I missed remarking on the death of Günter Grass last week, death and taxes being just a little too much for me. As long as the Soviet Union existed, Grass was a welcome and intelligent voice, definitely “left” but never in the least willing to go along with the “Old Left” notion that the U.S….
Search Results for: Gunter Grass
For Günter Grass, who, while attempting to shoulder the burden of history, falls frequently though not continuously on his broad German arsch
Back in high school—waaaay back in high school—I read Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum. Eighty-five percent of it surely went over my head, but the remaining 15 percent impressed me. A few years later, I essayed The Dog Years. I missed about 95 percent of that one, so I never made it to the end….
Günter Grass—What Must Be Said
Why do I stay silent, conceal for too long What clearly is and has been Practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors Are at best footnotes. It is the alleged right to first strike That could annihilate the Iranian people– Enslaved by a loud-mouth And guided to organized jubilation– Because…
Peter Watson’s The German Genius: Ist es deutsch? Ja, allzu deutsch.
Peter Watson’s massive (996 pages) study, The German Genius, is one of the most confounding books I’ve ever read, “impressive” for most of its great length, often “brilliant” in its discussion of 20th century Germany, but then lurching downhill drastically in places, descending to the level of Nazi apologetics at its worst—plus one whopping mathematical…
Are we having fun yet? Why living at the end of history has become the living end
When I went to first grade, I learned to print my name and hide under my desk in case of a nuclear blast. When I went to the movies, I saw news reels of U.S. above-ground atomic weapons tests in Nevada. (Nobody worried about fallout then.) In 1968, my parents could stand on their front…
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Articles of Lasting Interest: Jazz: I post a jazz video every week, usually but not necessarily featuring a performance of a composition of Thelonious Monk. These videos can be accessed as a group here. “Harvard douchebaggery not exclusively a left-wing phenomenon, study reveals” is an unfriendly take on Harvard Professor Robert Barro’s disingenuous claim that…
Leon Panetta: Less than inch from being a douchebag
U.S. troops film themselves urinating on corpses in Afghanistan. U.S. and allied troops burn copies of the Koran. A U.S. soldier goes berserk and murders 16 innocent Afghans. U.S. troops pose for photographs holding severed hands and legs. U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, we learn, has been flying home every weekend, to visit his…