German literature (almost completely NP)

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MalignD at aol.com [mailto:MalignD at aol.com]
> 
> << as for Heinrich Boll, wasn't he a pacifist in Hitler's Germany - gotta 
> respect that>>
> 
> Maybe  you should read his novels.  Billiards At Half-past Nine, Group 
> Portrait With Lady ...  Might give you an opinion of your own.  Might not ...
> 

anent this and another weeks-old post asking about English readers of translated German books
I'm about halfway into the library copy of Group Portrait in English, which the flyleaf says came out in 1973, while I wait for my German copy of "Verlorene Ehre" to be mailed from Germany (also thinking about ordering "Draussen vor der Tuer", we read some of that in high school German; heart-rending stuff...and there was another one "Die Lange, Lange Strasse Lang, which I'm not finding anywhere - was it also by Wolfgang Borchert?*)
Group Portrait is quite good, using the format of an investigation where the author is present as investigator, into a remarkable and unusual woman and the very unusual people living and dying around her through WWII and after.  

Other translated books I've read are Grass's Tin Drum, and another book with a lot of eels and mangel-wurzels in it, I seem to recall...  
Also, inevitably, Kafka, Goethe's Faust (a friend of mine corresponded with a German lady who indicated she and many Germans disliked Goethe - is that widespread?), and some Thomas Mann.  
But if I'm any indicator, the average American is not very well-informed on contemporary German fiction: trends, schools, bestsellers, treasures?  I hope not everybody there is simply reading "Da Vinci Code" this year (-;

There's a Pynchon cite in Vineland (Pee Wee Herman in "The Robert Musil Story" and "Mann ohne Eigenschaften" has certain Pynchonesque qualities, though it's supposedly quite a daunting read.  That's on my someday list, whether in xlation or neat...

(*yes, I found some of it online here http://borchert.magiers.de/storys.html)