Gunther Grass. Hans Helmut Kirst. Thomas Mann.

OK, I'll stop showing off now.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

I'll hound you night and day
Then be a good dog - Sit! Stay!

That "Time flies like an arrow" is in my list of possible sigs -

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Lisa Grossman

Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliché -- a cliché is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance, my grandmother used to say: 'The black cat is always the last one off the fence.' I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was undoubtedly true.
Solomon Short

The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor.’ I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs.'
Roy Blount Jr.

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
G. H. Hardy (1877 - 1947)

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
Bill Watterson (1958 -), cartoonist, "Calvin and Hobbes"

"Two wrongs don't make a right."
"Yeah but three left turns do."
Peter, Family Guy



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Those who forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

I was just going to mention Kirst. My favourite out of the books by him that I've read is "Who's In Charge Here", the one about a German POW trying to escape from a British-run camp in Egypt.

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IIRC it was more about Gunner Asch running the camp, despite the best efforts of the British to do it. Wasn't it set after hostilities ended, thus rendering escape pointless?



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

SPOILER WARNING for "Who's In Charge Here" _

IIRC he wanted to get back home in order to take vengeance on a Nazi official who'd done something nasty to his family, before they either managed to go into hiding or got killed/imprisoned by somebody else instead...

Or maybe it was just to help his family cope with the troubled situation in immediately post-war Germany?

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How come I have never heard about Kirst?
Is he one of those people who are utterly unknown in their own country but everybody knows them abroad (just like every German pupil learns the phrase 'it's raining cats and dogs', which I have never heard in Britain or the US).

The 'Who is in Charge Here' sounds like a nice satire on German effectiveness (which is a myth after all). The other myth is 'Dr Müller' of course ...

BJ:
Few people like 'Die Judenbuche' ... but it's on the canon. So is Brecht but he has gone hugely out of fashion. I was suprised to find that Sezuan will be on at Mainz next season. The first Brecht production in years. I think people are fed up with his didacticism. He probably was himself ... which reminds me of an ancedote I have heard about him (this stems from Mario Adorf who was a young actor then in the 50s). Brecht was already quite old and had been invited to witness a rehearsal at the Münchner Kammerspiele of one of his plays. He watched the rehearsal and after that the actors gathered around him. He beckoned them to come closer and said with a hoarse voice (all those cigars): "I see you've all read my 'Kleines Organon'. Well, it wasn't meant for you. You are good actors."
Brecht is a decent poet though ...

Intrigue:
I like all those ... and I remembered one differently (but still much the same):
Everything will always turn right - and that's why we end walking in circles

I'm in Britain, have certainly heard the term "raining cats and dogs" used here, and even seem to recall using it myself on more than one occasion.

Re Kirst: Maybe by time that the English versions of his books were issued the German ones were all out of (or just going out of) print?

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To go WAY back up the thread, the songs "Life in the Slaw Lane" and "Wet Dream" were by Kip Addotta.



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"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith

The phrase "raining cats and dogs" cropped up on this fforum only last week. I seem to recall being groaned at (or was it shot with the pun gun?) for mentioning that I'd stepped in a poodle.

And don't take the myth (!) out of German effectiveness until you've experienced our railways... you'd soon realise why we envy almost everyone else's!

Teach; I only know H H Kirst from reading them in the library, and I've never seen them on sale anywhere, so his popularity in the UK is unknown. They were very good, though; nice line in understated irony and wry humour. It may be he was well served by a good translator and is thus better in English than in German(!). His most famous book was 'The Revolt of Gunner Asch'/'08-15: Die abenteuerliche Revolte des Gefreiten Asch'.

I have read another book by a German author, but it was written ab initio in English; Tor! by Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger, an entertaining and fascinating account of the history of German football. It made me think about German football (and Germany generally) in a whole new way, and it also made me realise just why it was I disliked Bayern Munich so much.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Boy, you're too fast for me!! I've been sitting at Uni all day, studying Hawthorne and French while you went through all of German literature...
*is amazed*


BTW: Now, don't admire German effectiveness and use the railway as an example!! In England, I've always caught my trains nearly on time, if a train is "nearly on time" in Germany, that might mean you have to take the next one because yours doesn't arrive.
Or, you book your train to change at a certain station, and when you arrive there, you find that train has already left. Without you. Ask my boyfriend, he's picked me up from the station about 20 miles from home many a time!!



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Never put a sock in a toaster!
E. Izzard

Of course it was Polly in the daffodils, sorry for mixing names up. Actually, I'm not too worried, that I wasn't confronted with Wordsworth at school, i just needed one semester to find out that I don't like him at all.
Anyway, maybe it's just me, who is keen on getting all the references.



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Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

(N. Chomsky 1957)

I always liked the daffodil poem, but simply because I like daffodils. No literary affinity there, I'm afraid...



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Never put a sock in a toaster!
E. Izzard

To roughly quote Susan Sto-Lat (please forgive for not giving an accurate quote, but I don't have my copy of soul Music with me at the moment): "It's okay, if someone likes to write about daffodils, as long as he doesn't take more than half a page to do so."

The daffodils are not his worst poem, i mainly hate the Prelude. Well, "hate" is maybe a too strong expression, but I think about 70% of it were just unneccessary display of well written blank verses without any meaning or fun of reading them. He shouldn't have spent 50 years on revising it, but just cut it down to the interesting bits and then try writing something less high-blown. Or hang himself. (Easiest way to get rid of sense perceptions)



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Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

(N. Chomsky 1957)

I find a lot of Wordsworth's poems rather tedious, but I do like Daffodils. My dad wrote a very funny parody of it, which I think I've quoted elsewhere on the Fforum some time back, but if anyone missed it and would like to see it, just plock!



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Plock. Plunk?

Re German authors whose works are known (at least by one or more fforumites) in Britain: If you're counting childrens' authors then add Erich Kastner ('Emil and the Detectives', & its sequel; & 'The 31st of June') to the list.

Wasn't the SF series starring 'Perry Rhodan' of German origins?

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'Im Westen nicht neues.'

My grandparents had quite a few soldiers around in WW2 as they supervised the POWs working on the market garden. I have her copy of 'All Quiet on the Western Front'. Many of the British soldiers read it.

There have been at least two films, haven't there? I dimly remember a Deutsch version in black and white that was very moving despite my having to rely on the subtitles.

This is a poem I copied some years ago, from one of Mum's poetry books I think. Unfortunately, I've no idea who wrote it, but it may have been a woman....

WHY DOROTHY WORDSWORTH IS NOT AS FAMOUS AS HER BROTHER

"I wandered lonely as a...
They're in your top drawer, William,
Under your socks-
I wandered lonely as a-
No not that drawer, the top one.
I wandered by myself-
Well wear the ones you can find,
No, don't get overwrought, my dear,
I'm coming.

"I was out one day wandering
Lonely as a cloud, when-
Softboiled egg, yes my dear,
As usual, three minutes-
As a cloud when all of a sudden-
Look, I said I'll cook it,
Just hold on will you -
All right, I'm coming.

"One day I was out for a walk
When I saw this flock-
It can't be too hard, it had
three minutes.
Well put some butter in it.
-This host of golden daffodils
As I was out for a stroll one-

"Oh you fancy a stroll do you.
Yes, all right, William, I'm coming.
It's on the peg. Under your hat.
I'll bring my pad, shall I, in case
you want to jot something down ?"

Only a woman could hav ethat sort of insight.