this book has garnered quite a few unfavorable reviews on this site (and probably others), which i believe is due to the fact that it does not even to pretend to be approachable. this book does not coddle you with the traditional methods of character development. the action unfolds between injections of anaesthesia, projected onto a television screen, sometimes with programming, which can at times complement, compete with, and other times become entirely supplanted by, the author's internal cine...

3,5*

باید در سطح جهان برای خشونت طلبی نسخه ی بیهوشی پیچید، یا به زبان عامیاته به خشونت طلبی بی حسی موضعی داد

کتاب متن خیلی آشفته ای داره اما واقعا تجربه ی هیجان انگیزیه. به جای این که داستان رو به عنوان یه فرد بیرونی بشنویم، انگار رفتیم توی سر شخصیت اول داستان و داریم تصویرایی که تو ذهنش میاد رو با خودش تجربه می کنیم.از طرفی شیوه ی روایت خیلی سمبلیکه و انگار در سطح زیرین داستان یه سری حرفای دیگه ای به صورت موازی با سطح آشفته ی داستان داره زده میشه... و روند داستان جوریه که انگار میخواد بی حسی موضعی دندون های شخصیت اول داستان رو به مغز خواننده هاش سرایت بده... تاثیر خیلی عجیبی روم میذاره از این جهت...--...

I keep re-reading this book and get more from it each time. Easy to read, almost impossible to fully absorb.

گيج می زنم در جریان خوانش این اثر؛ خوش خوان و آسان خوان نبود اما برایم نکته های جذاب و خواندنی کم نداشت!کلید هایی که بی قفل می مانند و قفل هایی که بدون کلید بسر می برند!

I didn't get it!!

Ортодонтия и стоматология, геология, цемент, пемза – может это кому-то интересно… Продираться через поток сознания очень сложно. Грассово психосоматическое определение, что зубные камни – это окаменевшая ненависть, запутанные мысли, постоянная оглядка назад, вечное желание посчитаться, когда все взаимно засчитывается, а склонность к оседающим десен карманов – это картина психики, угнездившаяся жестокость, задатки убийцы заставляет задуматься и может даже испугаться. Они то есть у очень многих. Н...

داستان یک معلم تاریخ که به دندان‌پزشک مراجعه می‌کند و در حالی که روی صندلی دندان‌پزشکی نشسته و تلویزیونی جلوی او قرار دارد تا حواسش را از عملیات دردآور ترمیم دندان، منحرف کند، داستان و گفتگوهای واقعی و خیالی خود را از کودکی تا زمان حال برای بیننده تعریف می‌کند. در این بین شرایط جامعه آلمان بعد از جنگ را هم روایت می‌کند. کتاب سختی بود.

مدت‌ها بود که کتابی به این بدی نخونده بودم

Günter Grass’s Local Anaesthetic has been on my night table and on my desk and in my luggage and slipping out of my hands for about a month now. It is finally finished. Don’t hold that lag time against it. Grass’s narrator—a 40-something West Berlin high-school teacher who spends half the book in a dentist’s chair, where a “tooth plumber” shoots him full of numbing drugs and scrapes calcified scum from the backside of his smile—spins an alternately hallucinogenic, veiled, misdirecting and foully...

Published in '69 the story takes place in the 50-60s. A hippie teacher mentors alike-minded student while dealing with a former fanatical Field Marshalfiancee-in-law who has returned from being a POW in Russia. Feels dated inits dealings with the issues of the era. Also tries too hard to be artsywith the story told through visits to the dentist.WWII buffs might find it interesting that the Field Marshal probablydepicts Ferdinand Schoerner who was known for getting the jobdone on the Russian fron...

There appeared to be a fucund period where I couldn't stop reading Gunter grass. This time is highlighted in my memory but eternal sunshine and febrile trips to Bloomington. I finished thsi one sitting in the Highlands, amazed at teh disocurse, the counterarguments, the sage handle on it all. What was truly breathtaking that the book was so germane 25 years after its publication.

I read most of this book in the bath.

Actually 3 and a half, but there's no such rating.

i will evidently not be getting a nobel prize for literature appreciation

To be quite honest, although I remember reading this 30 years ago, I don't recall it well enough to make a reliable rating!

Bridging the awkward gap between information and informationology (a constant state of information), the old writer Grass makes an example out of himself to the Nihilists (Camus or Handke) by discoursing about the plot of burning a live dog for pages upon pages, with an intermission for an errant sexual escapade, nothing is as it seems because nothing seems likely but still nothing is abhorrently horrible and so we concede to listen to the diatribe losing nothing of the story of war criminals an...

Toate astea i le-am povestit dentistului meu. Cu gura amorţită şi aşezat în faţa ecranului mat care, tot atît de lipsit de glas ca şi mine, debita publicitate: spray pentru păr Wustenrot. Mai alb decît albul cel mai imaculat... Vai, şi din congelatorul unde, alături de lapte şirinichi de viţel, era depusă şi logodnica mea, se lansau către suprafaţă băşici vorbitoare ca în benzile desenate: „Nu-i lăsa să te vîre aici. Nu-i lăsa să te vîre aici..." (Sfîntă Apollonia, roagă-te pentru mine!) Elevelo...

Starursh is embroiled in the Nazi past, the radical left present, his failed relationship and his huge dental operation.The book is in three parts . The style of the first part is like Celine on acid . The second and third parts are in conventional prose. It is very difficult to follow what is happening in the hallucinogenic first part. However everything is explained in the second part. Interestingly two of the secondary characters share a something with Grass . His girlfriend Irmgard obsesses

Una novela de la cual no se que pensar. Confusa, con una narración que brinca de tema en tema en los que se mezclan los recuerdos del narrador, con las opiniones del interlocutor y extrañamente programas de televisión. La narración carece de casi toda estructura y más bien son una serie de pensamientos medio hilados por un tema, pero la estructura temporal está toda revuelta La historia va más o menos así, un profesor de secundaria va a consultar con un dentista y mientras estre le práctica ciru...

Just finished Local Anaesthetic at a gallop on my second attempt. Don't be put off by the surreal and somewhat disjointed opening - things come together quite quickly and the artistically-expanded viewpoint is actually far more lifelike than many a realist novel. Ralph Manheim's translation is remarkably good - it still sounds contemporary. Actually wish I'd read this freewheeling and adventurous novel when it first came out - read his 'Tin Drum' but this is better, tighter, funnier - because it...

The 1st part of this book is strangely enhanced by putting it down often, and letting one's life jump onto the dentist's screen. Disorienting to start, but it clears up as events unfold.Apparently, it's a reaction to a documentary on the Hübener group, with Grass wanting to convey his desire that more citizens would have stood against the Nazis; I'll have to look more into this Helmuth Hübener...

Grass weaves a story told through a sort of combination of hallucination and conversation with the protagonist's dentist. It's a frequently muddled sort of narrative and it can be rather difficult to track. What actually occurs and Eberhard's idle fantasies are hard to separate. A good read, but one I would have been better to undertake in fewer sessions and when better rested.

Funny, surreal and a bit unsettling a like other books of his I've read. I couldn't say for certain I knew what was going on for all of it, so I'll read it again someday. It's no dog years but enjoyable nonetheless.

This one is a very slow burn, but it made for a pretty big laugh 2/3 of the way through since the lead-up was so dry. At various points I would marvel at the fact that I was still reading the book since it seemed so esoteric, but ultimately it was a decently interesting experience.

It's not a four-star book for me, but it's better than its current 3.41 star average. The first 100 pages were a bit of a slog. On the edge of calling it quits, I slogged on a bit more. Patience paid dividends. Maybe it was a four-star book. It grew on me.

کتاب خیلی سخت و کسل کننده ای اومد به نظر من

Favourite part:Der abgewiesene Versager sinnt auf RacheDer Zahnarzt kritisiert die Aufrufe zur Gewalt

This is a game of three parts, mostly related by the extraordinarily unreliable teacher Starusch. Unreliable? He has several alter egos, and apart from the dental treatment for his 'Mussolini jaw' and perhaps the events of Part 2, it is hard to say precisely what has happened. But then this is Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, still half in denial about its recent past (as most visibly in the case of his tormented teaching colleague) but also struggling to deal with its present, and perhaps especi...