Günter Wilhelm Grass (German: [ˈɡʏntɐ ˈɡʁas]; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). As a teenager, he served as a drafted soldier from late 1944 in the Waffen-SS and was taken prisoner of war by US forces at the end of the war in May 1945. He was released in April 1946. Trained as a stonemason and sculptor, Grass began writing in the 1950s. In his fiction, he frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood.
Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. It was the first book of his Danzig Trilogy, the other two being Cat and Mouse and Dog Years. His works are frequently considered to have a left-wing political dimension, and Grass was an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The Tin Drum was adapted as a film of the same name, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1999, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, praising him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history".
Lokalbedøvet handler om en 40-årig lektor Starusch, der sidder i tandlægestolen og skal have sit bulldogagtige underbid rettet - hans aggressive tilbøjeligheder har helt forladt ham. Under behandlingen, hvor han distraheres fra de fysiske ubehageligheder af et TV-apparat og af diskussioner med tandlægen, oplever han alle de nederlag, han allerede har lidt, og dem, han er bange for at komme til at lide.
Realitet og fiktion, overgangen mellem indre og ydre dialog er hele tiden flydende, det eneste faste holdepunkt er tandlægestolen. Den besøges på et vist tidspunkt også af Staruschs yndlingselev, Philip Sherbaum, der har villet brænde sin gravhund af for øjnene af alle de hundeelskende, kagespisende damer på Kurfürstendamm for at vise dem, hvor umenneskelig brugen af napalm i Vietnam-krigen er. Men han har måttet opgive sin demonstration og går derfor til tandlægen for at få rettet sit harelignende overbid.
For Starusch er lokalbedøvelsen en reflekteret resignation, mens de unge endnu står over for valget mellem afmagt (lokalbedøvelse) og oprør mod et samfund, der bevidst bruger lokalbedøvelse for at få alt til at glide så nemt og gnidningsløst som vel muligt.
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