Headbirths: Or the Germans Are Dying Out

He is great, has a lot of courage and more culture than I can find anywhere, the XX real century thing that is now superseeded by the actual fashionable paper scratchers.

"Headbirths, or, The Germans Are Dying Out," by Gunter Grass, has been translated into English by Ralph Manheim. The book is a surreal metafiction about a German couple in their 30s. Harm and Dorte Peters are childless teachers who are debating whether or not to have a baby. This debate occurs against the backdrop of the Peters' trip through the Third World. The narrator, who seems to be a fictionalized alter ego of author Grass, discusses writing a book or a screenplay about the Peters. The book feels like a strange, reality-warping hybrid between a novel and a book-length essay. Grass's themes include post-WW2 German division, the looming shadow of the Nazi era, religion, contact between the developed nations and the Third World, and German national identity. He balances out these serious themes with a subplot involving a liver sausage. Overall, a clever and intriguing work.

This book has the pleasantly unsettling quality that makes you unsure whether to be amused or worried when you have finished reading it. I felt greater affinity towards the latter reaction, seeing Grass deal seriously with problems that are as current today as they were 24 years ago. This out-of-focus screenplay/monologue/elegy deals with the complicated questions of political alliance, "self-actualization", parenting, national identity, cultural identity, and the disillusion that accompanies understanding, and it problematizes everything it mentions. The mix of genres and presence of an author-narrator figure are reminiscent of "The Rat," although this book's transitions are even more abrupt and self-conscious. It is a wonderful book, and has quite a lot in it, considering its unintimidating length. But even though it is at times amusing (and even though I am always looking for the humor in things) I did not find it funny.

This is Gunter Grass exploring large themes such as fulfillment, joy, and the nature of society, using a farcical tale of a German couple traveling to Asia on a "reality tour," (Grass wrote this in 1979! amazing!) and the leitmotif of human reproduction they encounter there. Well, it's not actually about the couple, but about the filmmaker who creates this couple for his movie -- but you'll find out more when you read it. A great, fun, short, one-sitting read. Grass has a wonderful talent for setting scenes and picturing the absurd. This is not your father's German novel.