get out of my head. Some of the prose was poetic enough to stick in my head as well (“The bookshelves laughed themselves into splinters…” as they were hit by bullets, and stuff like that.)
Starting in, I had the impression that this book was sort of a analysis of the psychosis of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but I didn’t really get anything like that out of it. I felt if anything it skated, if not glossed over, that subject. As for Grass being the “guilty conscience” of Germany, I have to call BS on that as well. That certainly didn’t come through in this book, and it turns out Grass hid the fact that he was in the Waffen SS for 60 years. Sorry, I can’t just go with, wow, it was all insane! And, see, the characters in this book are all insane–that’s the only way to understand the Nazi phenomenon: by putting yourself in the insane POV! Uh, no, not buying it.
That being said, the book has some memorable scenes, grotesque characters and settings (even some gross sex scenes), and it makes you squirm pretty good sometimes. It Reminds me a lot “Geek Love” by Katherine Dunn — except cross-pollinated with a little Kafka, and much longer. Too much longer. The Tin Drum could have been edited in half, at least.
Why this book won the Pulitzer I have no idea. Perhaps, I just don’t understand what makes great literature.