Crabwalk

Rating:
Summary: A lot to digest
Review: In January 1945, the German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk by a Russian submarine in the Baltic Sea, and took some 9,000 refugees with her to their deaths. In the late 1990s, journalist Paul Pokriefke, born to a survivor while the great ship was still sinking, decides to write about the sinking, which killed more people than any other maritime disaster and yet is invisible in most history books. But Paul must crabwalk through the story, scuttling between the past and the present, to look at the tragedy of the past and the echoes that are still ringing through Germany today.

I must admit that this is one of the most fascinating, and disquieting, books that I have read in a long time. Part of the book is history, which is both informative and heartrending (5 stars). The other part of the book deals with Germany, and the way that World War II affected Germany and still affects it today. It shows how many people did and still deal with the memory of the war, some praising and some damning what happened, and all trying to come to grips with it. This other part is gripping and highly thought provoking (also 5 stars).

I wish I could say more about this book. It is a lot to digest, and is resistant to any quick and easy analysis. Overall I thought that this is a great book, and I highly recommend it to you.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful novel of German politics, post-war to present.
Review: Like the movement of a crab, this insightful and cautionary novel by Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass "scuttl[es] backward to move forward," telling the story of the World War II sinking of the "Wilhelm Gustloff" on January 30, 1945, and its long-term effects on three generations of one German family. Ten thousand passengers, including thousands of women and elderly men, and four thousand infants and children, were aboard. Nearly all of them perished.

Moving, crab-like, back and forth, following the seemingly random order of speaker Paul Pokriefke's recollections, Grass brings his story and characters to life, expanding our view of the war and its aftermath, and showing how Germany's sociopolitical thinking has changed (or not changed) from the war to the present. Actively involving the reader in deciphering Paul's memories and imposing some order on them, Grass reveals the lives of the historical characters involved in the disaster, provides intense and moving descriptions of the disaster itself, and establishes the on-going saga of Paul and his family, all directly affected by the disaster.

As in previous books, Grass is concerned here with the effects of the past on the present. Gustloff, Frankfurter, and Marinesko, characters involved in the history leading up to the sinking of the ship, have committed their lives, rightly or wrongly, to different political and military interests during the war. The speaker's family, too, has a variety of political commitments, though these have evolved largely after the war. The grandmother, Tulla, has always been a Socialist; Paul, the speaker, has been a moderate; and Konrad, Paul's son, has become a neo-Nazi. Paul is concerned that the collective memory of the country has dimmed over time and that the present generation, including his son, has gained little knowledge from the past while his mother seems to be stuck in it. When he discovers his son's hate-filled web site, he exclaims, "Good [gracious]! How much of this has been dammed up all this time...growing day by day, building pressure for action." When Konrad "kicks up a storm," commits a hate crime, and goes on trial, Grass brings his themes full circle.

The past and our willingness to learn from it, our changing definitions of "martyr" and "hero," the nature of punishment and atonement, and the impermanence of monuments and memorials are all major themes here, related both to the sinking of the Gustloff and to the events in the lives of the Pokriefke family. As is always the case with Grass, the themes are fully developed, the novel is fascinating for its insights, and it is often dramatic and moving. Grass's assessment of the current generation, as seen through Konrad, is both startling and alarming in its implications. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: Historically/politcally important, yet potentially dangerous
Review: Other reviewers have covered the plot of this book in great detail, so I will discuss the book's importance and its success, both in terms of polemics and literature.

Along with W. G. Sebald's "A Natural History of Destruction" and Joerg Friedrich's "Der Brand," "Crabwalk" is one of the three books shaping the most important debate going on in contemporary German intellectual circles. Grass, an old Leftie, makes the argument that by not addressing the topic of *German* victimhood (at the hands of the Allies) during World War II, mainstream German society has abandoned the topic to the political Right, including neo-Nazi groups.

On face value, this argument has a great deal of validity. Sebald provides much more detail on how academics and writers have avoided the topic altogether or have addressed it in an insufficient manner. HOWEVER, this argument has a serious weakness.

By re-focusing German debate on German victimhood during the war, there is a very serious risk of obscuring the victimhood of other groups (notably Jews and conquered nations). There is a precedent: The so-called Historians' Debate of the 1980s shocked and polarized German society as Stalin's crimes were compared with Hitler's crimes in a relativizing manner.

In other words, if this debate is not conducted very carefully, millions of people (not just Germans) will argue, "We were all victims of the war: Jews and Germans, Allies and Axis. Is there any difference?" There will be a radical relativization or radical leveling of victimhood. There is a real risk that Germans and others will lose sight of who started the war and who murdered millions of Europeans as part of a war of racial conquest. This line of logic already has many proponents in German society, and not just among the political Right. Radical pacifists among the political Left share this view. The German World War II memorial, Kaethe Kollwitz's Pieta sculpture in Berlin, is dedicated "to all victims of war and violence," including the poor German soldiers who fought the war for the fascists. (Yes, there is now a memorial expressly dedicated to Jewish victims.)

Thus, Grass's argument is interesting, and it is worth discussing, but it is potentially explosive and self-serving.

As literature, this book is clumsily written. (Nobel Prize-winner John Cotzee shared this opinion in his "New York Review of Books" review of "Crabwalk.") The "crabwalk"-style of narration (moving backwards or sideways to move forward) can make the story hard to follow at times, but it is not a major hindrance. The prose is not elegant, even though Grass is a Nobel laureate himself. The story is told by a first-person narrator, Paul Pokriefke, whose mother appears in several of Grass's novels. Unfortunately, Paul -- as a mouthpiece for the author -- was insufficient for the author. He inserts himself in the novel as a minor character! The author writes that Paul's friend "Grass" cannot tell the story, so he has asked him to tell it. This seems to be a very weak psychological device. Grass should either have told the story himself or have let Paul tell it. In the first case, his moral stature and renown would have given him the right to tell it. In the second case, the reader could have figured out that Paul speaks for Grass the author. There was no need for "Grass" the character in the novel.

In sum, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in German history, in German literature, or in the debates in German politics. However, read this book (and swallow its underlying message) with a grain of salt.

Rating:
Summary: CRABWALK is a triumph!
Review: Set as a novel, the author Gunter Grass crabwalks his way through the real background, the heyday, and then the sinking of the cruise ship 'Wilhelm Gustloff', last used as a refugee boat for Germans fleeing East Prussia. I had no idea that there was a more deadly sinking than the 'Titanic' until I read this book. The 'Wilhelm Gustloff' quite possibly could have taken 4 times as many lives as the 'Titanic' when it went down in the Baltic Sea. The exact number will never be known. At least 4000 were children. Why haven't we heard about it? The Russians didn't want to admit that their submarine had sunk a refugee ship (although it was still painted like a military ship). The Germans didn't want to admit the loss because Hitler wanted to keep what was left of the dwindling German spirit at the closing of World War II.

I learned so much from this book. CRABWALK should be required reading for everyone!

Rating:
Summary: Missing notes in the scale?
Review: The events surrounding the biggest naval disaster in history and its tragic outcome are not an easy topic to bring to the attention of the reader of fifty-some years later. "Why only now?" is a good question and one that starts CRABWALK. The Wilhelm Gustloff, a "Strength through Joy" cruise ship turned refugee carrier, sank after a Soviet submarine attack on January 30 1945 leading to the death of more than 9,000 people, half of them children and infants. Although the details of the sinking have been known since then, there has been reluctance to publicize them. Grass has found a way to break the silence. At least one aspect of his motivation for doing so revolves around the disaster's aftermath in today's society and emerges clearly towards the end of the book.

Tulla Pokriefke, one of the survivors of the tragedy, cannot find words to describe what she saw on the ship as the torpedoes hit: "There's no notes in the scale for it..." Nevertheless, for years she has been insisting that her son write it all down - the way she remembers it. Paul Pokriefke, a second-rate middle-aged journalist, born on one of the rescue ships at the time of the sinking, reluctantly takes on the "job". He's pressured into it by the major background player, Grass himself. Paul timidly argues with Him about the format, scope and depth of his book. He is in favour of a neutral documentary on the ship, its history and its namesake, a Nazi "martyr" and hero. His disinclination to take on this project at all speaks volumes about his generation's reluctance to relive and confront all aspects of the German past. Paul is typical in other ways too... But He nags and guides Paul through the details: take the central theme of the sinking of the ship and trace its history; bring out the lives of the people directly connected with it; don't forget Tulla, yourself and your son - make it personal. The outcome is a description of historical characters like Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi activist, David Frankfurter, the German Jew who killed him in 1936, and Alexandr Marinesko, the submarine captain who sank the vessel, interwoven with Paul's and his family's life, from then to now. Three generations of Pokriefkes, deeply influenced by the disaster, have to deal with it and the wider Nazi history in their individual way. None of them is comfortable with their present-day life.

It takes a specially gifted writer and authoritative critic like Gunter Grass to make this tragedy public in a format that is meaningful today. Having referred to the sinking of the Gustloff in previous novels, "it seems that He knew Tulla when she was young", he had been reluctant to expand on it until he had identified the right fictional frame in which to embed the facts. He found it in the strong character of Tulla, 18 at the time of the disaster and turning completely white on that day, who epitomizes the successful survivor and practical realist of her generation. She remains in the East, seemingly switching allegiances without effort to the Stalinist regime, defending it long after the Wall has crumbled.

Gunter Grass' language and literary skills are undeniable; but his often difficult language (at least in German) and his complex imagery and use of metaphor have brought him admirers as well as critics. In CRABWALK, both the language and the imagery do not present any difficulty for the reader. In fact, the text flows relatively smoothly: it reads fast despite the subject matter. Walking sideways like a crab and "scuttling backwards" to move forward describes the flow of the story. Slowly the characters come into view and the different strands merge to form a comprehensive picture. Paul's more or less ongoing commentary about his writing efforts, his reactions to family and Him, his jumping back and forth in the story, results, at times, in a somewhat lighter, more conversational tone.

Grass deliberately uses the structure of a traditional `novella' (not specified in the English version) to convey the historical events and their impact on his group of Germans. An addition to being a `short novel', a novella is usually more tightly structured and focused on a single major event. It often comprises a didactic angle or moral message. All of these elements can be found in CRABWALK. Grass' message in particular addresses the after-war generation(s). He integrates into the story the recurrent problem of young neo-nazis, skinheads and the danger of hate websites on the Internet characterized through Paul's son Konny. He reflects on the inability of the parent generation to come to terms with the children as well as their own reality. He criticizes the lukewarm attitudes towards politics and history by many Germans of Paul's generation. He is concerned with what the future holds. The German word `Krebs' - CRAB also means cancer. Although not stated directly the reader of German cannot avoid reflecting on this connotation. Like cancers, totalitarian and fascist systems infect society, then go into remission, come and go. Can we be wholly cured of them? CRABWALK is on many levels an important book, which leaves you with ample food for thought. [Friederike Knabe, Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: Missing notes in the scale¿
Review: The events surrounding the biggest naval disaster in history and its tragic outcome are not an easy topic to bring to the attention of the reader of fifty-some years later. "Why only now?" is a good question and one that starts CRABWALK. The Wilhelm Gustloff, a "Strength through Joy" cruise ship turned refugee carrier, sank after a Soviet submarine attack on January 30 1945 leading to the death of more than 9,000 people, half of them children and infants. Although the details of the sinking have been known since then, there has been reluctance to publicize them. Grass has found a way to break the silence. At least one aspect of his motivation for doing so revolves around the disaster's aftermath in today's society and emerges clearly towards the end of the book.

Tulla Pokriefke, one of the survivors of the tragedy, cannot find words to describe what she saw on the ship as the torpedoes hit: "There's no notes in the scale for it..." Nevertheless, for years she has been insisting that her son write it all down - the way she remembers it. Paul Pokriefke, a second-rate middle-aged journalist, born on one of the rescue ships at the time of the sinking, reluctantly takes on the "job". He's pressured into it by the major background player, Grass himself. Paul timidly argues with Him about the format, scope and depth of his book. He is in favour of a neutral documentary on the ship, its history and its namesake, a Nazi "martyr" and hero. His disinclination to take on this project at all speaks volumes about his generation's reluctance to relive and confront all aspects of the German past. Paul is typical in other ways too... But He nags and guides Paul through the details: take the central theme of the sinking of the ship and trace its history; bring out the lives of the people directly connected with it; don't forget Tulla, yourself and your son - make it personal. The outcome is a description of historical characters like Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi activist, David Frankfurter, the German Jew who killed him in 1936, and Alexandr Marinesko, the submarine captain who sank the vessel, interwoven with Paul's and his family's life, from then to now. Three generations of Pokriefkes, deeply influenced by the disaster, have to deal with it and the wider Nazi history in their individual way. None of them is comfortable with their present-day life.

It takes a specially gifted writer and authoritative critic like Gunter Grass to make this tragedy public in a format that is meaningful today. Having referred to the sinking of the Gustloff in previous novels, "it seems that He knew Tulla when she was young", he had been reluctant to expand on it until he had identified the right fictional frame in which to embed the facts. He found it in the strong character of Tulla, 18 at the time of the disaster and turning completely white on that day, who epitomizes the successful survivor and practical realist of her generation. She remains in the East, seemingly switching allegiances without effort to the Stalinist regime, defending it long after the Wall has crumbled.

Gunter Grass' language and literary skills are undeniable; but his often difficult language (at least in German) and his complex imagery and use of metaphor have brought him admirers as well as critics. In CRABWALK, both the language and the imagery do not present any difficulty for the reader. In fact, the text flows relatively smoothly: it reads fast despite the subject matter. Walking sideways like a crab and "scuttling backwards" to move forward describes the flow of the story. Slowly the characters come into view and the different strands merge to form a comprehensive picture. Paul's more or less ongoing commentary about his writing efforts, his reactions to family and Him, his jumping back and forth in the story, results, at times, in a somewhat lighter, more conversational tone.

Grass deliberately uses the structure of a traditional 'novella' (not specified in the English version) to convey the historical events and their impact on his group of Germans. An addition to being a 'short novel', a novella is usually more tightly structured and focused on a single major event. It often comprises a didactic angle or moral message. All of these elements can be found in CRABWALK. Grass' message in particular addresses the after-war generation(s). He integrates into the story the recurrent problem of young neo-nazis, skinheads and the danger of hate websites on the Internet characterized through Paul's son Konny. He reflects on the inability of the parent generation to come to terms with the children as well as their own reality. He criticizes the lukewarm attitudes towards politics and history by many Germans of Paul's generation. He is concerned with what the future holds. The German word 'Krebs' - CRAB also means cancer. Although not stated directly the reader of German cannot avoid reflecting on this connotation. Like cancers, totalitarian and fascist systems infect society, then go into remission, come and go. Can we be wholly cured of them? CRABWALK is on many levels an important book, which leaves you with ample food for thought. [Friederike Knabe, Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding novel from a modern master
Review: The suffering of ordinary Germans during the Second World War is a topic that for many years has been virtually off-limits for discussion. There have been several books recently, both fiction and non-fiction which however have tackled this subject head on and Crabwalk is one of them.

Set nominally in the present day, the narrater of this novel is Paul Pokriefke, an unsuccessful middle-aged journalist, with a failed marriage behind him. His mother, Tulla, was a passenger on the cruise liner Wilhelm Gustloff, sunk in January 1945 by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic with the loss of 9,000 lives, as it carried mainly civilian refugees away from the advancing Red Army. Paul himself is born on that fateful night after his pregnant mother is rescued. After being asked to write about this incident, he comes across a right-wing website dedicated to the memory of the liner and its namesake, a Nazi official murdered by a Jewish student in 1936. He discovers the website is run by his alienated son Konrad and is subsequently forced to deal with the effects that traumatic night has had on three generations of his family.

The crabwalk of the title refers to the erratic, unpredictable path back and forth in time which Paul must take in trying to reach an understanding of the war-time events which have shaped his and his family's existence. The narrative therefore flits between several storylines. There is Paul's own investigations on the internet and the strange relationship he discovers between his son and his main online antagonist, who calls himself "David", after the name of the Jewish student who assassinated Gustloff. There is the story of the Russian submarine commander who is fated to be responsible for the sinking of the liner and its massive loss of life. There is his mother's story, one of the few survivors of the sinking, who after the war remains in East Germany as a committed socialist yet who defines herself in terms of her experiences during the Nazi era and is determined to exert influence over her grandson Konrad. And there is Paul himself, an aimless, un-ambitious individual, a second-rate journalist whose life has been overshadowed by events outside of his control.

This is a powerful and thought provoking novel, yet written in a relatively unemotional style and very elegantly structured. It is a short novel yet wonderfully constructed and executed. The central theme is of course the denial of Germany's suffering during the war, or rather the suffering of ordinary individuals. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is possibly the worst maritime disaster in history, yet it has been excised from western popular culture, replaced, as is pointed out at one stage, in the public consciousness by films such as Titanic and so forth. The failure of Germany's post war generation, exemplified by Paul, to collectively deal openly with the guilt and suffering of their wartime parents is seen to drive younger generations towards the dark side of the equation. Post war Germany sought refuge in economic progress and reconstruction, its people seeking to exorcise the Nazi era by rebuilding a bright new European nation over its ashes. Paul is an example of someone falling by the wayside, unable to forget his wartime heritage and get on with life along with the rest of society. Consequently, as his career and family life is one of disappointment and failure he is unable to guide his son properly, who by himself inevitably ends up being drawn to the negative implications of Germany's defeat. Konrad seeks revenge on the Jews and demands that Wilhelm Gustloff's "martydom" is properly recognised.

The ending of the book is bleak. Failure to deal with the war is leading a new generation to repeat old mistakes with the danger arising of an unending cycle of violence and recrimination. Konrad is the example, unable to place the terrible suffering of his grandmother in its proper context and therefore learn from history. With the Tin Drum and Too Far Afield, Gunther Grass became the master of the Zeitgeist novel and a masterful commentator on his native Germany. He succeeds again with Crabwalk.

Rating:
Summary: Another Thought Provoking Book by a Master Storyteller.
Review: There is a reason authors receive the Nobel Prize. This book is an example of that reason.

It is a superb book, combining historic events (the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the murder of the Nazi official of the same name, and the rise of neo-Nazism on the internet) with the narrator's ties to family and his attempts to understand himself and his son.

It is disturbing, as good literature always is, because it raises hard questions. When is enough enough? Do we ever let go of past grudges? Wilhelm Gustloff, a Nazi organizer in Switzerland, is shot by a Jew who immediately turns himself in. Does that make either the perpetrator or the victim a hero? The murder receives enough attention that a ship is named after the victim. Near the end of the war, a Russian submarine sinks the ship in the Baltic Sea, at great loss of life. There are many civilians and children lost (literally thousands). There are also military personnel on board, and the ship still has military markings. Who is at fault here? Fifty years later the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, and it's obscurity relative to the much more famous sinking of the Titanic, becomes a hot topic among neo-Nazis on the internet.

It is all so real. It is all so believable (enter the name of the ship in a search engine and look at some of the things that come up).

Great art raises great questions. This is great art.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant book on a little known tragedy
Review: This book describes the history of a ship and its influence on the history of a family. The ship is the Wilhelm Gustloff that was named after a Nazi who was killed in Davos, Switzerland in 1936. After its use as a cruise ship for the Nazi Kraft durch Freude movement, a floating hospital and a training ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed to the bottom of the sea on 30 January 1945 with on board between 6000 and 10000 (nobody knows the exact number) German refugees. On board is also the very pregnant Tulla Prokriefke, who goes into labour when the ship goes down. In the end her son Paul is born on board of a rescue boat.

Paul is divorced, mediocre journalist, who has, to say it mildly, a difficult relationship with his mother. One day he finds a site on the Internet that describes the ship that determined his life (his mother cannot talk about anything else). He finds that the site, with neonazi characteristics, is made by his son Konnie. And then the story goes almost inevitably to its dramatic conclusion.

The book is called Crabwalk because the story of the ship and the family are not told in chronological order, but by walking sideways. Still, the story goes forward, just like a crab walks. This is also because Paul tells the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff working with the information that he finds on the internetsite of his son.

This is a brilliantly written book, because one never gets lost between or within story lines despite the large number of considerable time leaps. Also, this book describes a little known ship tragedy (more than 5 times the numbers of death as the Titanic!) and gives an insight into the distorted minds of German neonazi's. An excellent read.

Rating:
Summary: All men should read this book
Review: This book tells the story of Paul Pokreife, a journalist living in modern Germany. Paul is collecting information on the sinking of a German cruise ship during WW2, but this book is about so much more than that. It is about living in a country that is stangling under a political correctness that shuts off discussion of the past and oppresses its people in the present, producing ugly and frightening effects.

For me, the most touching scene is during Konrad's (Paul's son) trial, when the judicial system heaps blame upon Paul for the crime of being a male! Paul accepts the misandrist abuse, crushed as he is by the women in his life, and sees his son taken away, even more thoroughly destroyed by the system than himself. This is a touching book that all men should read.