So gracious of you to admit to it!!
An unnecessary fear.
As with every novel, when reading a Mann novel one just has to suspend disbelief and follow it through. Once you accept that, you are fine.
The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus, Lotte in Weimar, each of these perfòrms absolute literary magic, and you will enjoy the journey.
These are "late Thomas Mann" books. They define our era. The earlier works: masterful but historical, no need to worry about them.
But these three books: they are alive now, burning hot.
(As is every single Conrad novel.)
#JosephConrad #ThomasMann #TheMagicMountain #DoktotFaustus #LotteInWeimar
"The Shadow Line" (1917) in my view is the second-greatest book ever written. (The first, of course, being The Magic Mountain, published just 7 years later but distinctly in a different era. Conrad is "transition to modernism", Mann is modernism.)
"What is time? A mystery, a figment -- and all-powerful."
*The Magic Mountain*, Chapter VI, "Changes"
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I haven't posted much here as I've been reading but my private notebook has been a pretty steady stream of chatter.
It's been a slow read, unsurprisingly given that I started it just as the semester was wrapping up, but hoping to finish it over the next week or so. Overall, I'm really enjoying it.
The carnival scene that closes Chapter V, with Hans confessing/ranting his love to Chauchat, is a literature scene for the ages. Also, a bit of a challenge for my intermediate French.
I find Hans to be a baffling character which has probably kept me reading.
No great thoughts here - I'll put those in something more thoughtful - just a check-in.
"An unassuming young man was travelling, in midsummer, from his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of the Grisons, on a three weeks' visit."
-- Thomas Mann, *The Magic Mountain*
(welp, I guess I'm reading this now -- reading notes will go here)
#FirstLines #ReadingNotes #NowReading #Bookstodon #ThomasMann #TheMagicMountain
Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" was published 100 years ago.
The novel is full of challenging ideas, memorable characters, and striking images. It's definitely a work that I will reread.
Image: First edition of Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) - H.-P.Haack - Wikimedia Commons -- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
#TheMagicMountain #ThomasMann #ErichKästner #Davos
The tourist office in Davos asked Erich Kästner for a light-hearted novel about the city, since Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain had brought the place into disrepute. Accordingly, Davos is also the scene in „Der Zauberlehrling“, a fragment of a novel from 1936.
It was about eight o'clock, and still daylight.
'August, August!' said Hans Castorp. 'But I am cold, abominably cold; I mean in my body, for my face burns shockingly - just feel it!'
„If I remember rightly, it is the beginning of August.“
New Age
the roamer
Trevor Burrows
Jonathan Emmesedi
Nemi 📚🎶