Forgetful German author Günter Grass has now traveled off to the United States to remind good Americans everywhere not to forget about buying his new (not) book “Peeling something” or something, lest we forget.  

Grass’s memoir about forgetting is a thoroughly forgettable story about a long-forgotten 17-year-old Waffen SS recruit who apparently forgot about having been just that before suddenly remembering it doch (after all) sixty years later. Grass, the ever moaning, loud and outspoken antagonist of Nazi denial, denies that he ever denied his affiliation with Germany’s most brutal killing apparatus, preferring sometimes to deny this by using the word forget instead.

Having been a famous European intellectual writer guy for almost half a century, Grass has trouble remembering what it was like before being in the comfortable position to hypocritically pass judgement upon his inadequate Landsleute (countrymen) so in denial like that way down there below him in the Dreck (dirt). That’s why he keeps doing it, I guess.

And interestingly enough (not), his first big mega success back in 1959, the satirical-autobiographical “The Tin Drum”, was also about a little Nazi-era boy who decides not to grow any bigger until he decides to do so doch in the end. Or does he just forget how to grow up? I forget.

Come visit me at Observing Hermann…