| |||
|
Arts & Entertainment Comics Health & Body Media Mothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project Travel & Food ![]() Columnists
Current Click here to read the latest stories from the wires. - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Books stories, go to the
Books home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Books Reviews Reviews Ivory Tower - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
The genius of Danzig
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Oct. 7, 1999 |
Grass' route to the Nobel -- or, rather, the prize's route to Grass -- has not been swift. Until Thursday, we thought of him as we once thought of Susan Lucci, Phil Rizzuto, the pre-"Schindler" Spielberg. He was a perennial bridesmaid, passed over by the Nobel Committee in 1972 for fellow postwar Trümmerliteratur novelist Heinrich "Heinrich Who?" Böll; he had grown gray waiting for the slow Nobel compass to complete its rotation and settle once again on a German author. No other living German novelist approaches his stature. But then, how many Americans would be likely to know that? In the United States, he's had a different, more ambivalent sort of stature -- that of the most important living novelist to have drifted off the public radar. Now Grass will have what his character Pilenz, in the 1961 novella "Cat and Mouse," calls "the abracadabra," "the trinket," "the all-day sucker": He'll have his medal good and proper. But here he's still pretty much the "Tin Drum" guy -- or, at least, the author of the early "Danzig Trilogy," which comprises "The Tin Drum," "Cat and Mouse" and the 1963 "Dog Years." His latest novel, the epochal "My Century," will be published here by Harcourt Brace in December. And in between those two achievements lies a career -- 36 years of mature work.
| ||
|
|
Arts & Entertainment | Books | Comics | Life | News | People
Politics | Sex | Tech & Business | Audio
The Free Software Project | The Movie Page
Letters | Columnists | Salon Plus
Copyright © 2000 Salon.com All rights reserved.