Thomas Mann C/D S+D

Mann's Doctor Faustus vs. Goethe's Faust vs. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus vs. Randy Newman's Faust.

Just thought i'd add vs. Faust's entire back catalogue.

but yes I shall.

Thoughts on Mario & The Magician?

Should i have read Magic Mountain first?

someone please persuade me to give Doctor Faustus.

*another go

...phew

Still puzzling over Serenus Zeitblom ...

i loved it. seemed to convey certain aspects of life accurately and unsensationally. lots to chew over. lots of fascinating backround detail.

..but i think those who'll get the most out of it are fans of german music. the nods to schoenberg, mahler, pfitzner, the digressions on beethoven and bach, this is perhaps the point of ther book, despite he great story and characterisation.

musil seems to have a lot more verve and wit.

but I am getting into the Magic Mountain.

Reading The Magic Mountain and I think, post-Proust the stuff on time (and memory by default) I find a bit amateurish in comparison? Its hard going at the mo', just when I think I'm cracking it...but the sanatorium is a great set up and I like the idea of small changes in temperature standing for seismic changes.

Some of the scenes are great. You don't get character as such, they're more symbolic, and I change my mind from page to page as to whether that's a good thing.

which translation are you reading? I have this on my list for this year.

The H.T.Lowe-Porter one. On one of the other Mann threads a poster rubbished this translation.

a friend who's obsessed with Mann and who every five minutes insists I read him (I will eventually, it's either that or kill the friend) says the John E. Woods translations are the best.

I know only Lowe-Porter; I started reading Woods' translation of The Magic Mountain last summer and didn't finish it (read it summer '93).

Funnily enough, a good friend said his stepdad was about to start Joseph and His Brothers, which also got a sparkling translation recently.

the one I have is the Lowe-Porter - we'll see how it goes!

Might switch to the John E.Woods for the last two chapters then.

Can't quite believe its taken eight years from starting the thread to getting round to The Magic Mountain. Specially since I remember liking Death in Venice.

oh yeah I've read Death in Venice. Fuck you, friend. The main thing that's stuck with me from it is the phrase "exchanging meteorological commonplaces."

Tonio Kroger is one of my favorite stories -- favorite as in "life-changing."

Doesn't Lowe-Porter leave swathes of French untranslated? Sort of <3 the 'French? Everyone can read French' tradition of translators, but it can be a pain. Think there might be flat-out mistakes in Lowe-Porter too acc to some article I looked at, but enjoyed her Faustus well enough - think I've said before that slightly stiff older translations read fairly neutrally for me.

I took French for six years but gave up after a few pages. My college mentor happened to write a short critical guide to TMM which I used to get the gist of the thing.

Lolz I've been skipping ahead and yes I did find a couple of pages that was mostly French untranslated.

I'm relieved that you like the Faustus, w. I did check my copy as to who translated it during this thread revival and its Lowe-Porter.

Funnily enough the newer multi-translator Proust is a more 'stiff' read than the older Scott-Moncrieff but I think its an intended effect to reproduce the supposed awkwardness of reading Proust in French. xp

I never mentioned that in fall 2016 I read Joseph and His Brothers. I cracked the code: by starting where I wanted (the story of Tamar) and skipping ahead and going backward, I relished it. It's stupendously detailed and often funny.

I started The Holy Sinner today, good god.

magic mountain is the best book ever written

doctor faustus less so but still impressive

🤔

i mean i'm only halfway through and have just reached the crucial faustus/devil scene so who knows! but since it's structured like a biography the book just kind of blasts linearly through characters and situations. it's always best whenever it's dwelling intensely on something (the lectures on beethoven and beissel (and in fact any descriptions of music, mann was a great music writer), the theology digression, specifically adrian's instructors and classmates) rather than when it's rocketing through the popular salons adrian frequented. the narrator is both unreliable and very earnest, a rough combo to hang out with for a whole novel, even though the earnestness of the narrator's affection for adrian is what causes me to read the novel as queer

magic mountain avoids these obstacles bc the narrator is not a character and bc time in that novel is not so much linear as stopped entirely and you never suddenly encounter a flock of new characters, and the recurrence of familiar characters is either incredibly funny or incredibly moving or incredibly depressing

still, enjoying myself!

the duel in tmm is one of the most devastating things i've ever read

yes!!! god i should reread it, but it would take another year probably

for being a blank Castorp is such a likable dude: curious, amiable, the sort of person who wouldn't be caught dead reading a Mann novel.

castorp looking out into the mountain range and sky beyond his balcony and breaking down and putting the universe back together with his mind = never have i loved a book so much

100 pages into my first Mann, Joseph and his Brothers, and I'm loving it - I do wonder if I'll tire of it over the next 1400 pages but so far it's much lighter and more compelling than I had expected.

^^^ otm. I read it with astonishment and delight in fall 2016. It helped that I skipped Mann's intro and began with the story of Tamar.

As a kid I loved the Old Testament stories of the patriarchs as much as Greek mythology.

I haven't revisited the Old Testament since I was a small kid, and I'm wondering if I should - but I don't feel like I'm missing out on too much so far, despite my hazy memories of who did what.

I'm pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to pick up and read 10 pages when I have a few minutes, too, I'd expected it to be a book that I would have to read in big uninterrupted blocks (although I'm hoping to do some of that).

Not like he is Thomas Mann or anything, but Knausgaard’s second book ‘A Time for Everything’ (pre-My Struggle) incorporates the Old Test stories of both Cain and Abel and Noah, to pretty great effect

Just read a volume with Death in Venice / Tristan / Tonio Kroger. I can't say the first did much for me, painstakingly well written though it was. Tristan is very slight, though the letter and the response are pretty funny. Tonio Kroger though, that stuck with me. His idea about artists - obviously you could come up with numerous counterexamples but it's still a rare idea and strangely compelling, and wonderfully encapsulates his own character. Of course I am a bourgeouis dilettante so my judgement counts for nothing. The story also has the best line - "one ought not to tempt people to read poetry who would much rather read books about the instantaneous photography of horses" - he's clearly been stewing over this perceived insult for the best part of twenty years! Incidentally my parents had a book of Muybridge's photos which i used to look through with some interest, further proving my bourgeouis credentials.

I've been reading The Magic Mountain for about seven years and I expect I won't finish it for another seven

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