by Günter Grass ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1963
Gunter Grass' second novel is quite different in character from The Tin Drum. less of a showcase for an obstreperous talent (although there are still scenes of caricature and occasional scabrous humor), it is a more controlled book and far more internalized. This time the German-realist-surrealist, while again using many symbolic allusions, has subdued some of the abstractions, some of the elements of the absurd. The latter is chiefly apparent in the physical disfigurement of the central character which again singularizes him: the demonic Oskar Matzerath was a warf; now it is the protuberant Adam's apple which jumps conspicuously like a mouse the neck of Mahlke whose story is told by his friend Pilenz. Both boys grow up together in a small Danzig town and the always solicitous, increasingly admiring Pilenz follows Mahlke, in a sense an unlikely hero, odd, quiet, solemn, devout, as e performs his amazing feats. These extend from the childish games, when- as an underwater diver- he brings up trophies from a sunken minesweeper in the bay, to the atrocities of war and his spectacular performance in action. Little by little, however, there is the erosion of the individual by the system and Mahlke, the "mouse", the "clown", but most of all the "redeemer" with his resounding faith, goes deliberately to his death. It is the gesture of the individual against the philistinism which has always dominated German life and which was so much a part of the earlier book.... A tantalizing, eloquent, strange and strangely moving book, filled with remarkable scenes, a tragi-comic vitality and a transcendental vision.
Pub Date: June 15, 1963
ISBN: 0156155516
Page Count: -
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1963
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by Günter Grass ; translated by Breon Mitchell ; illustrated by the author
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translated by Günter Grass ; by Krishna Winston
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by Günter Grass
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson
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