{"id":1083,"date":"2006-08-16T06:55:01","date_gmt":"2006-08-16T11:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/smoking-grass\/"},"modified":"2006-08-16T06:55:01","modified_gmt":"2006-08-16T11:55:01","slug":"smoking-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/smoking-grass","title":{"rendered":"Smoking Grass"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted to write a long piece exploring the tension of Gunter Grass’ novels with his recent admission that he served in the Waffen SS during World War II, but I was stymied by the fact that I’ve never read a word he wrote, probably due to my irrational bias that all Germans from that era were Nazis.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Grass’ “frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history,” sez the website for the Nobel Prize<\/a>, which Grass won in 1999. The site also tells us, “after military service and captivity by American forces 1944-46, he worked as a farm laborer and miner and studied art in D\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00bcsseldorf and Berlin.” Which is true-ish. As is Grass’ own comment in his Nobel lecture<\/a>, “Humans have much of the rat in them and vice versa.” I probably oughtta read that whole lecture sometime.<\/p>\n

Now, I’m actually going to cut some slack for the 17-year-old Grass. Given that my dad lied about his age to join the military when he was a 16-year-old in Israel, I can pretty easily imagine a young Grass who wanted to join up, get away from his family and “help the war effort” or something.<\/p>\n

I can even imagine a situation where he didn’t really understand that this could lead him into the SS. I don’t know the facts of military allocation during the war, so I can’t say that he’s lying about how he was assigned to the Waffen SS. And it certainly sounds like that unit was more devoted to combat operations than to the running of concentration camps and mass executions that other parts of the SS were engaged in.<\/p>\n

War sweeps a lot of people up into decisions that they couldn’t imagine making in other circumstances. For a 17-year-old in a duty-bound society like that . . . well, I’m just saying that I don’t hold that piece of his history against him.<\/p>\n

However, I am<\/em> stuck trying to figure out what’s more unconscionable: not revealing till he was 78 the fact that he was in the Waffen SS, or only revealing it so he could have a sales peg for his new book.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve tried marketing literary books before and “I served in the SS” isn’t much worse than some of the angles I’ve seen.<\/p>\n

(Oh, and to that writer at Time who argues that Grass wouldn’t have been such a good\/important writer had he not<\/em> kept this deep, dark secret all along<\/a>: you’re a moral imbecile.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wanted to write a long piece exploring the tension of Gunter Grass’ novels with his recent admission that he served in the Waffen SS during World War II, but I was stymied by the fact that I’ve never read a word he wrote, probably due to my irrational bias that all Germans from that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Smoking Grass”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-politics-implicit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-ht","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4136,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week-grass-unfed-edition","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":0},"title":"0-fer of the week: Grass-unfed edition","author":"Gil","date":"July 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In keeping with last week's 0-fer of Ezra Pound (and as inspired tangentially by this Bourgeois Surrender post), I offer up my latest literary 0-fer: Gunter Grass! Now I really have to get back to work.","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1145,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-oct-13-2006","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":1},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Oct. 13, 2006","author":"Gil","date":"October 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"It's the Friday the 13th edition of Unrequired Reading, dear readers! Maxon Crumb's not a hockey-mask-wearing serial killer, but he did come off as a weird bird in the great documentary about his brother, Robert Crumb. Here's a good profile about him in the San Francisco Chronicle. * * *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":134,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/in-other-news","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":2},"title":"In Other News","author":"Gil","date":"February 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't want readers to think I'm spending all my time worked up about Mel Gibson's theology. In fact, I spent most of yesterday working with Vince on the rec-room in my house, which I'm trying to convert into a library\/study of epic proportions. We made some pretty good strides\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":960,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/time-is-money","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":3},"title":"Time is Money","author":"Gil","date":"May 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Nested in this NYTimes article about the principles behind the Geek Squad computer repair service is a passage about how much people value their time: Economists say industrialized societies are spending less on the basics of life -- food, clothing and shelter -- and more on leisure pursuits. Indeed, Robert\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/time-is-money#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1088,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wwii-flashback-day","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":4},"title":"WWII Flashback Day!","author":"Gil","date":"August 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"At the Washington Post, Jim Hoagland has a column on Gunter Grass, while George Will writes about the Japanese shrine to war-dead, which drives China into a tizzy. It's interesting, how we can't bear to forget and we can't bear to remember. Here's Hitchens reviewing a book about the moral\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1566,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-june-29-2007","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: June 29, 2007","author":"Gil","date":"June 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This issue will be over-and-done soon, dear readers. Till then, have some links. The AV Club offers up 10 directors you didn't know you hated. * * * Wit, wisdom, etc.: Don't eat before yoga. * * * Stossel. Brooks. The smackdown! * * * I read Under the Volcano\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0060955228","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}