Word: snails
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...progress of From the Diary of a Snail is all too consistent with the author's snail principles. On the way to almost any point, the reader is likely to get a favorite recipe from Chef Grass (simmered tripe with caraway seeds) or a growling epithet on Hegel: "Thanks to his subtlety, every abuse of state power has to this day been explained as historically necessary." Another snail detour documents the diaspora of the Jews of Grass's native Danzig during World War II. Here the narration seems to match the sinister creeping pace of anti-Semitism...
Game Plan. Is the world made up of nothing but "the violent and the righteous"? Are there no other snail lovers left? Just to make sure, Grass invents one, a "Dr. Doubt," a Danzig schoolteacher, who sits out World War II in a cellar, collecting snails and falling in love, among other activities. He says: "I know more now. Hesitation comes more easily." Grass's middle-aged snail wisdom might easily be mistaken for Doubt's. At 45, Grass is too wise to be possessed by any one credo. Yet Grass cannot stay in his cellar while history...
From the Diary of a Snail is less the expression of a political platform or even a philosophy than of Grass's character...
...little Grasses back home, watching Bonanza in German on TV (presumably along with their elders), Father knows how undramatic, how droning his snail fables must sound. No white hats, no showdown at the O.K. Corral...
...Being a little quicker than the snail," replies Father Grass, tucking everybody snugly in, "... and never getting there, children." Holy Spaceship Earth! Leaping Electronic Village! Could this agitator for 19th century liberalism be right...