Very P: His teeth are Grass

[Mark Kohut]

Have the scholars sourced this already? I cannot believe
it took me so long to think to source it. 

The first Gunter Grass novel I ever read was Local
Anesthetic, about a guy visiting a dentist but more about
the society and politics of Germany--and
the turbulent pendant world of the sixties.....as I tried to
"get" the novel...then

Now, I suddenly I asked myself, did Gunter have a lifelong use
of teeth and dentists even before this novel? 

Google Book Search tells me:
"Grass had used teeth and tooth decay before as tangible symbols of less 
tangible psychological and social conditions. Pilenz is suffering from a 
toothache on the first pages of Cat and Mouse" 


Cat and Mouse is 1961 in German, 1963 in English but the first world-famous BIG 
BOOK of Grass's,
The Tin Drum was 1959, 1961 in English................................
And do a Google Book search thru it and see all the teeth....especially the 
gnashing and grinding of and--
more TRP,--even dogs' teeth.....(and Grass's next big book was Dog Years!) 

Our subject of this list may have been able to read Grass in German, of 
course..(I tried once back
in college but i ain't him, but if not, he seems, like a spongelike artist, like 
Shakespeare----you wouldn't
believe all the offhand allusions and borrowings from others the scholars have 
been sourcing in Shakescene, including this verbal spin during the last few 
decades----to have picked up teeth and dentists from future-Nobelist Grass, at 
least, and rerooted them in his own way, so to speak.


P.S. Just a few years ago, I entered the NYPL thru the back/Press entrance for a 
panel on the publication of 

Grass's memoir that included Norman Mailer and there, leaning against the wall 
with some others, was Gunther himself, trim, shorter than I imagined, smoking a 
cigarette.