From: CathB2-AT-aol.com Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:32:34 EDT Subject: Re: Nobel Prize in Literature: Gunter Grass I have read only bits and pieces of Tin Drum, so I can't really comment on its literary merit. I would think that the attempt to make some response to the collapse of the pretense of modernism-- German culture, Western Civ-- which had previously succeeded in placing the Heart of Darkness long ago and far away-- is an important artistic project. There has always been the tendency to cancel out unpleasant stories that rob the community mythos of its coherence. The rewrite process is already underway on the concentration camps, even though eyewitnesses are still alive to protest. Baudrillard may be right. Perhaps all records of human experience are irrelevant outside the Big Picture; the little squeaks from the biodegradables are doomed to be drowned out in Surroundsound. Artists and revolutionaries, by definition, have never accepted "no" for an answer, however. So if such loudmouths continue to exist, and if they deserve prizes, the likelihood is that Gunter Grass deserves one so that he can get his picture on TV like today's intellectual heavyweights, Pat Buchanan and Jesse Ventura.
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