Acceptance. Thursday, September 30. 3 p.m. GMT: Exactly 40 years after the publication of his only great novel, the gruesomely realistic war epic, Tin Drum, Gunther Grass is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm, Sweden. 3:30 p.m. GMT: A cavalier Grass issues the following statement: "I asked myself what Heinrich Boll, the last German Nobel Prize winner, would think about all of this. I think he would have voted for me, too." 6:30 p.m. GMT: At an official press conference, the 70-year-old Grass accuses the German government of being completely "visionless" and impotent compared to Willie Brandt and other politicians of Grass' generation.
Derision. Saturday, October 2. 2:15 p.m. GMT: Grass calls the national media together for a full press conference: "The apathy [of my fellow German writers] is ruining society," he says, adding that young German writers were producing "bellybutton lint." He mentions that his novels The Butt and The Rat, in contrast, are "celebrated and read all over the world." 2:35 p.m. GMT: Grass pointedly mentions that he thought about sharing his Nobel prize with longtime rival Christa Wolf, but then decided against it.
Vendetta. Monday, October 6. 4:25 p.m. GMT: Gunther Grass publicly rejects all congratulations from longtime acquaintance Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Germany's leading literary critic. "He tore the tissue between us" with his negative review of Wide Open Field, Grass tells the assembled media. "I won't be speaking with him anymore." 7:00 p.m. GMT: Gunther's longtime ally Oskar Lafontaine quits as head of the Social Democratic Party, which Grass belongs to. Another press conference, another statement to the media: "All I have to say to Oskar," says Grass, "is 'shut up and drink your wine! It's over between us!'"
Reprisal. Tuesday, October 7. 3 a.m. GMT: Bob Anderson, director of Oklahomans for Children and Family, calls his own press conference. After admitting that he'd never read The Tin Drum, he recommended that it be banned from all schools. "I know that the people who gave Gunther Grass the Nobel Prize are the same kind of liberals that think that children should have sex whenever and wherever, and with animals and such."
How to Act When You Win the Nobel Prize
