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A review by christinecc
The Magician by Colm Tóibín
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
A disquieting and detached portrait of a disquieting and detached man, "The Magician" is an odd duck.
Technically, "The Magician" is non-fiction in that it recounts the life of Thomas Mann, a German author from the turn of the 20th century who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1939 and became an exile when Hitler took power, officially stripped of his German citizenship in 1936. On the other hand, "The Magician" is still a novel, and I expect you will find it in the Fiction aisle of your local bookstore. This is not a biography. It is a portrait, painted in bits and pieces by Colm Tóibín.
Unsurprisingly, Tóibín's writing is excellent. "The Magician" is a slow story that maintains momentum despite very little to suggest a page-turner. In fact, Tóibín downplays a lot of the more typically "exciting" or nerve-wracking episodes of Mann's life, likely due to the third-person limited point of view adopted. Mann's detachment is like a blanket that smothers any flame, so if I found this book hard to put down, I can only credit Tóibín's skill. I admit the last fifth of the book feels more aimless, but overall it's a very gripping read. If only Mann were a less disquieting person, I might have enjoyed myself.
And that is the problem here: not the writing or the storytelling, but the subject (and more importantly, Tóibín's choices in portraying the subject).
Tóibín has been an admirer of Mann's work for years, as have many, many authors. Mann is considered a major influence of literature, and cinephiles have likely heard of (if not necessarily seen) the famous Luchino Visconti adaptation of Mann's story, "Death in Venice." I have not read anything by Mann, and I knew next to nothing about him when I requested this book, save for the fact that he had written a novel about a creepy sanatorium called "The Magic Mountain."
Some cursory searching yielded interesting information about the author, which Tóibín's novel covers in evocative detail. For instance, Mann's wife Katia Pringsheim was among the first women to enroll at a university in Germany. Her family was particularly interesting in that they were of Jewish origin but did not practice, and they were huge admirers and patrons of Richard Wagner, whose daughter-in-law Winifred personally interceded to protect the Pringsheims from the Gestapo during Hitler's regime. In a particularly memorable passage, Tóibín depicts Katia's conflicted but mainly disgusted feelings about owing her parents' safety in part to a woman (Winifred Wagner) who openly and vehemently supported Hitler, even after the war.
Unfortunately, I cannot decide what to think of Tóibín’s book as a whole, except that it was slightly disturbing and only got more so as I dug deeper into the accounts by Mann's children, especially those of his son Golo Mann. Throughout the novel, Tóibín depicts Mann at close range, taking us into the author's mind from childhood onward. And yet Mann is never "I." He is "Thomas." He is at arm's length, and not because of the third-person limited point of view. Stylistically, Mann is detached from us. We are not privy to what moves his actions, only his reactions and vague thoughts. We do not know what he desires except when he plans a story or a novel. Matters develop around him and he acts accordingly.
Part of this detachment seems true to accounts of the real Mann, and I can't imagine that Tóibín created this impression accidentally. On the other hand, the book left me uneasy in the same way that, say, reading John Fowles's "The Collector" did not so long ago. "The Magician" has so many characters, so many friends and relatives and children of Mann's, and yet Mann could not care less about them. When he cries at his mother's death, I had to reread the passage out of disbelief. It felt like watching a stranger cry, not the person whose life I had followed up to that point. Similarly, there is no care in the depiction of Mann's children. They are like passing images, intriguing from a distance, but not enough to come close. Notably, Tóibín's Mann seems disturbed by his son Golo's distance. Golo observes from afar, and for some reason Mann in the book does not love this. Later, when Golo is charged with getting Mann's diaries out of Nazi Germany, we understand a bit more. And I assume Golo, both in the book and in real life, must have understood more, too, after reading the diary. The upsetting fact is that Thomas Mann, who was among many gay men who could not live openly without facing enormous danger, has some very disturbing diary entries wherein he describes his attraction to his own son, Klaus, when Klaus was a young boy. This fact does not come up in Tóibín's novel until the moment Mann worries about his diaries falling into the Nazis' hands.
Which is where, I think, Tóibín's portrait seems a little disingenuous. We are privy to all kinds of thoughts by Mann, especially when Tóibín has to use some of his imagination to fill in Mann's childhood and developing awareness of his attraction to men. Mann’s childhood struggles with his attraction to other boys made him really sympathetic, because he really had no one in whom he could confide. But what I don't understand is why there is nothing, nothing at all to suggest Mann would feel attracted to his own son, not until Mann worries about the Nazis using his diary to ruin him forever. This total silence is not explained by Mann’s own discomfort, because up until this episode about the diaries, there is no suggestion that Mann finds his sexual attraction concerning (in fact, his real-life diary notes that he finds his attraction to his son "natural"), and we even see the moment in Mann's childhood when he is attracted to his older brother Heinrich despite their relationship as siblings. We are also privy to a holiday during which Mann became fixated on a ten-year-old boy, who later served as the inspiration for the fourteen-year-old Tadzio character in "Death in Venice." What I mean is that Tóibín’s version of Mann did not hide his sexual attraction from the reader.
So why did Tóibín feel the need to hide Mann’s thoughts about his son Klaus, something equally private to Mann as his fantasies about Heinrich and the boy on holiday, but eminently more disturbing? It feels like a half-hearted effort to remain historically accurate while also making Mann more palatable as a person. And I see no reason to make Mann more palatable. Certainly Tóibín is aware of the man's flaws. Did he hide the diary entries' revelation until the novel’s midpoint for shock value? And if so, what for? Wouldn't we have felt the same tension and stakes had we already known about what those diaries contained?
There are also no mentions of Mann having any kind of conflict with his wife, despite the fact that Tóibín referred to numerous writings by Mann's children, and Mann's son Golo has written about his father's terrifying bursts of anger. There is hardly even a mention (really, only the slightest) of Mann's disappointment at the birth of his first child because she was a girl, because he found boys to be "more full of poetry" and (in what seems to match his deeply narcissistic mentality) more of a "continuation" of himself. This Mann, as depicted by Tóibín, may be entirely self-centered and oblivious to his faults, but that does not explain how he fails to even register basic interactions with his family that we know took place. His mind is on his books. His wife is his devoted supporter. That is it. The rest does not exist. And when Mann's son Klaus dies of probable suicide, we hardly feel anything, because Mann himself feels so little in this book. We cannot understand Klaus. This version of Mann has made no effort to do so.
The most moving part of the novel is, sadly, a letter written to Mann by his son Michael after Klaus's funeral, which Mann did not attend: "You are a great man. Your humanity is widely appreciated and applauded. I am sure you are enjoying loud praise in Scandinavia. It hardly bothers you, most likely, that these feelings of adulation are not shared by any of your children. As I walked away from my brother's grave, I wished you to know how deeply sad I felt for him."
I have to think Tóibín is the true author of this letter, as Mann (in the book) claims to have destroyed it. This leads me to believe that Tóibín does--without a doubt--know what kind of person Mann was to his family. Perhaps his point is that Mann had no clue how callous and cold he seemed to others. Personally, I don't think Mann was unaware.
Overall, this is a good novel and a good piece of historical fiction, but it is not an internally consistent portrait of Mann, and if people must read something after this novel, I hope they will seek out the autobiography of Golo Mann, who brings a very different opinion of his father to the table.
Recommended if you are interested in fiction depicting turn-of-the-century Germany with a particular focus on the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler. I can also recommend this to anyone who has read or plans to read the works of Thomas Mann, who remains a huge influence on literature to this day.
I received a free eARC of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Technically, "The Magician" is non-fiction in that it recounts the life of Thomas Mann, a German author from the turn of the 20th century who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1939 and became an exile when Hitler took power, officially stripped of his German citizenship in 1936. On the other hand, "The Magician" is still a novel, and I expect you will find it in the Fiction aisle of your local bookstore. This is not a biography. It is a portrait, painted in bits and pieces by Colm Tóibín.
Unsurprisingly, Tóibín's writing is excellent. "The Magician" is a slow story that maintains momentum despite very little to suggest a page-turner. In fact, Tóibín downplays a lot of the more typically "exciting" or nerve-wracking episodes of Mann's life, likely due to the third-person limited point of view adopted. Mann's detachment is like a blanket that smothers any flame, so if I found this book hard to put down, I can only credit Tóibín's skill. I admit the last fifth of the book feels more aimless, but overall it's a very gripping read. If only Mann were a less disquieting person, I might have enjoyed myself.
And that is the problem here: not the writing or the storytelling, but the subject (and more importantly, Tóibín's choices in portraying the subject).
Tóibín has been an admirer of Mann's work for years, as have many, many authors. Mann is considered a major influence of literature, and cinephiles have likely heard of (if not necessarily seen) the famous Luchino Visconti adaptation of Mann's story, "Death in Venice." I have not read anything by Mann, and I knew next to nothing about him when I requested this book, save for the fact that he had written a novel about a creepy sanatorium called "The Magic Mountain."
Some cursory searching yielded interesting information about the author, which Tóibín's novel covers in evocative detail. For instance, Mann's wife Katia Pringsheim was among the first women to enroll at a university in Germany. Her family was particularly interesting in that they were of Jewish origin but did not practice, and they were huge admirers and patrons of Richard Wagner, whose daughter-in-law Winifred personally interceded to protect the Pringsheims from the Gestapo during Hitler's regime. In a particularly memorable passage, Tóibín depicts Katia's conflicted but mainly disgusted feelings about owing her parents' safety in part to a woman (Winifred Wagner) who openly and vehemently supported Hitler, even after the war.
Unfortunately, I cannot decide what to think of Tóibín’s book as a whole, except that it was slightly disturbing and only got more so as I dug deeper into the accounts by Mann's children, especially those of his son Golo Mann. Throughout the novel, Tóibín depicts Mann at close range, taking us into the author's mind from childhood onward. And yet Mann is never "I." He is "Thomas." He is at arm's length, and not because of the third-person limited point of view. Stylistically, Mann is detached from us. We are not privy to what moves his actions, only his reactions and vague thoughts. We do not know what he desires except when he plans a story or a novel. Matters develop around him and he acts accordingly.
Part of this detachment seems true to accounts of the real Mann, and I can't imagine that Tóibín created this impression accidentally. On the other hand, the book left me uneasy in the same way that, say, reading John Fowles's "The Collector" did not so long ago. "The Magician" has so many characters, so many friends and relatives and children of Mann's, and yet Mann could not care less about them. When he cries at his mother's death, I had to reread the passage out of disbelief. It felt like watching a stranger cry, not the person whose life I had followed up to that point. Similarly, there is no care in the depiction of Mann's children. They are like passing images, intriguing from a distance, but not enough to come close. Notably, Tóibín's Mann seems disturbed by his son Golo's distance. Golo observes from afar, and for some reason Mann in the book does not love this. Later, when Golo is charged with getting Mann's diaries out of Nazi Germany, we understand a bit more. And I assume Golo, both in the book and in real life, must have understood more, too, after reading the diary. The upsetting fact is that Thomas Mann, who was among many gay men who could not live openly without facing enormous danger, has some very disturbing diary entries wherein he describes his attraction to his own son, Klaus, when Klaus was a young boy. This fact does not come up in Tóibín's novel until the moment Mann worries about his diaries falling into the Nazis' hands.
Which is where, I think, Tóibín's portrait seems a little disingenuous. We are privy to all kinds of thoughts by Mann, especially when Tóibín has to use some of his imagination to fill in Mann's childhood and developing awareness of his attraction to men. Mann’s childhood struggles with his attraction to other boys made him really sympathetic, because he really had no one in whom he could confide. But what I don't understand is why there is nothing, nothing at all to suggest Mann would feel attracted to his own son, not until Mann worries about the Nazis using his diary to ruin him forever. This total silence is not explained by Mann’s own discomfort, because up until this episode about the diaries, there is no suggestion that Mann finds his sexual attraction concerning (in fact, his real-life diary notes that he finds his attraction to his son "natural"), and we even see the moment in Mann's childhood when he is attracted to his older brother Heinrich despite their relationship as siblings. We are also privy to a holiday during which Mann became fixated on a ten-year-old boy, who later served as the inspiration for the fourteen-year-old Tadzio character in "Death in Venice." What I mean is that Tóibín’s version of Mann did not hide his sexual attraction from the reader.
So why did Tóibín feel the need to hide Mann’s thoughts about his son Klaus, something equally private to Mann as his fantasies about Heinrich and the boy on holiday, but eminently more disturbing? It feels like a half-hearted effort to remain historically accurate while also making Mann more palatable as a person. And I see no reason to make Mann more palatable. Certainly Tóibín is aware of the man's flaws. Did he hide the diary entries' revelation until the novel’s midpoint for shock value? And if so, what for? Wouldn't we have felt the same tension and stakes had we already known about what those diaries contained?
There are also no mentions of Mann having any kind of conflict with his wife, despite the fact that Tóibín referred to numerous writings by Mann's children, and Mann's son Golo has written about his father's terrifying bursts of anger. There is hardly even a mention (really, only the slightest) of Mann's disappointment at the birth of his first child because she was a girl, because he found boys to be "more full of poetry" and (in what seems to match his deeply narcissistic mentality) more of a "continuation" of himself. This Mann, as depicted by Tóibín, may be entirely self-centered and oblivious to his faults, but that does not explain how he fails to even register basic interactions with his family that we know took place. His mind is on his books. His wife is his devoted supporter. That is it. The rest does not exist. And when Mann's son Klaus dies of probable suicide, we hardly feel anything, because Mann himself feels so little in this book. We cannot understand Klaus. This version of Mann has made no effort to do so.
The most moving part of the novel is, sadly, a letter written to Mann by his son Michael after Klaus's funeral, which Mann did not attend: "You are a great man. Your humanity is widely appreciated and applauded. I am sure you are enjoying loud praise in Scandinavia. It hardly bothers you, most likely, that these feelings of adulation are not shared by any of your children. As I walked away from my brother's grave, I wished you to know how deeply sad I felt for him."
I have to think Tóibín is the true author of this letter, as Mann (in the book) claims to have destroyed it. This leads me to believe that Tóibín does--without a doubt--know what kind of person Mann was to his family. Perhaps his point is that Mann had no clue how callous and cold he seemed to others. Personally, I don't think Mann was unaware.
Overall, this is a good novel and a good piece of historical fiction, but it is not an internally consistent portrait of Mann, and if people must read something after this novel, I hope they will seek out the autobiography of Golo Mann, who brings a very different opinion of his father to the table.
Recommended if you are interested in fiction depicting turn-of-the-century Germany with a particular focus on the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler. I can also recommend this to anyone who has read or plans to read the works of Thomas Mann, who remains a huge influence on literature to this day.
I received a free eARC of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
Moderate: Death, Antisemitism, and Incest
Minor: Genocide, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Death of parent