Rating: 
Summary: Green with envy.
Review: 1980: I was 10 years old the first time I came into contact with Grass' THE TIN DRUM. It was in the form of a movie on cable television. For whatever reason, I immediately found myself drawn towards the bizarre story and eccentric characters. Unfortunately, my parents didn't think it was an appropriate program for their impressionable child to watch (looking back, I can't say I disagree). The television was turned off and I went to bed dejected, disgusted, and somewhat disturbed. It wasn't until 1995 that I re-discovered Grass' work in its original form. I was browsing the shelves of a used bookstore when a dog-eared paperback caught my eye. Seeing as my parents weren't around to object, I purchased the book for a dollar and took it home where it sat on a bookshelf for nearly a year. To make a long story short, I finally read the book--then I read it again. In my opinion, Grass' novel follows in the same tradition of storytelling as Celine's JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT, or Joseph Heller's CATCH-22. Sweeping. Vast. Strange. Humor of the darkest type is employed at every turn--an uncomfortable kind of comedy that allows one to laugh when they feel like wincing. You can't go wrong with this one. Each chapter is compact, almost a short story in itself, and the pacing is superb. I can honestly admit that THE TIN DRUM is the only book I have ever read that I wish I had written myself.
Rating:
Summary: The Banality of Evil and Its Consequences
Review: I have been meaning to read this book since it came out in 1959, but only did so now. My reason for delaying was that the reviews I had read of the book made it sound unappealing to me. Why did I want to read the unrealistic ramblings of an insane dwarf?Having been impressed with Mr. Grass's recent work, Crabwalk, I finally decided to give The Tin Drum a try. I'm glad I did. Let me explain why. In my studies of the Nazi era, I was always struck by comments that observers from that time made about how banal the evil of it all was. Yet much of the propaganda from that period (such as The Triumph of the Will) that we can see today makes the Nazis seem like mythic figures. What were the observers trying to say? I finally felt like I understood the point through reading The Tin Drum. Reading about distant battles while living in Germany before the bombing became great seems a lot like reading about attacks on coalition troops in Iraq now. Going to party meetings seems a lot like how people here go to lodge meetings now. In the first 100 pages, I kept wondering why Mr. Grass had chosen to write the novel in the form of an autobiography of an insane dwarf pretending to have a mental age of 3 who had been convicted of a murder he did not commit. Eventually, it hit me. He needed a narrator who could not be considered complicit in what the Nazis did, or we could not trust his voice. In addition, how can you portray banal evils as insane unless you see them through the eyes of an "insane" person who makes all too much sense? Once I accepted the brilliance (perhaps even the inevitability of his choice), I settled back and really began to enjoy the story. Then I began to realize that it is our childish instincts to want to control everything in our lives that leads to our separation from the richness that we can provide one another. So Mr. Grass was also sharing an important psychological point in choosing Oskar as his narrator. What made the book special for me was Mr. Grass's ability to continually show how our connections to one another are the potential for goodness, while our instincts to take advantage of one another are the evil we must overcome. Oskar Matzareth, the narrator, is a thinker . . . yet ultimately his point is that we must carefully examine what we think about. Otherwise, false ideas will lead to fatal consequences. I was very impressed by the way that the plot was constructed so that each time society acted in divided ways Oskar himself or someone close to him was harmed. What will stay with me the longest are the amazing descriptions of fictional people and events: His grandmother's skirts, the horse's head with the eels emerging from it, his "father's" death during the Soviet invasion, Jan Bronski's obsessive search for skat cards during the attack on the Polish post office and Oskar's reaction to the statue of Jesus coming to life will always be with me. I found myself wishing that I could read German like a native. The satirical humor is usually savage and quick to kill its object. I fully absorbed the lesson before the blood could even begin to emerge from the butt of the satire. As I read the book, I wondered how many times I missed compelling humor because it didn't translate well into English. At the end of the book, I found myself searching for a novel to compare The Tin Drum to . . . in order to help other readers decide if this book is for them. In the end I could find no one book. Instead, The Tin Drum can best be described as a combination of reverse sort of Gulliver's Travels, Candide and Don Quixote set in the context of German/Polish Danzig through the end of World War II and in West Germany thereafter. So there's a fundamental darkness to the book that is missing from the other three. I came away wondering how I can stay connected with others now while retaining the ability to see and act on the events around me as a detached, objective observer. Mr. Grass has raised quite a challenge for us all.
Rating:
Summary: An overwhelming, impressive, confusing, masterpiece
Review: I have just completed this masterpiece of literary fiction - of all the great works I have read, Grass's is a tour de force of imagination surpassed by few. It is a grotesque and pathetic but brilliant portrait of humanity - like Oskar and all of of the characters who become unforgettable. I could not put it down. True, the book is lacking in plot - but that is not its genius. Its genius is portraying the human condition -- and human behavior. ...I agree that it is not the ultimate testiony about the horrors of Nazi Germany that it is billed to be. This was confusing to me -- I think much of the retrospective critisicm of this novel credits Grass too much with portraying the horrors of the Third Reich. It is a more generic portrait of the evils of humanity. Two hundred years from now, a reader will not learn of the German atrocities from the Tin Drum; however it will still be a great work of literature with universal truths. I also want to strongly disagree with the reader who commented that the message is that humans are not good or evil - just a product of their situation. If we learn anything from this novel, we must learn the horrible truth that human beings have an incredible capacity for callousness, dispassionateness and, yes, pure evil. Take the Alfred Maskereth's warming his hands over the burning remains of the synogogue; the children of Danzig; the Polish looters on the train ride West; the "innocents" Oskar converts to petty thieves, to name a few. All of the characters in Tin Drum have knowledge of right and wrong - most seem to choose wrong - a sad commentary on humanity, but appropriate considering the period and circumstances which gave bith to this book. END
Rating:
Summary: dark humor deep picaresque
Review: I must recognize that since Günter Grass obtained the Nobel prize, I approached to this book with some skepticism, based in the fact that the author was a refugee, or a child that lost his town in a war, made me think it was a political award (the feeling I have with the current Nobel prize - I mean that I have the same prejudice about him, not that I know it was a polite award. I just have not read any of his books). Well, this book was one of the best surprises in my whole life. Grass manages the most brutal situations from a totally new point of view. The mixture of humor, sadness, nostalgia, perversity, pessimism and even optimism are utterly brilliant.
I think that the most of the readers that attack this book is the same group that attacks Ulysses and similar great books. I think they all are missing the point. This is a mixture of Don Quixote, magic, historic novel, epic and black humor, in a whole new form, at least at that master level, where human situation and sometimes the whole concept of an objective reality is put in question, and also a great part of all of the feelings This book is totally a masterwork for literature history.
Rating:
Summary: dark humor deep picaresque
Review: I must recognize that since Günter Grass obtained the Nobel prize, I approached to this book with some skepticism, based in the fact that the author was a refugee, or maybe a child that lost his town in a war, made me think it was a political award (the feeling I have with the current Nobel prize - I mean that I have the same prejudice about him, not that I know it was a polite award. I just have not read any of his books). Well, this book was one of the best surprises in my whole life. Grass manages the most brutal situations from a totally new point of view. The mixture of humor, sadness, nostalgia, perversity, pessimism and sometimes even optimism are utterly brilliant.
I think that most of the readers that attack this book is the same group that attacks Ulysses and similar great books. I think they all are missing the point. This is a mixture of Don Quixote, magic, historic novel, epic and black humor, in a whole new form, at least at that master level, where human situation and sometimes the whole concept of an objective reality is put in question, and also a great part of all of the feelings This book is totally a masterwork of XX century. You will never forget it.
Rating: 
Summary: Far too "fantastic" of a read for me...
Review: Overall, The Tin Drum seemed to be a drawn-out, laborious journey for me. I read upwards of fifty carefully selected novels a year, and I've heard much here and there about the merits of The Drum. Perhaps I was expecting too much from it? The first three or four chapters had me thoroughly absorbed in Oskar's ancestry, and for the rest of the book I kept waiting for someone as interesting and human as his grandmother Anna to show up. Granted, Oskar's mother Agnes is another consistent and great character, but besides these two, I made no friends. Oskar was such an "unreal" personage that I found him impossible to trust as a narrator... with every beat of his drum he startled the cohesive theme of this book into a corner. I never found that corner. I am no stranger to authors diving in and out between the "fantastic" and the "real" (as for instance do Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Hermann Hesse, Charles Williams etc), but 570 pages of unending "fantastic" in the true dictionary sense (ie. of an odd appearance, or grotesque) left me truly bewildered. I will be less trusting of any future novel that begins with the disclaimer "I am an inmate of a mental hospital..."
Rating: 
Summary: Larger than Oskar
Review: The Tin Drum had been on my "to read" list for the last few years. This does not mean that I was actually looking forward to reading it, rather that I felt it important to do so. I finally bit the bullet and picked it up. I have to say that I was strangely satisfied with the read. Grass really captures the duality of the characters and the "nations" that exist. In addition, memory and a refusal to move forward with time (both personally and as a society) are captured perfectly. Definitions of countries and ethnicities are shown for what they are, transient notions changing with time. Who is a German and who is a Pole and who is Jewish? What is a nation and what is does it mean to be nationalistic? Likewise, the idiocy of war and its impact on society are illustrated with a brilliance seldom seen. That being said, the novel did plod along and was tedious at times. However, the scene with the horse head makes even the slower parts worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital
Review: The Tin Drum is a crazy, anecdotal novel that chronicles the adventures of Oskar, who is a cross between Rumplestiltskin and Peter Pan. He identifies himself sometimes as Jesus, sometimes as Satan. At thirty, Oskar is an inmate of a mental hospital (as noted in the first sentence of the book) and is still pounding on the same model of drum he received when he was three. Through his perceptive eyes, we get an image of Germany in the 30s and 40s, its dissidents, its criminals, and its entertainers. Oskar is selective in what he tells us. For example, we know his alleged father can "turn feelings into soup", but we don't know his function in the Nazi party. We know about every nurse Oskar meets, but his encounters with the military are kept to a minimum. The pre and post-war situation is almost just a background, and Oskar rarely comes upfront and comments about the horror of the times. He expresses his feelings through his drum, interrupting party speeches and causing mayhem on the streets by breaking windows with his voice. The insanity of the world is not seen on a grand scale, but through the demise of individual characters. He has a great eye for catching all the little nuances of humanity, and the characters Oskar describes are unforgettable in their quirks. After reading the first paragraph about the saving grace of the four potato colored skirts, you won't be able to put it down. My favorite chapter is "On the Fibre Rug," but you'll have to make it to the end for that one. This book is a thoroughly enjoyable and witty read. No book has ever made me laugh so much, or writhe so much in discomfort. It's magical, it's real, it's perceptive, it's a must read.
Rating:
Summary: self destructive, no?
Review: The tin drum is an equitius of time and place. The produilents of the charicters in each seguimanal are, for the most part mild to fair in their ability to ammuse the reader. I found this book short of a novel, yet it frounged my thoughts when I was away from it. The embasititorial in the closing is quite amusing and will be enjoied by the reader. This book is full of pertious twists and turn. A must read for all of those who enjoy disconfort and pledaguin.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting to say the least
Review: The Tin Drum is definitely not for everyone, a warning I've already seen repeated several times. It is exhausting, unconventional, and long, but if your willing to put the time into reading it, it is a rewarding experience, 600 pages of humanity in all it's beauty and horror. Oskar is a strange character, but very intriguing. At times, I felt like I could completely relate to him, only to be completely shocked and disgusted by his actions.There were times when I was physically nauseated by this book: the children's stew, the horse head and eels, the mushroom smell of Maria and his grandmother, the pin and Matzerath. Any book that can have that sort of affect on it's reader is powerful. You shouldn't read the Tin Drum if you're looking for a captivating plot, though at times the plot is captivating. What is really special about Grass' writing are his characterizations which said more about Eastern Europe before/during/after the Nazi era than any plot could've. Though some call this book too fantastic, I think it beautifully and honestly illustrates that period and those people who have been warped by WWII propaganda, the average people living under Nazi rule: grocers, artists, and families; Grass brings them to life. Oskar on the other hand does not seem average, but then again he's not meant to be. This is fiction afterall. If you want a book to dutifully relate Nazi-ruled Eastern Europe read an encyclopedia. If you want to meet people, read the Tin Drum.
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