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SCRIBBLE
Frau Gutman
For this edition of Scribble, co-editor Lily Harding interviewed Frau Gutman about her Zeitgeist project in school. This extra-curricular club has been running successfully for over a year and attracts a diverse membership; it has also been one of the highlights of the recent lockdowns. Zeitgeist is defined as meaning ‘the spirit of the age’ and encompasses ideas which reveal spiritual, cultural and moral dimensions of a particular age or time period. The Zeitgeist society has enjoyed ranging over a significant number of time periods, tapping into the ideas and thought of the day. We have chosen to give this edition of ‘Scribble’ over to the concept of Zeitgeist, encouraging contributors to delve into a particular era or writer, exploring what their Zeitgeist reveals.
Q1 What is your favourite English-language book and why? How do you choose? I love “The History of Love,” by Nicole Krauss, “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides, “Bleak House”, “The Cazalet Chronicles”, “Captain Correlli’s Mandolin”. Help, this rather varied and random list could go on! I seem increasingly drawn to American women writers such as Ann Patchett, Nicole Krauss, Meg Wolitzer, Anne Tyler, Brit Bennett - but then also love the novels of Sarah Moss, Maggie O’Farrell and other British female writers. I think I like books that have a strong storyline, but leave you thinking, laughing or crying. A few years ago I discovered The Hay Festival - I tend to go with my family and parents and I create a timetable of events-so that we all get some of our favourites for children and adults - I tend to mainly choose female writers and have been lucky enough to hear wonderful writers, such as Margaret Atwood, Judith Kerr and Elif Shafak. Having said that, I am reading a William Boyd novel at the moment and I love his novels-they are so varied. I also loved Ian Mcewan’s “Atonement”, despite the fact that Bryony (me) betrays Cecilia (my daughter).
Q2 What is your favourite Foreign-language book and why?
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I think the greatest novel ever written is the “The Tin Drum” (Die Blechtrommel) by Günter Grass). It literally blows your mind. It is about a boy, Oskar, who decides to stop growing by throwing himself head first in to the cellar, as he does not want to part of the society he sees around him-he lives in Danzig (now Gdansk)and is witnessing the rise of Hitler. The drum of the title is from a shop owned by a Jewish man and he loves to visit this toy shop, until it is destroyed during Kristallnacht. This was also the time my grandfather managed to leave Berlin and saved himself from dying in Sobibor - which was the fate of the rest of his family. It is part magic realism, very funny, extremely disturbing and changes you for ever once you have read it. There are so many unforgettable scenes in the novel, such as Oskar joining a troupe of dwarves performing to Nazi soldiers or Oskar watching a Nazi rally descend in to chaos as he bangs his drum and causes everyone to start waltzing. Grass, a deeply political writer captures the despair of living in a world, in which the Holocaust was allowed to happen. There is a scene after the war, when Germany is re-building and fast becoming an incredibly powerful country economically, in which Oskar visits a Bierkeller, where you get served a beer and an onion on a chopping board-the image is so powerful - the need to chop up an onion to be able to cry in a post-holocaust Germany, in which such horrific atrocities were allowed to happen. He was one of the first writers to deal with the theme of guit in post war Germany.
