pynchon mention in grass review

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: lorentzen-nicklaus <lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: <jeremy at xyris.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2002 11:33 AM
Subject: pynchon mention in grass review

 in today's "frankfurter allgemeine zeitung" (faz), p. 56, there's a review
by  hubert spiegel on the new novella of günter grass ("im krebsgang" [in
crab's walk], göttingen 2002: steidl verlag. 224 pages, 18,- ?). the book
deals with the shipwreck of the "wilhelm gustloff" on 1/30/45, when 9ooo
german war refugees, mostly women and children, died after the ship had been
hit by a torpedo fired from the soviet submarine "s 13". in his review
spiegel, connecting grass' book with the debate on "airwar & literature"
w.g. sebald (r.i.p.) had initiated a couple of years ago, works out the
poetological and political problems (are there really "german victims"?)
which caused grass to laborate with this novella, that he had modelled in
his head much earlier,
for such a long time. basically the following passage from the review
hints - with german gr quote - at the fact that american writers, in
particular pynchon and vonnegut, could write about german war sufferings 30
years ago while the leading german authors, back then, didn't want to look
there, also because the german public was not ready for this. (just for the
record: i think
that uwe johnson's "jahrestage" - the first volume was published in 1970 -
is a remarkable exception here).
+++ kfl *

-snip-

http://www.blutzeuge.de/
http://www.steidl.de/grass/
read & listen to the first chapter (mp3-format). Is it Grass himself
reading?

Who can ever forget Sonja Ziemann?
Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen, BRD 1959, Regie: Frank Wisbar (1902 - 1967), who
has made the Stalingrad Movie "Hunde wollt ihr ewig leben" (US: "Inferno")
too. In 1948 he made "The Prairie" after the Fenimore Cooper novel.
Buried in Hamburg:
http://www.friedhof-hamburg.de/ohlsdorf/prominente/prominente_uvwxyz.htm

Darkness Fell On Gotenhafen
This is a well-wrought, World War II drama with a pacifist message, centered
on the sinking of the German cruise ship "Wilhelm Gustloff" in the Baltic
Sea on January 31, 1945. The luxury liner had just taken on 6,000 refugees
from the area of eastern Prussia, under invasion by Russian forces and soon
to change hands in the war. Most of the refugees were women and children and
only 928 survived the Russian submarine attack. Although the sinking of the
ship is the most dramatic sequence in this film by director Frank Wisbar,
the refugees and their lot are also explored at length. In one sequence, a
Jewish refugee is discovered and brutally brought under arrest, bringing the
larger issues of the conflict back into focus for a moment.
- Eleanor Mannikka
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=A229337

http://www.deutsche-passagierschiffe.de/wilhelm_gustloff.htm
Das Schiff war als erster Neubau einer KdF-Flotte gebaut worden. Es wurde
unmittelbar nach Beginn des Zweiten Weltkrieges von der Kriegsmarine
übernommen. Bis dahin machte es 44 Kreuzfahrten mit 65.000 Urlaubern. Vom
10.09.1939 bis zum 20.11.1940 setzte man es als Lazarettschiff ein, danach
als Lazarett- und Wohnschiff der Kriegsmarine in Gotenhafen.
Am 30.01.1945 lief es mit 6100 Flüchtlingen aus Gotenhafen aus und wurde vor
Stolpmünde auf Höhe Stolper Bank von einem sowjetischen U-Boot torpediert.
Nur 1250 Menschen konnten lebend geborgen werden. Amtlicherseits werden 5200
bis 5400 Opfer vermutet.
Das Wrack liegt 45 m unter der Wasseroberfläche.
Bauwerft: Blohm & Voss, Hamburg
Länge: 208,5 m
Breite: 23,6 m
4 Dieselmotoren mit Getriebe, 9500 PSe, 15,5 kn, 2 Schrauben
Passagiere: 1460 Einheitsklasse ( 246 Zwei- und 241 Vierbettkabinen )
Besatzung: 420
Stapellauf: 05.05.1937
Fertigstellung: 15.03.1938

http://www.pwgester.de/literatur/litliste-3reich.html
Literatur- und Filmliste zum Zeitabschnitt "Drittes Reich"

I have never had the impression that the German WW 2 victims have been
forgotten in postwar Germany, but maybe Grass is right that the topic has
been left to the right wing, in my opinion because the left has been busy to
fight right-wing attempts to forget all the other victims.

Otto