What a strange book. I first started reading it four years ago and eventually got half-way through. I restarted with the new translation three months ago, reading on and off. I would often read a chapter or so and then need to put it down, either because it was disturbing or tiresome.

And yet, I kept coming back, sometimes after ten minutes, often after a day, sometimes more than a week. It was certainly good. I’ll say genius, though expect it to be controversial. I’d have a hard time recommending it, other than to someone interested in writing---it was certainly innovative and interesting as craft, but not compelling as a novel.

As for the content, it was interesting to read this while watching TV and movies that were of the more traditional plot- and emotion-driven sort. I’ve been trained to expect a clean narrative plot unfolding through a lens of human emotion---love, revenge, ambition, etc.---but there was only one chief emotion in The Tin Drum: guilt. Though lust and jealousy were important, the novel was about guilt---both individual and collective---and in particular, collective guilt in the sense of post-war German Kollektivschuld (interestingly, in almost 600 pages I don't recall a significant mention of the holocaust and yet it didn’t seem lacking---it would have been too specific). There were many characters, but apart from the protagonist, their inner lives were never explored. There was little plot, either---the book percolated from one vignette to another, exemplifying a post-modern chaos in which nothing happens for a reason, and our human responses are as arbitrary as their stimuli.

There are a very few books that I will always keep with me. This feels like it will be one of them, but certainly the one I am least likely to reread---I can’t imagine ever doing this, while the thought of revisiting other such books includes remembering the joy of being in a state of reading that particular book. While I didn’t have to force myself to read it, I’m glad it’s over. The Tin Drum wasn’t pleasant, yet it was deeply rich.