Thomas Mann Books

Whether you are reading or rereading one or all twelve of the great works discussed in this lovely volume, Rudolph Binion's theory--that a subtext undercutting a text provides the appeal of a classic--will add intrigue to the deep enjoyment of spending time with fine literature. I found the essays in themselves to be written with such wit and ingenuity that I read from one to another to see if I agreed with the subtext the author was proposing, and to see as well how the theory developed from one to the next, but then I went back to the works themselves to read them with a new eye. In so doing, I rediscovered Goethe, Flaubert, Stendhal, Ibsen, and Mann. I still have seven to go. The pieces are short and lively. Each by itself has the quality of a fine literary essay, but because the author develops a theme throughout, each also develops logically and gracefully from the previous one.

Thomas Mann won the Nobel Prize for "Buddenbrooks" and "The Magic Mountain"--both toweringly long novels of great complexity. These short stories, however, are as sharp and quick as a paring knife. Some of the stories are sketches for the monumental novels to come, such as "Tristan"--a satirical look at inmates in a sanatorium. Others are sweetly sick, for example "Blood of the Walsungs", which has something of the style of "Death in Venice." Some say the children in "Walsungs" are modeled after Mann's own. I don't know if this is true, but it's a shocking idea.

The stories vary from whimsical to fantastic, to tragic or even tragi-comedy. They are some of Mann's best work outside his novels, and though some are early works, they are interesting in showing the seeds of theme and promise in Mann's later great works. I consider this a "must-read" for anyone tackling Mann's bigger works.

First of all, the first posted review under Reed's THOMAS MANN: THE USES OF TRADITION (2nd ed.) is not of Reed at all, but of Prater's recent biography. Reed himself has brought his now 20-year-old study up to date, and it is by far the most aesthetically, politically judicious critique of Mann's career I know of--and written by a scholar who has made significant contributions to an Anglophonic audience's understanding of Goethe, Schiller, and the Weimar classical period generally. One may regret that Oxford books cost so much (!), but in this instance the investment is well worthwhile

Thomas Mann tried to solve the enigmas of the artist and his art. He ascribed special significance to his mother's creole ancestry. He thought his father's personality determined the pattern of his life. German bourgeois culture was paramount. Mann acknowledged a significant amount of identification with the artist figure of DEATH IN VENICE. Contrarily, though, Thomas Mann had the strength to maintain his lofty place. Mann persevered in his work. DR. FAUSTUS was a sort of confession. It was the achievement of new emotional freedom.

To Thomas Mann the mark of genius was to discover, adopt, and adapt. He did not consider original invention important. His guiding stars were Nietzsche, Wagner, and Schopenauer. Goethe's harmonious personality influenced Mann. The voice of Schiller had spoken to him in his youth. His intellectual awakening took place in the 1880's. Mann planned a novel on Frederick the Great and never wrote it. While composing DR. FAUSTUS Mann felt close to Dostoevsky. He had admired Hesse's DEMIAN and STEPPENWOLF.

As a young writer, Mann showed noteworthy maturity and soberness. He had a highly developed sense of order and responsibility. Mann used solid learning of every kind in his masterpieces. An emphasis on details was his standard practice. To Mann the world of letters was a unity. Mann combined profound emotion with intellectual detachment. He opposed the established German view that psychology and myth were at opposite poles.

The author, Mann, constantly balanced reality and symbol. Mann was a genius of the golden mean. He was a supporter of humanism and democracy. A useful chronology and notes appear at the end of this excellent work on Thomas Mann.

Truly amazing work that reflects just some of what Hurricane Katrina means.
This is what real artists do. I was fortunate to see the complete installation, but the book is wonderful in itself.

Needless to say, anything written by Thomas Mann, one of the greatest authors and essayists in world history, is more than worthwhile. This collection is most noteworthy for what may be the most authentic and realistic experience of a seance ever put to paper. The similar chapter in his MAGIC MOUNTAIN is based on this onetime situation where Mann and a well known sceptic were invited to participate in this very convincing experience. Since Mann had phenomenal powers of observation, it seems hard to believe that he was hoodwinked here, but anyone reading this may actually believe the very odd things described. Later in life, it is said that Mann disavowed this essay and seance. Those who are familiar with descriptions by many less than credible witnesses should read this description. However, I think that even such a great mind as Thomas Mann could have been hoodwinked!

First off, I hate his show, I loved this book and the movie.

Private Parts is hilarious, compelling and truthful. I've never been a huge Howard fan, I saw this book and for some reason started reading.

The book is his story, how he got where he is now and where it all started. If you love Howard Stern, you'll love his book, if you arent a fan, its still great reading.

Writing about oneself is an extremely difficult task that requires both daring and self-criticism. I don't know how many times I wanted to destroy my own writing because, with time, I realized how naive and stupid I was in the past. This is not the case with Howard Stern's autobiography here. He's a very brave man who does not fear to be criticized neither for who he is nor for what he does. Perhaps, the greatest anxiety of being ignored or under-appreciated drives H. Stern to put his "private parts" into unusual and fascinating language codes. And in this creative process, he is probably to be compared to such great names of the past as Giovanni Boccaccio ("The Decameron") and Francois Rable ("The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel").

Moreover, H. Stern's "Private Parts" is a great representation for the recent immigrants like me of the unofficial American life in the second half of the 20th century. I'm reading this book along with Peter Novick's "The Holocaust and Collective Memory" and it's a great combination so far that allows me to see what's considered history and by whom.

Leaving the critical reflection for people who don't understand that critical concepts and theories are not weapons to discredit an artwork or an artist, just want to say, "I really loved this book!" I did love it even though as an average woman I was constantly measuring myself up to who H. Stern considered "hot" or "nice" or important. On the other hand, reading "Private Parts", I've never felt alone in my self-oppressive thoughts and unrealistic dreams. Howard Stern also indulges into both unimaginable self-appraisal and genuinely scary self-criticism.

I'm still just half-through his book, but I think I won't change my mind about his talent and daring even if he wrote at the end that every reader of the book is an idiot. So far, I don't even care what the book ends on. H. Stern has already put the culmination at the beginning - a very feminist gesture... If you are easily excited (sexually I mean) I'm not sure you'll be able to continue reading after the first 10 pages. You'll surely need to pause... for a while... Enjoy the reading!

I could actually hear Howards voice as I read this great book that tells the story of Howard Stern from a child until present day(1994)Also check out his follow up book Miss America(its also great)

a rather interesting bio. pretty much the whole book is half bio and half satire and commentary. it definitly give's you a tour into the demented mind of howard stern and as you progress through the book even as raunchy as it get's you finish by saying to yourself "well that made sense"

not for the uptight and not for the easily offended,,,read with an open mind!

This is one of those books you can pick up anywhere, read a few pages, enjoy it, and put it down again. Perfect for, er, certain rooms in the apartment.

If you get Howard, you should get this.

French literature of or about the XIX Century deeply explored the rise of the bourgeoisie over the nobility. Think of Balzac and Proust. But it was this book, published at the turn of the XX Century, which first explored in a comparable depth the decline and fall of a bourgeois family, amidst social unrest. This is the epic story of the Buddenbrook family through four generations. This was a family who had greatly prospered in the free city of Lübeck, in Northern Germany. They were a family of merchants and naval entrepreneurs, deeply rooted in the Protestant ethics of Weberian fame. They were very religious and hard workers. The novel begins with a scene of family bliss: old Johann Buddenbrook has purchased a new house, a big, beautiful one, and the family is gathered. They are celebrating economic and social success. There is Jean, the son and partner, his distinguished wife, and their three children, their and their grandparents' joy and pride. Thomas is a serious and noble boy; Christian is a troublemaker; and little Tony is a hardnosed girl, also naughty but always good in the end. The novel continues telling the story of the upbringing of the three kids and the people around them. The old folk die, and the younger begin to go out to the world. Thomas reveals as an excellent businessman, in the tradition of his forebearers, has a good marriage and gets elected as senator of the city, which he celebrates by moving into a spectacular new house. Christian becomes a ne'er-do-well, a drunkard and a useless guy. In fact he becomes pathetic and hypochondriac. and the pretty Tony experiences tragedy and bad marriages. The decline continues.

There is no point in elaborating on the complex, tight plot. It is a multilayered bovel, with some side stories, but always a straight language and an easy to read style, with no experimentalisms. Mann is a very skilled narrator, and his first novel shows him already in full possession of his art. Character development is very good, and his Realism gives no quarter. Mann illustrates some fifty years, starting in 1835, in the life of this interesting city, one of the cradles of modern commerce, finance, and Capitalism in general. Along with the Buddenbrooks, we experience the profound changes the city undergoes. Business, politics, religion, music, family life and social relationships are all explored. A great fresco of life, by the guy who would later pen "The Magic Mountain" and "Doktor Faustus", philosophical and chornological sequels of this excellent novel.

I thought this book was very well written and entertaining but just too long. If you love Mann then read this book, if not, then just read Magic Mountain or Death in Venice.

I've decided to elaborate on my review.

The reason why I think this book is not worth the time is because the topic is too narrow. For the average reader, this book's focus on a German upper-middle class family from the turn of the twentieth century might not grab their attention and hold it for 736 pages. I am interested in German history and culture yet I found myself struggling through sections. I think many people who are introduced to Mann by this work may dismiss him because this book failed to really capture their imagination. For this reason, I think many people can skip this particular work.

As I said I found the book to be quite interesting throughout, but there were sections that did not add to the book. No one but the true Mann fan will read about some of this family's daily minutia completely enthralled. I am a fan of Mann and I certainly had problems with some of the work. I think the book would have been just as good if not better with fewer pages. The book would at least be more accessible if it were shorter.

The writing is superb, the story is very compelling at times and I am glad I read Buddenbrooks, but I can certainly sympathize with some of the negative reviews for this book and I would not recommend this book for any of my friends unless they like Mann to begin with. If I were not interested in Germany, I may have put this book down way before the final page.

I read the "The magic mountain" by Thomas Mann about a year
ago and was very impressed by it. It was a book about ideas
and discussions, drawing from different standpoints of the
political spectrum. I even went on to rate the magic mountain
as one of the greatest books I had read. Buddenbrooks was
a bit of let down. Its clearly a book written by a coming of
age author, and one can see the author's work mature as the work progresses. I think the Magic mountain is a must read and
Buddenbrooks lacks the intellectual distance that Mann is
capable of. Its a Mann book, and not reading it is like
missing a flower in the garden.

The Buddenbrooks motto is: "My son, show zeal for each day's affairs of business, but only for such that makes for a peaceful night's sleep." (page 473). A wise and careful approach to life like that you would think would keep the family going on and on -- but no --- "the storms and shipwrecks of life." (page 590) pull them down. A history (fictional) of a family in a big book that does not seem so big, because of the skillful way it is told, in short well organized chapters.

The novels of Thomas Mann often portray the fortunes of an artistic aristocratic family in Germany at the turn of the century. What Mann finds fascinating about these families is their decline from wealth to poverty and health to disease. In BUDDENBROOKS, Mann begins a four generation saga with old Johann Buddenbrooks, who by the mid 1800s had established his family as a local power in terms of wealth and health. Clearly Mann saw more than a little of himself in the Buddenbrooks clan. In fact, when his novel was first published in 1901, many of his readers saw themselves and their town novelized in a fashion that scandalized them. They did not like to think of themselves as the inheritors of a worn out and dissolute society.

Johann has a son Jean, who tries hard to carry on the tradition of success in both family and business that he inherited from his father. Jean has many of the hard-nosed qualities of business that marked the success of his father. Jean is soon faced with problems unknown to Johann. Beginning with Jean's generation is the decline of the fortunes of the Buddenbrooks. Jean has an older brother Gotthold who commits two sins that later mark the next generation. He has no interest in or aptitude for running a large family business. In his personal weaknesses, Gotthold comes across as a Freddy Corleone, jealous of the talent of his older brother Michael from THE GODFATHER. Further, Gotthold alienates his family with a marriage of which they disapprove.

Jean has three children, a daughter Antonie (Tony), and two sons Tom and Christian. It is the fortunes of these three that comprise the bulk of the book. It is almost painful for the reader to note the decline of this generation for reasons that may not be all of their own doing. When Tony matures, she is faced with an impossible choice: to marry the man whom she truly loves (Morten Schartzkopf) or the wealthy pig (Grunlich), whom Jean unwisely pressures her to marry. Despite Jean's best intentions, his refusal to let his daughter follow her heart is a very big reason for his family's later decline.

Tom is Jean's eldest son and determines to carry on the family tradition of success, but he is less capable than his father and still less capable than his grandfather. Tom combines diminished business acumen with an inability to tolerate with what he sees as the moral lapses of his brother Christian. Tom is blind to his own penchant for an interest in fine clothes and culture that Johann would have found incomprehensible, yet he has no scruples about lashing out at Christian's foibles.

Christian is a walking mess of neuroses, which later cause him to wind up in a mental institution. He has no talent for business and he sees himself as a dabbler in the arts, which probably goes a long way toward explaining Tom's antipathy and lack of patience for him. Further the family trait of whining about an unfair distribution of a will that was first seen in Gotthold emerges with a vengeance when Tom lies, leaving Christian with a pittance.

The family's decline ceases with Tom's son Hanno, a basically decent but sickly boy who dies of typhus at fifteen. What Mann has done in the Buddenbrooks saga is to use the passing of the decades as a temporal sieve, slowly filtering out the best of the genetic wheat, leaving only the effete chaff. In so doing, he dramatizes what for him was the most abiding concern of his life: a rationale for the extinction of his family's class and culture.

If you're a struggling writer, artist, musician, Thomas Mann is for you. This book is wildly funny and satisfying.
The author understands the struggle and invites you in. The protaganist of the novel is realistic and naughty. You will see how Mann has inspired other writer's in his wake---look at the Talented Mr. Ripley novels by Patricia Highsmith---this book was her inspiration.

"Confessions of Felix Krull - Confidence Man" by Thomas Mann, © 1955

I have read this before, but I wanted to make sure I remembered right. He does mention watching a prostitute ply her trade, but it is not as much as Gabriel García Márquez does in "Love in the Time of Cholera," which I will have to read again, as well, to refresh my memory of the story.
Such a book, you would never imagined that a Nobel winning, world renowned author like Thomas Mann would have written it. It is amazing that he writes of a person who is so ignoble as Felix Krull, is worthy of writing of. Yet, it would have been a challenge to write of this immoral fellow in a positive way, as this is.
It must be admitted that there is a bit of a pun in 'confidence man' and the person, himself, Mr. Krull. He is the utmost confident fellow, conceited even.
The oddest thing of this whole story is that it is unfinished. He, I subsequently found out, died before he finished it, but it does end with a bang (pun intended).

Devin,

This book, "The Confessions of Felix Krull," I thought you would enjoy. It is about a fellow who flaunts social conventions and becomes people he is not. In essence, he is theatrical his whole life. A good half of this book details his life of being someone he is not, but he starts out very much as an imitator. In his earliest childhood memories, he imitates princes. His godfather is an artist who dresses and uses Felix as a model as he grows up. His godfather can not believe how much he becomes the character Felix dresses as, be it a King or an artist or a gentleman on a fox hunt.
His spirit is suffused with his ability to be who he wants to be, so he becomes a Marquis or a waiter or a thief. His confidence is uppermost. His employer thinks he can speak French, English, Spanish, etc. at a whim (though he only repeats phrases he has learned elsewhere, it sure sounds good). Not everyone can do this. Felix says he is of finer clay, and, being fiction, it is beyond dispute. You have to realize, there really are people of 'finer clay' around, that is the basis of aristocracy. We should not cowtow to them, but we should emulate them, as best we can (they know how to act properly). This is a dichotomy of life: we are all made equal in the eyes of the Lord, but some are better than others.

THE CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL CONFIDENCE MAN is Tomas Mann's last work, and reportedly the first part of a longer, fictitious autobiography that Mann was never to finish.

Felix Krull, the narrator, begins his story by recalling his upper middle class childhood, and recounting the loss of his family's fortune, which leads to a series of memorable adventures in Europe.

The book breezily entertains episode after episode until one long dreary stretch of drudgery near the end when Krull details a trip through a science museum in Lisbon. However, his tedious lapse into pedantry has a purpose. It finally separates Krull from any scintilla of Judeo/Christian moral constraint, allowing him, without conscience, to pursue his predatory ways.

Interesting how when I first read this book at age 20, I identified with Krull, cheering his every conquest and deception; but now, a generation later, I regret that Mann never finished the second part of this book in which the amoral Krull gets his comeuppance. Krull tantalizingly refers to his arrest, but alas, we never learn the details. We can only hope that Mann was going to put Krull away for a long, long time.

Krull's is a cautionary tale for today's arrogant, self-absorbed amoral pseudo-intellectual. He keeps telling us how smart he is, and how much above the common crowd he lives. Then he shows us how easily he can deceive others -- his mother, his uncle, his boss, and strangers who put their faith in him. He deceives without conscience, whether he steals jewelry or a young woman's virginity.

The particularly striking thing Krull reveals about his con man methods is his confession that he has the ability to learn just enough of any subject to deceive a person into thinking he is an expert. Krull is so taken with this ability, he even cons himself into believing he is an intellectual when he is, in fact, finally, a tedious pseudo-intellectual bore.

Finishing this novel left me wishing Mann had lived long enough to give us the second volume. I found his depiction of Krull to be an exquisite-- and hilarious-- exploration of narcissism from the narcissist's point of view. How delicious! The astounding egotism the protagnoist shows is a promise that he would have many adventures and his hints about jail time suggest that he over-stepped his bounds at least one time too many. How unfortunate for us readers that Mann died before he could complete the story. The situations at the end of this volume suggests the author got to about the halfway mark of where he wanted to go in the tale of this self-absorbed youth.

The fact that Mann was working at the end of his life was amazing enough. That he could so convincingly convey the inner life of an adolescent was, for me, proof of a talent that had dazzled me in *The Magic Mountain.* Comedy is a very difficult genre to work in effectively. The hints of the comic that were found in *Mountain* are in full effect in *Krull.* I'm eager to learn about Mann himself, given the titanic ability in evidence here.

This picaresque novel of adventure by the writer of such ponderous masterpieces as _The Magic Mountain_ is one of my favorite books.

Many readers who come to it after _Buddenbrooks_ or "Tonio Kroeger" note the parallels Mann felt existed between the artist and the confidence man. In Tonio Kroeger, the eponymous central character has an encounter in his home town where he's mistaken briefly for a con man. In the earlier story, it's an incident full of irony. In _Felix Krull_, Mann turns that theme on its head and plays it as a burlesque and shows us the artist seen through the fun-house mirror of the artist-equals-con man metaphor.

A number of the themes of Mann's earlier novels are taken up here in humorous and ironic form, e.g., the rise of the artist through the decay of a respectable family (a theme in _Buddenbrooks_) is transmogrified into Krull's lineage from a good-but-dissolute family; in consequence, their respectability is more apparent than real, and as much an illusion as Felix Krull's career of deceit.

It may be that Mann intends that Felix Krull symbolically represents decay beneath his disguise (like the actor Mueller-Rose in the story), but the reader doesn't *feel* this is true. Krull might be the healthiest character in Mann's work, full of that zest for life that so wearied the bourgeois manque' Tonio Kroeger in Italy. Felix Krull isn't a "manque'" anything; a consummate actor on the stage of life, he is simply whatever or whomever he wants to be.

The elegance and suavity of the writing, captured well by the Lindley translation, are both a pleasure to read, and an analogue for the well-oiled confidence skills of the first person narrator. It's helpful to remember that we are being told "true confessions" by a man who has made his way in life by taking people in.

Another feature of the work, not often commented on, is the element of parody. Mann wrote the book with one eye, as it were, on the great German picaresque novel by Hans von Grimmelshausen, _Simplicius Simplicissimus_. Krull's travails, talents, and successes are at times a humorous transposition of those in Grimmelshausen's famous work. (Grimmelshausen's book is worth seeking out in its own right.)

And then, there's the Goethe reference: the artful, confessional style was intended (or so Mann claimed in an interview) as a parody of Goethe's style in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_. Mann had much to say about Goethe during his career, much of it freighted with a lot of seriousness (e.g., see his essay on "Goethe and Tolstoy"), but proves here he could regard his great predecessor with more than a little irony.

Because the book was started back in 1910, and reflects on a period 20 or more years earlier, it's a historical time capsule of sorts. This might annoy some readers; for others, it grants the work a certain period charm.

Finally, we should remember that the work is incomplete. This was intended to be the first part of a full-dress fictional memoir. Had he lived longer, Mann might have written 2 more volumes. The result is that the book is a bright fragment rather than a fully realized work of art. We're left to imagine what the remainder of Felix Krull's adventures might have been like. In an interview in 1955, Mann remarked that Krull would have a matrimonial adventure, as well as a prison sojourn and a retirement in England.

A pity we can never see the completed work, and cannot know with certainty how Krull's career would develop. I, for one, am happy with what Mann was able to bequeath us. I feel almost as if he left me a legacy.

Nothing controversial; I agree with at least one thing in all reviews, and there is not one without something I disagree about.

*

1)This is a translation of the nine lines of terza rima (in Italian) from Dante's Inferno with which Mann introduces Doctor Faustus (they are left untranslated). They are from the beginning of Canto 2, as Dante is about to begin his journey into hell with his guide Virgil:

The day was now departing; the dark air
released the living beings of the earth
from work and weariness; and I myself
alone prepared to undergo the battle
both of the journeying and of the pity,
which memory, mistaking not, shall show.
O Muses, o high genius, help me now;
o memory that set down what I saw,
here shall your excellence reveal itself!
--translated by Allen Mandelbaum in The Inferno, 1980

(Mann as a rule loved his own language, and, until he got to the United States, where German translations might be hard to come by, or non-existant, continually ordered books translated into German from not only the Russian (which he probably didn't know) and other languages, but the English, Spanish, the Italian and the French as well (the latter two languages I cannot imagine him not being proficient in).

*

2)hetaera: an ancient Greek word for courtesan. Usually a foreigner, and thus unable to marry a Greek, and sometimes a slave. Expected to provide companionship as well as sex, she might well be better educated than many of the wives of her owners, and might be able to buy her own freedom--but at a very high price. I expected to see the word compared to the old fashioned Geisha (before prostitution was officially outlawed in Japan in 1954), but instead found it compared to the old Japanese word for very high class prostitute (Orian).
"Esmeraldus"--seen by me in a (GROAN) unknown book, narrated (supposedly) by an uneducated man, and used to refer--in the plural (not the word, the number of women)--to ordinary prostitutes. I don't know when it was written, but I was confident that it had not filtered down from Mann. (comments, contradictions and enlargements welcome!)
Hetaera Esmeralda: Small butterfly, with transparent wings, found in some regions of South America ("Brazilian"--but from a much less reliable source than that listed below), it flutters through dense undergrowth in preference to open spaces on its transparent wings. (Museum of Natural History, London, Zygmunt Frankel, visitor, reporting, 1997). The word is now Latin, with the addition of "Esmeralda."

*

3)The Kretzschmar lectures:
They are: "Why didn't Beethoven write a third movement for his last piano sonata, Opus 111?" "Beethoven and the Fugue," "Monster of all Quartets" (a continuation), "Music and the Eye," (with an extension on the piano)" "The Elemental in Music."

These extraordinary lectures contain some of the most gorgeous prose and the meatiest musical ideas of the entire novel (and it doesn't matter whether you read them in the original German, or either of the two English translations). Zeitblom (Zeitbloom?) says that he included all of them because of the profound effect they had on the book's protagonist. Time and again, Mann says, in his diaries and The Story of a Novel: The Genesis of Doctor Faustus, working on the middle of the book, the end of the book--anywhere!--he goes back to the Kretzschmar lectures, modifying, polishing. The reader finally begins to wonder--why doesn't he finish with them (already)? Read them, and you will see!

"fare-thee-well"
"O--thou sky of blue"
"All was--but a dream"

*

For the conversation with the devil, you really need H.T. Lowe-Porter's original translation. Woods does not reproduce the kinds, layers, and depths of the German used as well as she does (although, for the most part, Woods' translation is the better one). Admittedly, this scene is a translators nightmare, as well as joy, and Mann himself (in the novel) says (his narrator, Zeitblom, says) that he might be able to get his "biography" published in America, but feared that some of the more "German" parts would be impossibe to translate).

Thomas Mann's tragic rendering of the myth of Faust is an extraordinarily rich work of artistry and beauty. Adrian Leverkuhn is the precocious object of the narrator's affection, as he ascends into brilliance until a calculated bargain with the devil consigns his humanity to damnation. This is a brilliant allegory for Gerany's interior collapse as it degenerates into the Third Reich. There are moments in Doctor Faustus that are as strong as anything Mann has ever written, such as the remarkably detailed descriptions of 20th century musical composition. Truly an aesthetic experience of deep and complex proportions.

It is rare that it takes three months for me to finish a novel, but
this novel operates on so many levels it is difficult to read more than a few chapters before you need to stop to digest. Keeping track of the numerous secondary characters is a painstaking, but worthwhile, endeavor. Mann forms his environment with this multitude, presenting a photograph of German bourgeois life in the early 20th century.

The book warrants musicological analysis in its debt to Schoenberg, its continuation of the intimate connection between Faust and music, and its portraiture of Germanic musical existence (for starters). But even outside of musicological inquiry, the book is full of literary paths one can tread should they choose. The relationship between the book's narrator and his forsaken hero, Adrian, dallies in sentiments rarely explored between two male characters. There are some echoes of Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, except that Adrian Leverkühn's encounter with "love" comes with dire consequences.

I'd like to re-read the novel with a focus on the music only, because what resonated for me most loudly was how the book serves as a treatise on the dangers of blind nationalism. The narrator, Zeitblom, frustrates the reader with his various digressions, until you realize they are not digressions at all, but instead carefully considered allegories. His reflections about wartime Germany telescope into Adrian's own struggles. There were moments that made me stop and put the book down as I was yanked into my own reality:

"...the democracy of the West--however outdated its institutions may prove over time, however obstinately its notion of freedom resists what is new and necessary--is nonetheless essentially on the side of human progress, of the goodwill to perfect society, and is by its very nature capable of renewal, improvement, rejuvenation, of proceeding toward conditions that provide greater justice in life." (358)

I suppose I still believe this...but I note also Zeitblom's comments a couple of pages earlier regarding Germany:

"It is the demand of a regime that does not wish to grasp, that apparently does not understand even now, that it has been condemned, that it must vanish, laden witht eh curse of having made itself intolerable to the world--no, of having made us, Germany, the Reich, let me go farther and say, Germanness, everything German, intolerable to the world." (356)

This is why I read.

Readers who have no musical background will likely find themselves frustrated with some of the lengthy musical explications. I suggest skipping/skimming them. Normally I would never recommend this, but there is so much else to be had from reading this novel that it would be such a disservice to throw the myriad babies out with the musical bathwater. For the musically-inclined reader, however, the plethora of references to composers and pieces is a ready-made listening list and a chance to experience a nation's struggle with both political and aesthetic ideologies.

Before you read this book, I highly recommend you become acquainted with the history of German culture, music, art, literature and life. It is an excellent read when you have a background to fall back on. Thomas Mann draws from his life, from the culture surrounding him and the unfolding panorama of the history of Germany. From Goethe, to Kant, to Schoenberg, his book is a mosaic of influences. You cannot read it without at least having some idea about the dark times he lived in, about his homosexuality and his literary knowledge. He was the German master, but unlike Franz Kafka, he is only accessible when you have the tools to discern him.

But once you get an idea about the grandeur of his milieu, brace yourself for one of the most sublime and excellent of books. It is a Bildungsroman of a man and an epoch. Doctor Faustus is the looking glass in which the reader sees the writer himself lurking behind his creation and the era he represented. It is a tragedy but like the operas of Wagner, it will haunt you and thrill both your mind and heart. Each page has the depth of the abyss. Read this with a glass of German Riesling to get the full effect of German culture.

In Doctor Faustus, arguably his greatest book if not the greatest book ever, all of Mann's formidable gifts come together. Lying at the heart of Mann's concern is the central figure of Adrian Leverkuhn, theologian turned composer. In him all the warring impulses, all the contradictions of our age are focused. "Cold" by nature, inclined to mathematics and to "speculate the elements" as scientists do, he yet craves the freedom and unrestraint of art, specifically music, the most demonic of the arts. But the fearful complexities of modern composition and his own innate coldness form an insuperable barrier, he needs something to kindle him to his destiny as a great composer. This turns out to be the Devil, who in a memorable interview heavy with fate offers him a quick way out of his difficulties.

The book teems with unforgettable images. To pick a few at random: the extended description of Adrian's sojourn in the Italian countryside, where he meets the Devil and his fate is sealed; the wintry excursion to the Bavarian Alps; the vision of the children in the choir singing a motet to Adrian, bedecked with rubies on their fat hands while little yellow worms crawl from their nostrils down into their chests in the finest diabolic style. The density and vividness of Mann's imagery, its capacity to fill the mind and linger there, is Shakespearean.

Mann's treatment of his characters is sensitive, fine-grained, subtly ironic, and humanly engaging, with much wry humor. The amazing chapters dealing with Schwerdtfeger's vicarious wooing of Marie Godeau for Adrian, the piling up of layers of meaning and subcontext (including the latent homosexuality that runs like a provocative thread throughout Mann's writings), amount to a virtuoso performance whose incredible, sustained brilliance is rivaled only by Joseph's interview with Pharaoh in Joseph and His Brothers, also by Mann. Those readers who complain that the narrator Serenus Zeitblom is a tedious boor, that the other characters are lifeless cardboard cutouts, and that nothing ever happens, simply haven't gotten to first base with this novel.

What then is the problem? It is one that Mann himself wrestled with and which for a time led him to consider the work a failure, although he was determined to finish it. The problem is that the story cannot just unfold naturally and tell itself. A certain amount of history, of context, is needed to motivate the character of Adrian Leverkuhn; readers must be made to understand why the problems he wrestled with are not peculiar to him but arise inevitably and are universal -- in short, our problems as well. This context-building necessitates a rather long, abstract, and careful development. With his daughter Erika's help, the original manuscript was cut extensively to leave only the most essential material, but even so this development occupies the first third of the book. Anyone interested in Western history will find it fascinating, while those who aren't will be richly rewarded for persisting, for the narrative pace, at first imperceptible, does pick up and toward the end becomes irresistible, like the final running out of the sand in Adrian's hourglass.

Given that Adrian's concerns are ours as well, what are we to do about them in our own very different age? What meaning does the concluding high G on the cello in Adrian's final work, that abides like a light in the night, hold for us? When we strip away all the inanity, futility, and trash of our era, what is left? Not art, alas, for art is a finite store that has been exhausted. But there is science, which is unlimited and inexhaustible, and it is specifically the scientific aspect of Adrian's nature, his tendency to "speculate the elements", that is meaningful for us. Modern biology now offers the prospect of understanding and manipulating the essence of life itself. Will it just be more "devil's juggling", more falling down in the dust to worship the quintillions, from which Zeitblom protested nothing human can ever emerge? Can man be trusted to resist temptation in carrying out such a program? Can the devil and the humane even be separated from this vital substance? No one can tell us, yet the essence of the problem is already fully present in symbolic form in Doctor Faustus. This is the triumph of Mann's representative art, of the Artist way. As we continue on the precarious, ever-changing path of self- and world-discovery, Mann's book stands as a guidepost and a warning. This is the enduring significance of Doctor Faustus and the reason why it will always be with us for as long as we remain recognizable as a species.