third and fourth week of January 1999
"I saw a lot of very adult things in Turkey and was quite disturbed by it all; a Tin Drum experience really. And when I came back my parents had moved."
damon
from blur: in their own words.
"The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) is the story about a young boy who, at the age of three, improbably engineers a case of self-imposed arrested development. He simply refuses to grow. The story has been called complex and allegorical."
from the amazon.com website
Gunter Grass, the author, had once said that it is about the effort "to escape the process of becoming an adult and the inherent responsibilities" of adulthood. I remember reading this novel when I was 15 and having my blinders, so to speak, ripped off. The symbolism of the protagonist's tin drum and his ear-piercing scream being his modes of expression was disturbing, and yet exhilarating, at the same time. He was the living embodiment of the id. So what did damon mean when he said the above? Was it Turkey that was the Tin Drum experience, or was it coming back home after the summer to discover that his parents had moved that was the Tin Drum experience? I'd bet it was the latter.
BRITGIRL
Listen up, girls and boys. This week's lesson was on The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, one of the German writers whose works damon has read. Unfortunately there were mighty slim pickings in the net for The Tin Drum and Gunter Grass in general (except some free speech brouhaha brewing over The Tin Drum in some red-neck neck-of-the-woods here in the land of the free...do look into it if intrigued). Read the book, if you haven't already, and come back in two weeks time for another opportunity to learn more about damon's influences and his view of the world. Class dismissed, now go out and play!
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