Crabwalk

Rating:
Summary: The Cycle of History
Review: "Crabwalk" starts slowly but soon weaves a hypnotic spell as the reader is yanked backwards and forwards through the history of modern Germany. It is with a sense of disgust that we watch events unfold - first the horrific sinking of a ship full of refugees, then the hardening of a survivor into a true believer, then a man's disassociation with all that has come before and finally the next generation's embracing of fascistic ideals of martyrdom and national revenge.

The ending of "Crabwalk" shows how the German people's willed amnesia has created yet another underclass to fear.

Chilling stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Deus ex libra
Review: Authors placing themselves in their own books tread on shaky ground. Few can negotiate the path with success. Grass, who has succeeded with so many other innovative efforts, accomplishes this feat with his usual mastery. Grass has lived through many January 30s, including Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933 and the sinking of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" in 1945, near the finale of that power. The date threads through the book in the figure of Paul Prokriefke, born on the latter date and the story's narrator.

Paul is an unwilling narrator, goaded into revealing hidden events by his mother and the unnamed "He" who intrudes on his idleness. Paul is beset on one side by Tulla, his mother who was on board when the Gustloff was torpedoed. On the other is Grass who restrains what he may write while persisting in his demand that the story be told. Paul is repeatedly confronted by his inadequacies. The greatest failure is his son, Konny, who has turned into a Nazi sympathiser and manages a Web site extolling the ship and the "martyr" for whom it was named. The stress Paul endures is palpable. Through it all, however, he comes to manifest what Grass wants him, and us, to see. Western history has ignored the world's greatest sea disaster in the loss of some nine thousand lives, mostly women and children, in the closing days of the Third Reich.

Grass, always a masterful prose exponent, has excelled even the superb works he's previously blessed us with. Using the metaphor of a crab's "scuttling from side to side", he moves between characters, time and events with unmatched ease and clarity. In just over two hundred pages, he exhibits absolute control of the narrative. No word is out of place, nothing omitted and the focus remains tight throughout the story. The theme is sorrow - the tragedy of so many dead, the horrors of war's pointlessness, the failure of the world to understand what has happened and why it must never be repeated. Grass makes us aware that people, ignorant of what war imposes on individuals, can be led to make the same mistakes again. This book helps us understand what we must do to learn the truth and what steps we must take to prevent recurrence. Otherwise, his final words will express the results of our failure: "It doesn't end. Never will it end". As his readers, we must refute that conclusion by assuming our responsibilities. The "ghost in the book" must be our chosen mentor, a role Grass undertakes gladly so long as we listen. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: Deus ex libra
Review: Authors placing themselves in their own books tread on shaky ground. Few can negotiate the path with success. Grass, who has succeeded with so many other innovative efforts, accomplishes this feat with his usual mastery. Grass has lived through many January 30s, including Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933 and the sinking of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" in 1945, near the finale of that power. The date threads through the book in the figure of Paul Prokriefke, born on the latter date and the story's narrator.

Paul is an unwilling narrator, goaded into revealing hidden events by his mother and the unnamed "He" who intrudes on his idleness. Paul is beset on one side by Tulla, his mother who was on board when the Gustloff was torpedoed. On the other is Grass who restrains what he may write while persisting in his demand that the story be told. Paul is repeatedly confronted by his inadequacies. The greatest failure is his son, Konny, who has turned into a Nazi sympathiser and manages a Web site extolling the ship and the "martyr" for whom it was named. The stress Paul endures is palpable. Through it all, however, he comes to manifest what Grass wants him, and us, to see. Western history has ignored the world's greatest sea disaster in the loss of some nine thousand lives, mostly women and children, in the closing days of the Third Reich.

Grass, always a masterful prose exponent, has excelled even the superb works he's previously blessed us with. Using the metaphor of a crab's "scuttling from side to side", he moves between characters, time and events with unmatched ease and clarity. In just over two hundred pages, he exhibits absolute control of the narrative. No word is out of place, nothing omitted and the focus remains tight throughout the story. The theme is sorrow - the tragedy of so many dead, the horrors of war's pointlessness, the failure of the world to understand what has happened and why it must never be repeated. Grass makes us aware that people, ignorant of what war imposes on individuals, can be led to make the same mistakes again. This book helps us understand what we must do to learn the truth and what steps we must take to prevent recurrence. Otherwise, his final words will express the results of our failure: "It doesn't end. Never will it end". As his readers, we must refute that conclusion by assuming our responsibilities. The "ghost in the book" must be our chosen mentor, a role Grass undertakes gladly so long as we listen. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: Echoes and Ripples -- Reliving and Reimagining the Past
Review: Crabwalk is the first great book I have read that was written in the 21st century.

Why Crabwalk? Here's a definition of "crab:" "to move sideways, diagonally, or obliquely, especially with short, abrupt bursts of speed." Crabwalk's structure is similar. Grass offers a clue in referring to "scuttling backward to move forward."

Paul Pokreife, a journeyman journalist, narrates several parallel tracks: his life, his mother's (Tulla), his son's (Konrad), his ex-wife's, the ship Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi Wilhelm Gustloff (and his monument and remains), Gustloff's assassin (David Frankfurter), the Soviet submarine commander who sunk the ship (Marinesko), and Konrad's online challenger (Wolfgang "David" Stremplin) and his parents. Sometimes Mr. Grass jumps sideways sharing several stories at that time. Other times he jumps forward or backward to a different time or story. . . and then goes sideways to other stories. It's like stream of consciousness narration except it's finished prose and dialogue. . . rather than thought fragments.

This structure establishes many connections between one person and another to show an interconnected fabric of German society and consciousness since 1933 in the context of a few events, a family and a few other characters. I felt like I had just absorbed the richness of War and Peace . . . except in a relatively short and simple book.

Crabwalk can be read at several levels of meaning. The most compelling story relates the terrible tragedy of the sinking of the German refugee ship, Wilhelm Gustoloff, in January 1945 on the frigid Baltic by a Soviet submarine. More than 1200 survived while most others (estimated between 6,600 and 10,600) died from explosions, equipment faults, rescue mistakes, freezing, drowning, or the icy waters. Of these, more than 4,000 were probably children. There were only 22 lifeboats on board, and only one was launched properly. You'll have to read Crabwalk to appreciate the tragedy, but it dwarfs the Titanic. Yet it's a little-known event. The Germans made no announcement then to help maintain civilian morale. The Soviets were embarrassed and hid the event. Post-war Germany has kept a code of silence around any German civilians suffering as a result of the war, seeming to reflect the national guilt for starting the war.

Paul's being born the night of the sinking, aboard a rescue ship, links him to the Nazi past (through the anniversaries of the Nazi rise to power and Gustloff's death), the consequences of the sinking on the survivors, and the sinking's effect on the next generation of Germans. This connection is the bridge to other ways to read the book.

At another level, it's a story of a dysfunctional family: A woman who wasn't sure who the father is of her only son; a son estranged from his mother by her disappointment in him and his rejection of her values; a fatherless son becoming a poor father and failed husband; and a grandson reaching out to a grandmother for the emotional support his father fails to give him.

At a third level, Crabwalk is about the experience of the German nation since January 1933 when the Nazis took over. We go through the economic recovery years as Tulla's parents take a cruise to the Norwegian fjords aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff. Tulla grows up during the war and has a miscarriage while being a streetcar conductor. She becomes pregnant with Paul, and after the rescue are settled in East Germany where she becomes a carpenter and a devoted Stalinist. Paul escapes to the West as a teenager, and the two becomes estranged. Tulla also admires the old Nazis after East Germany falls and tries to fascinate her grandson with the ship's history. She succeeds through giving him a computer, and Konrad runs a Web site about the ship and the man it's named for. At the same time, you find out how Gustloff becomes a Nazi martyr after he's assassinated by a Jewish medical student in Davos. Ironically, Frankfurter's health improves by being in prison. He's released after World War II by the Swiss and heads to Palestine.

At a fourth level, this is a story about how our lives are influenced by our environment (our family, our nation, our history and our ways of perceiving).

At a fifth level, Crabwalk teaches us to think about the consequences of when and where we're born. If Paul had been born a few hours later, he would have spent his whole life in the western sectors of Germany rather than starting in the east. He believes his whole life would have been different . . . and it probably would have.

At a sixth level, Crabwalk explains that history repeats itself through the influences of the earlier generations on another. There are many deliberate ironies in the book as one character acts out variations on what an earlier character did (especially the way Konrad mimics David Frankfurter).

Ultimately, the book is about guilt. Who's guilt is it? And for what? What's to be done to atone? "History, or, to be more precise, the history we Germans have repeatedly mucked up, is a clogged toilet." "We flush and flush, but the [content]. . . keeps rising." In particular, should Germans deny their own suffering in World War II as a means to expiate guilt, or will that denial lead to new guilty actions?

The book profoundly expanded my understanding of the German experience. As a young man in Munich on business, I found my sleep troubled and interrupted by dreams and memories of Nazi marchers on the street outside, death camps in the countryside and murderous attacks on fellow Germans. Some taxi drivers who were old enough to have been in the Wehrmacht looked at me with obvious hate. Clients my age were very punctiliously correct anti-Nazis (we even visited events criticizing the Nazi past together). On the streets, young skinheads passed wearing swastikas. Crabwalk helped me to understand what was happening then and now.

Rating:
Summary: An important, wonderful read........
Review: Every so often I am very pleased to find myself in the middle of a novel that is a pleasure to read. This is Crabwalk. Grass' narrative voice is intimate, and although he makes frequent, apologetic references to the 'scuttling' back and forth in his storyline, the story is actually very readable.

Yes, simply as an historical account of a tragic event, especially his description of the actual sinking of the ship is riveting. Yet, so is the unfolding of the tragic relationship between father and son...the sense of loss, and of history repeating itself....a main theme in the story.

Fantastic. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Grass Almost Makes the Great Comeback
Review: Gunter Grass has been undreadable for too many years. The magic of the Danzig Trilogy petered out after "The Flounder." But here in "Crabwalk" one is reminded of this great voice. Unfortunately the novel suffers from a narration that is too stubborn. If in fact the Gustloff ranks as one of the all-time sea disasters, the weight of this needs to be more important than the narrator's fears and denial. I found much to love in Grass' attempt to balance the sinking of the ship with the sinking of the narrator's life, but I felt it was unnecessarily coy at times. But still, a 3-star Grass is as good as one can ask for in these Shock and Awe days.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent view of contemporary Germany
Review: Gunter Grass, born in Danzig, has seen Germany emerge from the rubble of the Second World War, through its division and reuinification, into the 21st century as one of the leading powers in the European Union. "The Tin Drum" explored repressed Nazi episodes, "Too Far Afield," the persistent wounds of the Cold War, and now, in "Crabwalk," how Germany attempts to come to terms with this tumultuous half century and move on. The story span three generations of Germans, but one sentence sums up the contemporary mindset of the country: "The Germans keep flushing and flushing, but the sh*t keeps coming up."

Rating:
Summary: Crabwalking history as novel
Review: Gunther Grass, a Nobel Prize laureate, continues to turn out books that are uniquely his own and invariably fascinating. In CRABWALK (the name refers to the manner in which crabs ambulate, always moving to the right or left rather than forward)Grass brings to our attention a maritime tragedy that occured in January 1945 - the sinking of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" from Russian torpedoes, a tragedy that took the lives of 6,000 - 10,000 people, and a tragedy that has all but disappeared from the annals of history. Grass uses this heinous incident as the fulcrum from which to give us the history of the building of the ship, the state of life in the German Reich that politically drove the creation of this 'people's boat', and the reaction of the German people at large to this hidden tragedy. He does this all through the narration of one man born on the night of the sinking, a man whose mother is a bizarre 'true believer' and through his failed marriage that resulted in a child who in adolesence replicates his journalist father's drive to uncover the facts of the story by creating a website on his computer. Sound complex? Well, by crabwalking his way through this format, Grass leads us on a fascinating mystery and psychological unpealing of dysfunction - German, Jewish, interpersonal, and familial. Despite the magnitude of unveiling (for many of us) the gross incident of the 'Wilhelm Gustloff', the overriding strength of the novel is the exploration of father/son relationships. "What can be done when a son takes possession of his father's thoughts, thoughts that have been festering for years under a lid, and even translates then into action?" There is a profound statement in the telling of this story that will challenge every reader to examine how parents influence their children and the active feedback of that interaction. CRABWALK is beautifully written, wise, acerbic, rich in humor and philosophical overtones, and is a mighty fine read!

Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Read
Review: I enjoyed this new G. Grass book so very much.Found it fascinating and so interesting.It must be quite an experience to be able to read Mr.Grass' books in German- but as I am not fluent in German -I am very happy that his books are translated into English.
I hope we will have many more books from Herr Grass.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening, but a difficult read
Review: I've not picked up a novel by Gunter Grass since I plowed through (and enjoyed) "Cat and Mouse", "The Tin Drum" and "Dog Years" a couple of decades ago. Prior to reading this novel, I was completely ignorant of the catastrophic sinking of the German ship Wilhelm Gustoff by a Russian submarine in the Baltic Sea in the last few months of the second world war. As presented by Gunter Grass, this incident was the result of many fateful events, each one of which may not have been deadly, but when combined resulted in a horrible tragedy.
I found this novel very difficult to read. Grass aptly titled the book "Crabwalk" because the story does not unfold in simple chronological order. Instead the story, as told in the first person by Paul Pokriefke, wanders back and forth over more than half a century. As I read the novel I was flipping back through the pages I'd already read trying to figure out who a particular character is, or to recall a given event. I had to get halfway through the novel before I could recall all of the main characters and events. My knowledge of German is fair, and I found it helpful in understanding location names and some of the peculiar sentences. A good atlas is helpful to have when reading this novel because a map of the region where most of the events in the novel take place is not included.
I'd recommend this book, but it does require some effort on the part of the reader. It's not a poolside read.