Finished: The Tin Drum (Grass) Still digesting this very bizarre, yet attention-holding Nobel Prize winning book! I wasn't looking forward to reading this one from the Top 100 list, but now I'm really glad I did...even if it might not make my personal Top 100 list. It is obviously good literature, even if I might not "get" all the double, political meanings of everything. There is so much reference to World War II, through imagery and different metaphors, including the storming of Normandy, and the taking over of Danzig by the approaching Russians, and more. I think this is probably what gave the book it's Nobel Prize winning status. If you read between the lines, or I guess, read the lines and are able to interpret what they mean, it can be very powerful. I don't think my brain understood as much of it as it should...but then I didn't live during that time. I think sometimes you have to have truly experienced the war horrors and history being made to totally grasp it. I don't know.

Reading this story of Oskar Matzerath, a patient in a mental institution who stopped growing at the age of three and lived his entire life through banging on his tin drum is kind of like a train wreck...you just can't look away. I do like the author's writing, which is always important in keeping me engaged. Oskar weaves his tale, going back to the conception of his mother under his grandmother's huge skirts as she squatted in a potato field and harbored his soon-to-be grandfather, who took refuge under those skirts while running from authorities. While grandmother, Anna, pointed the authorities in the wrong direction, Joseph impregnated the helpful stranger. Once married, Anna and Joe had daughter, Agnes, who becomes Oskar's mother. The story takes place in Danzig in the beginning  years of World War II. Agnes falls in love with her Polish cousin, Jan Bronski, but they resist their love and Agnes marries German grocer, Alfred Matzerath. However, Agnes and Jan can't keep their hands off of each other, so Jan becomes a friend of the family and Agnes and Jan begin a love affair right under the nose of Alfred...who seems more interested in German party activities and cooking exotic meals anyway. Of course, Agnes becomes pregnant and gives birth to Oskar, who has the Bronski blue eyes. As Oskar grows up, in his mind he considers Jan to be his father, and Alfred his "presumptive" father. Oskar is born with extreme intelligence and can understand everything from the moment he's born. He hears his father say that Oskar will follow him into the grocery business and he hears his mother say that on his third birthday, she will buy Oskar a tin drum. Oskar decides then and there he will never be a grocer. He waits patiently for three years for his tin drum...going through all the antics of being a baby, etc. On his third birthday, sure enough Oskar gets his tin drum. He decides that he is picture perfect with his drum, and therefore, should never grow another inch. Oskar throws himself down the cellar stairs when the door is accidentally left open and while suffering only a small head injury, true to his word, he doesn't grow another inch. Doctors blame the fall. Though he does grow in mental  years, he acts to his family like a three year old until after he's into his 20's. Oh, and along with that, he develops this ear-piercing talent of breaking what glass he likes with his screams. So...just try and take that drum away from him! The story then goes on to tell all about how Oskar deals with his mother's death due to eating too much fish, his real father's death while defending the Polish post office in the war, his presumptive father's death by choking on his party pin after swallowing it to hide it from the invading Russians; and how he falls in love with Maria, then Roswitha, and how he even father's a child by Maria....all when he's in all their minds, just a three year old. After his "presumptive" father, Alfred, dies Oskar realizes just how much Alfred really meant to him and he throws his drum into the grave with Alfred, gives up drumming, and decides to finally grow. And grow he does...but only about another foot in height. He also grows a hump, and his head grows a bit abnormally large. In other words, he appears to be more of a "dwarf", as he is called, than just a small child. I don't know if he was actually a "little person" all along, or not. After all, he is telling this story from a mental institution, so what do we believe? And, so the story goes on and on and flits back and forth between Oskar in the mental institution then back to his life story. Oskar does all kinds of things...becomes the Christ-like leader of a group of teen hooligans, does a stint in a traveling circus-like show with his mentor and friend, Bebra the dwarf, becomes a gravestone carver, becomes a nude model, takes the drum back up and becomes a drummer in a jazz band, and then on his own stage show, becomes wealthy...AND...falls in love with a nurse, Dorothea, who lives in his same rental flat, but who he never sees face to face. However, when Dorothea ends up murdered, Oskar is suspected, tried, declared insane, and committed to the institution where he spends two years drumming away on his drum once again, and reliving his life by "drumming" it out. At the end of the story, Oskar turns 30 years old and finds out from  his lawyer that they have a new suspect in Dorothea's murder and that he will likely be set free. Oskar laments about what he will do back in the real world. It sounds bizarre, because it is, but in a way I can't put my finger on, it is also intriguing. :-)

A couple of interesting quotes: When Agnes tries to take Oskar to Kindergarten when he turns 5, needless to say, Oskar has a terrible first day, shatters all kinds of windows, and is asked by the teacher not to return. There is a quote that blew my mind!

No more pencils. No more books. No more teacher's dirty looks.

OMG...aren't those the lyrics to Alice Cooper's School's Out For Summer written at least 30 years later?? I was just floored by that...wondering if Alice Cooper was some literary guy or something, lol.

The next quote I liked was when Oskar was born and heard his mother's first words:

    Mama was thinking less about the business and more about equipping her son: "Well, I knew it would be a boy, even if I sometimes said it would be a little lass."
    Thus prematurely acquainted with feminine logic, I heard the following: "When little Oskar is three years old, we'll give him a tin drum."

I just love that part..."thus prematurely acquainted with feminine logic"...lol