On Mon, 13 Apr 2015 19:38:53 -0700, Michael Scoles wrote:
If you are asking about the anti-war movie, I remember seeing
it in Canada after some controversy over its depiction of statuatory
rape. (The kid who refused to grow up was seduced by a woman.)
Great movie but, as usual, I have no clue ragarding the point of your
question.
On the latter point, it is often hard to figure out what MS is
saying in his posts because their apparent simplicity is often
undermined by internal contradiction and lack of knowledge.
One wonders whose radar MS is referring to. Anyway,
given that American's knowledge of Gunter Grass will tend
to be limited (for a nation with so many colleges/universities,
it is remarkable how few intellectuals we produce), here's
a link to an article that is not exactly an obituary (Grass died
on April 13, 2015) but provides some key points about his
life:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/world/europe/gunter-grass-german-novelist-dies-at-87.html?emc=edit_th_20150414&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=389166&_r=0
Bullet point version (for those whose minds have been irretrievably
damaged by powerpoint):
(1) Perhaps best known popularly (i.e., cult of personality-wise)
for his novel "The Tin Drum" and, for those who don't read foreign
authors, the movie version (though, since it has subtitles, many
will be turned off by having to read while watching a movie, so
maybe fewer people have seen it than any of the Transformers
movies or the "Fast and Furious" movies).
(2) Grass' work asks the hard question about what do we do
about our past and, in Germany's case, the terrible things that
were done. Forgetfulness and denial seems like the most popular
response but this is hypocrisy and "bad faith". But perhaps
human's "innate" bias towards things cause us to behave this
way -- how else should one deal with genocide? For relevance
to the U.S., see "the Civil War".
(3) Interesting coincidences: I quote the article:
|Günter joined the Nazi children's organization Jungvolk
|at the age of 10. Like many Germans of his generation,
|he later claimed to have done no real service to the Nazi
|war effort.
NOTE: Grass admitted to having been part of the SS but
this was near the end of WWII and apparently was not involved
in any of their more notorious activates. Continuing the quote:
|Among them was Joseph Ratzinger, who went on to become
|Pope Benedict XVI. After the war ended, Mr. Grass and the
|future pope were prisoners together in an Allied camp at
|Bad Aibling. Mr. Grass later remembered Mr. Ratzinger as
|"extremely Catholic" and "a little uptight," but "a nice guy."
A person does what a person needs to do to survive, I guess.
(4) Grass won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999, but this
probably is meaningful only to the dwindling number of people
who read literature and the even smaller number of people who
read foreign literature.
(5) I'm going to guess that when MS says "under the radar"
he might be referring to Grass' Nazi involvement early in life,
comparable to Kurt WALDHEIM's though Waldheim's involvement
was much greater (see his Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Waldheim )
Then again, MS might be referring to Grass and Waldheim's
ability to fly planes and how often they were able to land
without being detected by an airport's radar system.
Who's to know? Too many degrees of freedom.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 12:21 AM, Michael Sylvester wrote:
How did that guy slip under the radar?
Compare and contrast with Kurt Valdheim.
---
You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected].
To unsubscribe click here:
http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=43835
or send a blank email to
leave-43835-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
