of time. But you get to know how a european fails to critisize colonialism, as he himself is a sublte colonialist, Dissappointing. Libro que principalmente es el diario de viaje del autor de una visita que realizó a la India, Combina el diario junto con un soneto llamado "Sacar la lengua" y una serie de dibujos a carboncillo que complementan la obra, Pare ser sincero creo que los dibujos es la parte más notable de la obra, o de manera personal es lo que más disfruté del libro.
La parte del diario y del soneto es una descripción del viaje del autor, las imágenes y visiones que describe son duras, de una realidad llena de pobreza y marginación, en donde diferentes grupos sociales discriminan a otros y en la suciedad y miseria se regodean todos.
La región de la India en la que se encuentra centrada el viaje del autor es la región de Bengala que comparte frontera con Bangladesh y el viaje se realizó a medidos de la década de los.
Sin embargo, siento que de alguna manera la visión del autor se encuentra distanciada de la realidad que está viviendo, y no es que necesariamente el autor se tenga que sumergir en la miseria para dar una narración nítida, pero existen puntos en el que el autor hace énfasis que creo que empantanan las descripciones, como el énfasis en la lectura de Fontaine o la relación entre Subhas Chandra Bose y Hitler y Stalin.
Los dibujos a mi me gustan mucho, están todos muy encimados y ligeramente deformes todo muy negro y medio grotesco, creo que es lo que más me gustó del libro.
Este libro es un poco caro y difícil de encontrar y la parte del soneto no me pareció muy bueno por lo que no lo considero como lectura fundamental del autor por lo que si lo encuentras por ahí esta bien y la edición que tengo es perfecto para una mesa de café.
De Duitse auteur verhaalt over zijn ervaringen, impressies en gedachten tijdens een reis door het oosten en zuiden van India en Bangladesh, A curious book that's physically large, yet contains apage account of the author's time in India with his wife in the late's, plus many of his penandink drawings from that time which I confess I did not appreciate, and a long poem on the subject as well also unappreciated.
The travel narrative was fine, although he made references to an earlier trip to India on his own, about which I'd have liked to read more, One good thing to come out of all the furore surrounding the new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was that I came across this Mark Twain quotation:
"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
"
One author who never settles for the almost right word is Gunter Grass, whose Show Your Tongue I have just finished reading, I have already told you how I came by this book, so I was really looking forward to reading it, It certainly wasn't a disappointment, It is a marvellous book,
Read the rest of my review at sitelink blogspot. com/ Gunter Grass, Show Your Tongue, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Much of The Call of the Toad, especially the character of Chatterjee, was planted in Grass' head during an almostsixmonth trip to India in the mideighties.
Show Your Tongue is Grass' travel diary of that time, a hundred pages of text, a hundred pages of drawings, and a long poem, The whole thing is in diary style of course, impressionist, but with the sense of the diarist who is also a Nobelwinning writer while most people would lean too heavily towards one side or the other, Grass balances fact and opinion to give as much an objective picture of what he sees around him as he can.
His descriptions are, as usual, excellent, and while he rarely allows any overtly sociopolitical speech to enter the milieu of his travel diary, his disgust at what he sees infuses every word.
Showing one's tongue, in Hindu culture, is a sign of shame, Grass, coming from the somewhat neat and orderly at the time world of West Germany, finds much for India, and in retrospect his own country, to be shamed about.
He talks to many about India's "longing for a Hitler figure" according to many of those he talked to, Ghandi was considered an anomaly, and the country's real hero is WWgeneral Subhas Chandra Bose, a Nazi sympathizer who worked closely with the Japanese on a plan to crush Russia between the two countries' armies, the caste system, the awful treatment of the Chinese immigrant population,
the mountains of garbage, and other similarly controversial topics.
But as he exposes all this and compares it to the Germany both of thes and that of thes, he cannot help but be awed by the beauty of India.
This was not Grass' first trip to the country, and during the fifteen years in between trips, he longed to go back, Ultimately, it is this kind of division that informs the book more than anything attraction and repulsion, outrage and acceptance, Germany and India, But later over tea, language did treason,
the boy went wrong on me,
became a terrible angel,
This is an intriguing diary/travelogue from one of the masters chronicling a six month stay in Calcutta in, The account is larded with sketches by Grass, These afford a haunting atmosphere to the prose descriptions of poverty and merciless weather, There are two occasions when the author and his wife meet other westerners, instantly it doesn't matter whether the counterparts are Italian or Russian: the four together are Europeanunited in the midst of this subcontinental chaos.
That made me ponder my own travel experiences with my wife, The lens of prejudice could be something you can't leave behind, It is easy to compare this account with the one by Naipaul I read earlier this year, There is much sifting to be considered,
Herr Grass weaves German politics and history into his description, TheC author Theodor Fontane becomes a companionas he will again later in Too Far Afield, It is likely the details which will linger, Grass buys some stationary upon which he sketches, A subtle touch indicates that the paper costs a few days wages for many of those he encounters, All the while the author stands gape mouthed at the crowding and the soaring birth rate, This reminded me of Klaus Mann recalling how the literary publication The Dial brought relative prosperity to his family during the years following The Great War, These asides to a grander canvas are appreciated, as is the constant configuring of the Indian goddess Kali into an approach to a geopolitical reality, I imagine some could regard that as racist, a new Orientalism, or one with a new press release anyway, Perhaps the scandal of his teen conscription into the SS has undermined the general appreciation for this master, I am curious about the future regard for Gruppe, Novels, notably sitelink The Tin Drum and sitelink Dog Years , of German writer Günter Wilhelm Grass, who won the Nobel Prize offor literature, concern the political and social climate of Germany during and after World War II.
This novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, and sculptor sincelived in West Germany but in his fiction frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood, He always identified as a Kashubian, He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum, a key text in European magic realism, He named this style “broadened reality, ” “Cat and Mouse”and Dog Yearsalso succeeded in the period, These three novels make up his “Danzig trilogy, ”Helene Grass née Knoff,, Novels, notably sitelink The Tin Drum and sitelink Dog Years , of German writer Günter Wilhelm Grass, who won the Nobel Prize offor literature, concern the political and social climate of Germany during and after World War II.
This novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, and sculptor sincelived in West Germany but in his fiction frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood, He always identified as a Kashubian, He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum, a key text in European magic realism, He named this style “broadened reality, ” “Cat and Mouse”and Dog Yearsalso succeeded in the period, These three novels make up his “Danzig trilogy, ”Helene Grass née Knoff,, a Roman Catholic of Kashubian Polish origin, bore Günter Grass to Willy Grass, a Protestant ethnic German, Parents reared Grass as a Catholic, The family lived in an apartment, attached to its grocery store in Danzig Langfuhr now Gdańsk Wrzeszcz, He has one sister, born in, Grass attended the Danzig gymnasium Conradinum, He volunteered for submarine service with the Kriegsmarine "to get out of the confinement he felt as a teenager in his parents' house" which he considered in a very negative way civic Catholic lower middle class.
Inhe became a Luftwaffenhelfer, then he was drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and in November, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, into the Waffen Schutzstaffel, The seventeen year old Grass saw combat with theth Schutzstaffel panzer division Frundsberg from Februaryuntil he was wounded onApriland sent to an American prisoner of war camp.
Inand, he worked in a mine and received an education of a stonemason, For many years, he studied sculpture and graphics, first at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then at the Universität der Künste Berlin, He also worked as an author and traveled frequently, He married inand fromlived in Berlin as well as part time in Schleswig Holstein, Divorced in, he remarried in, Fromtohe held the presidency of the Berlin Akademie der Künste Berlin Academy of Arts, During the German unification process inhe argued for separation of the two states, because he thought a unified Germany would resume its past aggression, He moved to the northern German city of Lübeck in, He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in, In, Grass caused controversy with his disclosure of his Waffen Schutzstaffel service during the final months of World War II, which he had kept a secret until publishing his memoir that year.
He died of complications of lung infection onth of April,at a Lübeck hospital, He was. sitelink.