Twentieth-century lit

[Otto Sell]

Hi Jeremy, Hi Keith

I can only fully subscribe to that view.

Besides, what do you say to the description of our national Oprah, MRR:
"Leading critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki -- picture a seventy-year-old Toad from
X-Men-- described Grass as having "written himself dry" over a tome
containing "five good pages," and most of his colleagues followed suit."

(he, he, sez Otto)

Keith is right too. "The Tin Drum" is doubtless the best novel of Grass but
at the same time the best and most important novel of the German past-ww2
literature. "They" hated him for it as "They" hated him for "Cat and Mouse"
which surely is readable past page 25 - one misses the scene where the main
character masturbates on the "Ritterkreuz" (or not? - too lazy to check
now). I loved Grass at first, I admit, because those militarists had to
vomit, but learned later to love his books for the beautiful literature and
for the insights into the real bad history of my country. I always preferred
him to Böll.

Having read all four mentioned books at least twice I can assure you that in
the case of Rushdie's "Midnight Children" the verdict is absolutely right.
Not so sure about Marquez and Pynchon, but in fact no reading of MC wouldn't
make sense without keeping in mind what
Rushdie has taken over from "The Tin Drum." Just in short:

The first chapter of both novels are about a piece of clothing which becomes
important (of course, therefore the chapter-headline) for the
"family-(hi-)story(ies) we read about in both books, starting at the
generation of the grand-parents.
Rushdie has written his opening chapter with images who are strictly
contrary to the images Grass had used:

Whereas _The wide skirt_ is important for the "quickie" which fathers
Oskar's mother into his grandmother to hide his grandfather from the
policemen in that plain nowhere between Poland and Germany, _The perforated
sheet_ stands for the nearly endless encounter of Saleem's grandparents in
the Kashmir mountains between in what are to become India and Pakistan. Both
books are telling stories of people living at the border of countries who
are in conflict, telling of real "private" relations across the borders of
the nationalities, thus claiming for tolerance among the nationalities and
religions.

Otto

PS assuming there aren't many republican p-listers I offer my condolences.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jeremy Osner <jeremy at xyris.com>
To: p-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 6:39 PM
Subject: Twentieth-century lit


In today's Feed --
http://www.feedmag.com/templates/daily_master.php3?a_id=1388 --
Jefferson Chase says that "Midnight's Children, One Hundred Years of
Solitude, perhaps even Gravity's Rainbow are unthinkable without it";
"it" is *The Tin Drum*.

Jeremy