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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A true journey in every sense of the word, with a masterful sense of pacing and style. I feel like it opened a portal to a sort of zeitgeist pre-WWI that allowed me to grasp at least a grain of what the typical european civilian experienced. Personally loved how the narrator treated the main character like a guinea pig they inserted into experiments and how they'd make jovial mocking remarks about him. It made the narrator a character too, that you could converse with, who you were in on a joke with. Very cool.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There's probably very little I could say about this book that other's haven't already. Even Wikipedia states "It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature" and that should be enough.
But it does hold true. I've read a bit of Hesse, Goethe and other German writiers, and Mann's prose puts them to shame (even the Lowe-Porter translation). I have Musil up next, but I plan to go back to Mann many more times in the future. Several sections in this translation were rather dense and not well suited for late night reading, especially some of the long winded diatribes between characters which Mann used (slightly pretensiously) to display both his analytical insight and extensive vocabulary. But the book is enjoyable if you come to realize its intent.
It is not really meant to be a story, but a challenge. And not a challenge in the way Joyce is. It is subtle and well crafted, ironic, self aware, and inviting. You get from it exactly how much you give it. Every character serve's his or her purpose, yet none are shallow or one sided. People complain of the disjointed feel, but to me the way time is presented in the novel doesn't lend itself to a standard narrative and I believe the book would suffer if it was more rigidly structured.
For anyone interested in the humanitarian ideals and continental culture of the prewar 20th century, you cannot go wrong. If you find yourself interested, read it. It seems to be written expressly for the type of person who would be interested in a 100 year old 700 page long German book taking place high in the mountains.
Also, you'll want to be able to read french since there's a 20 some page section in the middle with no translation.
But it does hold true. I've read a bit of Hesse, Goethe and other German writiers, and Mann's prose puts them to shame (even the Lowe-Porter translation). I have Musil up next, but I plan to go back to Mann many more times in the future. Several sections in this translation were rather dense and not well suited for late night reading, especially some of the long winded diatribes between characters which Mann used (slightly pretensiously) to display both his analytical insight and extensive vocabulary. But the book is enjoyable if you come to realize its intent.
It is not really meant to be a story, but a challenge. And not a challenge in the way Joyce is. It is subtle and well crafted, ironic, self aware, and inviting. You get from it exactly how much you give it. Every character serve's his or her purpose, yet none are shallow or one sided. People complain of the disjointed feel, but to me the way time is presented in the novel doesn't lend itself to a standard narrative and I believe the book would suffer if it was more rigidly structured.
For anyone interested in the humanitarian ideals and continental culture of the prewar 20th century, you cannot go wrong. If you find yourself interested, read it. It seems to be written expressly for the type of person who would be interested in a 100 year old 700 page long German book taking place high in the mountains.
Also, you'll want to be able to read french since there's a 20 some page section in the middle with no translation.
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Thomas Mann created a satirically-based "a plague on all your houses" novel, very much disguised, in writing 'The Magic Mountain'. He introduces characters who are academics, the wealthy, and common people in his monumental masterpiece. The novel mixes in with mostly hundreds of philosophical disputations between two educated intellectuals, which sometimes include others with less empowered brain cells, scenes of comedic flirtations, hook-ups, social fads and ordinary disputes between patients of an elite hospital.
It is a time of manners, good clothes and genteel insults, just before World War I. If you are an ill-mannered, or more crude, type of human, even if somehow you have money and maybe a title from a foreign country, you still will be quietly despised by the European educated upper-class elite, businessmen or aristocrats. However, tuberculosis ends up leveling the field. Spoiler alert - tuberculosis is a deadly disease for most people in the early twentieth-century, educated or not, rich or not, European or not, whether one is exceptionally stupid or shallow or empathic or smart.
Hans Castorp is surprised by the hermetic Bell jar he sees his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, is living under when he visits a sanitarium for wealthy tuberculosis patients in the Alps. It's a long train trip from Hamburg to isolated Davis in the year 1907, and Hans is in a somewhat disgruntled mood. He has recently graduated from University as an engineer, and has put off starting his new job at Tunder and Wilms, shipbuilders, for this journey and visit to Joachim.
Joachim, a military soldier, is fretting under the imposed daily routines and regimen that all 200, more and less, tuberculosis patients follow in the International Berghof Institution (unless the patients are near death, in which case they never leave their rooms or bed). He tolerates the people he meets there, especially two competing philosophers - Ludovico Settembrini, an Italian revolutionary power-to-the-people atheist and humanist, and Rahel Naptha, an ex-Jesuit hierarchical moralist and possibly a sadist, definitely believes in extreme punishments. Joachim introduces Hans to them reluctantly.
Daily life in Berghof is all about scheduled routines. It is a very boring and repetitive routine. People lose any sense of Time - Sundays are the same as Tuesdays or Fridays or January or June or September. A patient's room is assigned semi-permanently as long as the patient pays and/or is alive. The worst of the Sanitarium's medical treatments for those who are not yet very sick are the first four weeks of total bed rest. After that, it is a regimen of eating, and walking, and lying down, with periodic doctor examinations. There are the daily hours spent lying down after every meal on lounge chairs in freezing weather on balconies. There are the five daily meals together in a large communal space fitted with seven tables, each individual assigned a seat if they aren't too sick and bedridden. There are leisurely walks, three times daily. The weather varies very little from that which is normally experienced in Winter, even in the Summer when days of snow and freezing temperatures can be expected to be mixed in with some days of sunny Springtime weather. On site are servants, nurses and doctors, including a psychiatrist, Dr. Krokowski. Each patient takes their temperature many times at set times every day. Once a month they have a consultation with Herr Hofrat Behrens.
The book has 900 pages. What is in these 900 pages? 'The Magic Mountain', Mann's name for the isolated Sanitarium, is a place where ALL of humanity's illnesses (political, psychological, social) is diagnosed and then examined to death, right? Tuberculosis isn't the only killer disease. This doorstopper, satirical and slyly bitter, certainly can make a person question the value of reading! And of studying or utilizing philosophy. And of the examined life. And of breathing...
Where Hans ends up is shocking to me. All of that thinking and studying and learning, the examinations of his own assumptions and of his body, all of the intellectual (and goofy circular argumentative bloviating by two characters), even the conversations that are meaningful and thought-provoking, all of the in-depth examinations of competing philosophical aspects (all of which Mann artfully twists into Mobius-strip madness), and the ridiculous, sometimes stupid, social dramas of sex manners and gossip, all of the physical regimens to delay death or regain health - all for naught, apparently.
Clue one - in the background, Death stalks every tuberculosis patient in the book whether deserving or undeserving, whether an intellectual or a shallow person of low interests, whether a conscientious and moral fighter or being someone who gives up their principles and life philosophies in the Time they have left.
Clue two -
Democracy or autocracy, religious or atheist, revolutionary or reactionary - does it matter? Hans, an ordinary person who theoretically became intellectually enlightened, in the end reverted to the built-in, maybe 'diseased', knee-jerk instinct of tribalism and the unthinking primitive need for War. However, I think Mann, in weighing the two main contending philosophies, decided on democratic values as the winning one.
Mann is of the opinion, I think, that Humanity is foolishly besotted with a supposed superiority of intelligence and philosophical designs. The body's impulses, weaknesses and instincts make of it a diseased entity whatever our intellectual playground. We have a reliance on a top-heavy brain-intellect architecture doomed to fail. Actually, maybe, we suck at practical values and intelligence, especially socially. Political governance, whatever the philosophy a government has based itself upon, is damned. Humans are inconsistent and incapable of sticking the logical landing.
Science is cool but wasted on us, especially in the sense of us wasting ourselves (like in shooting ourselves) with science. I think that is Mann's opinion.
It is a time of manners, good clothes and genteel insults, just before World War I. If you are an ill-mannered, or more crude, type of human, even if somehow you have money and maybe a title from a foreign country, you still will be quietly despised by the European educated upper-class elite, businessmen or aristocrats. However, tuberculosis ends up leveling the field. Spoiler alert - tuberculosis is a deadly disease for most people in the early twentieth-century, educated or not, rich or not, European or not, whether one is exceptionally stupid or shallow or empathic or smart.
Hans Castorp is surprised by the hermetic Bell jar he sees his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, is living under when he visits a sanitarium for wealthy tuberculosis patients in the Alps. It's a long train trip from Hamburg to isolated Davis in the year 1907, and Hans is in a somewhat disgruntled mood. He has recently graduated from University as an engineer, and has put off starting his new job at Tunder and Wilms, shipbuilders, for this journey and visit to Joachim.
Joachim, a military soldier, is fretting under the imposed daily routines and regimen that all 200, more and less, tuberculosis patients follow in the International Berghof Institution (unless the patients are near death, in which case they never leave their rooms or bed). He tolerates the people he meets there, especially two competing philosophers - Ludovico Settembrini, an Italian revolutionary power-to-the-people atheist and humanist, and Rahel Naptha, an ex-Jesuit hierarchical moralist and possibly a sadist, definitely believes in extreme punishments. Joachim introduces Hans to them reluctantly.
Daily life in Berghof is all about scheduled routines. It is a very boring and repetitive routine. People lose any sense of Time - Sundays are the same as Tuesdays or Fridays or January or June or September. A patient's room is assigned semi-permanently as long as the patient pays and/or is alive. The worst of the Sanitarium's medical treatments for those who are not yet very sick are the first four weeks of total bed rest. After that, it is a regimen of eating, and walking, and lying down, with periodic doctor examinations. There are the daily hours spent lying down after every meal on lounge chairs in freezing weather on balconies. There are the five daily meals together in a large communal space fitted with seven tables, each individual assigned a seat if they aren't too sick and bedridden. There are leisurely walks, three times daily. The weather varies very little from that which is normally experienced in Winter, even in the Summer when days of snow and freezing temperatures can be expected to be mixed in with some days of sunny Springtime weather. On site are servants, nurses and doctors, including a psychiatrist, Dr. Krokowski. Each patient takes their temperature many times at set times every day. Once a month they have a consultation with Herr Hofrat Behrens.
The book has 900 pages. What is in these 900 pages? 'The Magic Mountain', Mann's name for the isolated Sanitarium, is a place where ALL of humanity's illnesses (political, psychological, social) is diagnosed and then examined to death, right? Tuberculosis isn't the only killer disease. This doorstopper, satirical and slyly bitter, certainly can make a person question the value of reading! And of studying or utilizing philosophy. And of the examined life. And of breathing...
Where Hans ends up is shocking to me. All of that thinking and studying and learning, the examinations of his own assumptions and of his body, all of the intellectual (and goofy circular argumentative bloviating by two characters), even the conversations that are meaningful and thought-provoking, all of the in-depth examinations of competing philosophical aspects (all of which Mann artfully twists into Mobius-strip madness), and the ridiculous, sometimes stupid, social dramas of sex manners and gossip, all of the physical regimens to delay death or regain health - all for naught, apparently.
Clue one - in the background, Death stalks every tuberculosis patient in the book whether deserving or undeserving, whether an intellectual or a shallow person of low interests, whether a conscientious and moral fighter or being someone who gives up their principles and life philosophies in the Time they have left.
Clue two -
Spoiler
Hans leaves his heavenly-soft eternity of quiet routine and minimal responsibility for a life of War and to kill and kill and destroy and destroy. After all of that in-depth self-examination, and deep-learning, and thinking about what he believes for seven years?Democracy or autocracy, religious or atheist, revolutionary or reactionary - does it matter? Hans, an ordinary person who theoretically became intellectually enlightened, in the end reverted to the built-in, maybe 'diseased', knee-jerk instinct of tribalism and the unthinking primitive need for War. However, I think Mann, in weighing the two main contending philosophies, decided on democratic values as the winning one.
Mann is of the opinion, I think, that Humanity is foolishly besotted with a supposed superiority of intelligence and philosophical designs. The body's impulses, weaknesses and instincts make of it a diseased entity whatever our intellectual playground. We have a reliance on a top-heavy brain-intellect architecture doomed to fail. Actually, maybe, we suck at practical values and intelligence, especially socially. Political governance, whatever the philosophy a government has based itself upon, is damned. Humans are inconsistent and incapable of sticking the logical landing.
Science is cool but wasted on us, especially in the sense of us wasting ourselves (like in shooting ourselves) with science. I think that is Mann's opinion.
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No