Drummed Up

Martin Archer: has read up to p.50 of Günter Grass's 'The Tin Drum'. It's intriguing but there are a lot of pages to go. Is life too short for this novel ... does anyone know it? ... advise please.
30 September at 21:21 ·
Jacqui Beere: I don't, but the pop group Japan had an album of the same name.
Martin Archer: Aah, perhaps I should consult David Sylvian's website for any clues. Mick Karn... great bass lines... do you not think?
Jacqui Beere: I liked their music very much, especially Tin Drum. 30 September at 21:31
David Hume: Sorry, I've written them off as middle-class art school boys. Just playing at it. Am I wrong ? 30 September at 21:36
Andy Bossom: Excellent book...I think it is worth perservering with...the film is also in my top 10 of all time!! 30 September at 21:39
Tat Mersy: Great book, stick with it. Only one of his I've read, quite a while back now. Haven't seen the film. 30 September at 21:59
Martin Archer: Thanks for the comments; I've decided to stick with it. Glad I've not seen the film, though Andy, as I'd never have bothered with the book. Caroline, Sam's colleague, is half
German and recommended it to Sam for me to read. So it would be churlish not to give it a go. Anyway, I don't recall reading before about a dwarvish obsessive drummer as set against the rise of Nazism! As for Dagenham Dave's comments on Japan, I'm sure they're not far from the truth, but when I look back on my musical (British music) interests, there is a thread of art school running through my favourite stuff, but as played by baby boomer sons and their younger siblings, poorly advocating anything sensible, but enthusiastically reproducing for themselves that one positive mode of the 20th century, in my opinion... black American popular culture.
01 October at 20:22
Martin Archer: Today have listened to the World Book Club Radio 4 interview with Grass. Interesting. Thanks for the pointer Tat. Mon at 18:22
Tat Mersy: I've just re-listened to it myself, reminding myself of what a superbly significant piece of post-nazi literature this book is, (my bookshelves proclaiming me to be a fanatic Holocaust watcher.) If I could wish myself anything it would be the gift of writing with such clarity and cool pertinence on a subject that has dogged me since my teenage years.
Martin Archer: The modern state of Israel irritates me but my reactions are always tempered by reflecting on the Jewish people's history, the diaspora and the Holocaust. What I liked in Grass (notwithstanding his literary skills, as outlined by you above) is a wonderful candour concerning his own people's behaviour in the 20th Century and his denial that there is anything other than reality mirrored in his story( rather than any symbolic significance to be found in the props, e.g. the tin drum, central to Oskar's biography). I must admit, that I tend to stay clear of films dealing with the Holocaust, cos I anticipate their content and don't like to be brought down by the horror, the pathos, the discomforting proximity of the relative recentness of those events. I'd be interested, however, in reading how you have reacted to the whole theme and how you 'watch'.
Andy Bossom: I completely understand many of your arguments. It always seems supremely ironic to me that the modern Israeli state is verging on the "fascistic" at times. Does every state or race have to find someone else to persecute?? I usually never watch films once I have read the book - but I actually watched the Tin Drum as film before reading the book. The film is European art house rather than "Hollywood" style sensationalism. the film intrigued me to read the book. I rarely watch any "war" related film due to usually having difficulties with political interpretation and the shifting sands of historical perspective. In fact I am not even sure that film and print are mutually compatible! However you have enthused me enough to try and find time to re-read Oskar's story again!
Martin Archer: Andy, I don't know how you feel about the way people excuse their actions in such horrific situations. I am quite understanding I suppose of how people can do all sorts of awful things in the name of an ideology/belief system. I readily admit, in my self analysis, that I am moulded by just about every theory I read! I can in one month be persuaded by Marx as well as Nietzsche, Darwin as well as Genesis, Nationalism as well as Internationalism and the list of contradictions goes on. The person with convictions is the person who is sometimes the most dangerous!
Andy Bossom: There always seems to me an inherent contradiction between political ideology and fundamental "humanity". If there is no common ownership of land, does the peasant farmer have the "right" to kill the capitalist landowner in order to acquire a plot of land to feed his family. Or should he allow himself and family to starve due to lack of access to the means of production? Does anyone have the right to kill another human being? I have always had leftist tendencies, but prefer the notions of justice, freedom and equality rather than the armed struggle. As an individual in modern day Britain it is easy to decry fascism, but how would you act if you were a teenager in Nazi Germany in the the late 1930s? To conform to the prevailing ideology is the path most individuals take. I believe a critical analysis is fundamental to understanding the world around you, but how critical can you be with a Nazi gun to your head?
Martin Archer : There were, of course, and are, persons of strong enough character to be able to stand with principles that demonstrate their ''fundamental 'humanity'''. These are the 'heroes' that quite often are themselves convinced of a reward greater than might be attainable in this life. This is where religious belief may overtake political ideology in an individual's raison d'etre. The trouble, as you are no doubt aware, is that such 'fanaticism' becomes, in the idiom of those they oppose, a perversion, a wickedness of sorts. Perspective colours judgement. In terms of our initial theme as dealt with by Grass, the types of people I have in mind were conscientious objectors, notably Jehovah's Witnesses and others, who, in contrast to the sad fate of Jewish detainees, might have, at the signing of a declaration of fault, freed themselves from concentration camps and from an untimely death had they not peaceably made their stand. Again, the difference is more than subtle in their behaviour from those who might kill or resort to some other violent or otherwise transgressive action, to take what is theirs (within most estimates of what is right) but is denied them through prevailing power relations.
Andy Bossom: I suppose every individual has to decide how they wish to order their thinking. You can attach yourself to a religious code or political ideology or indeed adopt your own individual moral or ethical standpoint. I suppose the difficulty is in deciding how far you can move from that particular perspective. Or do the ends justify the means? There have been reported cases of those dissident Nazis who decided to fight fascism from within. Rather than openly confront they appear to outwardly conform. No one can see the inner mind of another individual and that is where true freedom can be located. you can then work against the system from within - perhaps helping some jewish detainees to escape their untimely death. I agree that once an individual believes that a greater heroic status will be bestowed upon them on sacrificial death, then it becomes much more difficult to counter. I have often wondered what my position would have been in 1939. Can you be a conscientious objector when you are needed to fight fascism? Could you sacrifice your moral position as a Jehovah's Witness in order to defeat an aggressive dictator? Should principles be put to one side for the "greater good"? Or is there any such thing as the Greater Good? Perhaps it is merely an expression of the prevailing cultural hegemony. English soldiers were not so much fighting fascism as "defending" their own "way of life!
Tat Mersy: I wonder if those with a declared political ideology or religious belief found it easier to kick against the Nazis than their own convictions. Although, it must be acknowledged that many bog standard, non-religious, apolitical Germans took a discreet stand against the regime. These people hid Jews, adopted their children or the family silver when their neighbours went into hiding, mobs of non-Jewish women stormed prisons to secure the release of their Jewish men-folk, camp employees smuggled supplies in and artwork out - an astounding amount of pictures, painted in foodstuffs, poetry and sculpture was smuggled out, all of it tiny due to the scarce resources. Oskar Shindler is an obvious, media-saturated example of ordinary volk made extra-ordinary by the times they lived in. And Raul Wallenberg, I've had a crush on Raul since I was 15. A young, Swiss diplomat, he disappeared behind the iron-curtain at the war's end, having secured travel documents for thousands of Jews during the war years.
Martin Archer: Just red a bit about Wallenberg's humanitarian and selfless stance, Tat. Our three-way discussion has revealed a number of reasons why folks behave the way they do. Simple belief in what is right over what is wrong seems to be the finest of the qualities displayed out of all the examples we've come up with; the so-called 'golden rule' of treating others the way we would be treated seems the touchstone to moral rectitude. Yet that conviction-crippling emotion called Fear... fear for family and friends' welfare should we act in the right way... must be difficult to overcome in a situation such as the intimidating rise of Nazism. I guess that is where the true definition of heroic action lies. Andy's development of how we might rationalise or 'order our thinking' is very much at the centre of how peaceable means can become militant means; how, if we are religiously 'devout', we are bizarrely moved to do God's work ourselves rather than leaving it to God to sort out. We can see such action in many examples, from South American Catholic priests who take up arms, to Islamists who maim indiscriminately and execute for effect. Were any of us interested in developing this discussion I might ask, How has postmodernity worked upon dissolving those grand ideological narratives that appeal to individuals' senses of patriarchy, eg., nationalistic defence of the realm against a perceived evil dictator or empire... the axis of evil comes to mind? Is it today possible for governments to mobilise whole populations toward fulfilling an idea... Liebensraum for instance?