Buddenbrooks (1901)
Bra-evffin’-oh, young Mann — I’m pretty sure this breaks the world record for precocious achievement of towering literary artistry. Published in 1901 when dude was like 26 years old. Must’ve taken a couple years to write. Can’t imagine a current undergrad publishing something like this in a few years. But I didn’t actually read Mann’s text — Mann comes to me filtered through John E. Woods’s sensibility and super-steady, elastic, attentive prose style. The duo is as good as it gets.
Of the four “major” Mann novels (plus the famous novella about the chicken hawk who dyes his hair, which I read 10 years ago translated by someone other than Woods or Michael Henry Heim — we should really all write to Woods and ask him to translate the “stories of three decades”), I’d rank this ahead of neck-and-neck third and fourth place finishers Doctor Faustus and The Magic Mountain, but behind the monumental achievement of Joseph and His Brothers, the importance/impact of which deepens in my mind now that a year or so has passed since I read it.
I love the thematic overlap among these novels. In Buddenbrooks, there’s the sort of transgenerational family saga he returns to thirty years later in Joseph and His Bros, specializing in sibling conflict; Hanno and his mah’s musical obsession echoes Doctor Faustus in advance — the super-descriptive pages toward the very end relaying young Johann’s improvisation on piano pulled out the prose stops, suggesting the confounded turbulence of youth, including in Hanno’s case the suggestion of a desire to get with his cool friend Kai (I’m sure Mann’s novels have launched hundreds of dissertations exploring his portraits of restrained sexuality); there’s illness as in The Magic Mountain, particularly Christian’s case. But generally I was surprised how immersive this was, how quickly I entered the world of the story and lived with this middle-late 1880s generation. I expected something far more stodgy and comparatively amateur (like proto-Mann), I think, and so was pleased to move through this and find him writing at the highest level from the get-go — it’s not a “soap opera” as some have said, but Tony’s kiss with the aspiring young doctor at the beach as a teen and the subsequent betrothal to the ridiculous obsequious Bendix Grunlich with sideburns dusted in the same gold powder they use on almonds around Xmas really got me into it — the conflict between love and familial duty, the sort of restrictions that in the West have gone extinct for the good of society but the detriment of our literature.
Loved the repeated image of the waves “raucously” crashing on the shore, their “ineluctable” succession suggestive of the passage of time, generations that emerge from the previous and give way to the next — loved Thomas’s evening of mystical insight after reading some philosophy (its Eastern overtones reminded me of Schopenhauer) and his totally realistic determination to change his life and then after a few days return to his entirely societally constrained ways.
Loved the conflict between Thomas the rational conservative duty-bound for the family’s sake to stand firmly in the past and Christian the globe-trotting liberated gadabout who tells a good story and cares not about convention with both feet planted in the future.
Loved the conflict between the old ways and the emerging new (exemplified by the organ teacher’s initial exasperated disdain for Wagner, followed by his understanding and appreciation). In the same ballpark but not quite playing the same socio-historical game as Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March — unlike other Mann novels that have an eye out (often maybe semi-excessively explicitly in Magic Mt. and Dr F.) for the political situations of their time, this one seems more completely focused on its characters and their world.
Loved how Mann handled Tony’s every utterance with characteristic affectionate “gentle irony” — loved how Mann never condescends to characters he knows are questionable, how he stands back and presents it with at most a suggestion of judgment.
Loved the patient, thorough, consistently reinforced characterizations (Christian’s roving eyes and trouble swallowing and story about Johnny Thunderstorm; Thomas’s mustaches waxed and curled to extend beyond his either cheek).
Loved the minor characters, particularly the early iteration of Gosch, whose first name I won’t dare try to spell, awed by Gerda’s beauty, with his hair combed forward over his brow.
Loved how Gerda is like one of those mysterious statuesque women who glide from the shadows of ruined Gothic novel estates. Only Clara seemed undercharacterized and only once or twice did I feel a little confused about a plot point.
Loved how there’s so much life in here, all of it lived and “real” without a trace of post-modern or post-realist “reality hunger” techniques — it’s about as straight-up conventional pre-Joyce steady third-person narration as could be, a proper novel uber alles, the shoulders-of-giants Faulkner will stand upon when he conceives of the Compson family fallen on hard times (thanks to this review by GR friend Jonfaith that mentions this parallel).
Makes me want to read more 19th century lit like Dickens, Austen, Eliot. Anyway, a great novel, totally ambitious, controlled, and affective in its portrayal of a family’s decline thanks mostly to the natural progression of innate individual sensibilities making their way through life — ends on a really pessimistic note, something along the lines of “life will crush us all” — but overall its presentation of life’s deep dark richness and warmth is somehow optimistic, or at least suggests that our brief experience of however many days we’re allotted is absolutely worth it.
The Magic Mountain (1926)
In 1997, in Jamaica Plain, Boston, ~4 am, mid-June, after a college friend’s band that was blowing up at the time played downstairs at the Middle East and everyone afterwards came back to our place, I remember a coolish girl on our porch saying to me something like “Oh, you like to read? I bet you like boring shit like The Magic Mountain.” I don’t remember my response but since then whenever I’ve thought of this book I’ve flashed to that scene and her assumption that only pretentious little fuckers read books like this. Now, if I time-traveled back to Boston that night (the sun was just barely up, actually — early summer dawn comes around 4 am) I’d change her mind about me and The Magic Mountain with enthusiastic description of how the book was boring at times, sure, totally intentionally boring at times, I’d say, but shit it’s most certainly not. Sure, it’s so slow at first it seems like a chore, but I think in fact it’s also a mountainous testament to the importance of writerly/readerly patience, more than it’s a “magical” read.
It didn’t get going for me until 330 freaking pages in (706 total). Turns out Mann ain’t Musil (The Man Without Qualities Vol. 1: A Sort of Introduction and Pseudo Reality Prevails by Robert Musil is different in tone, particularly, and for me was more enjoyable/superior throughout, more open and humorous, and somehow also seemed much less dense) — he’s more like a superintellectual Stendhal or, at his best, matches the vivid prose and encompassing scope of Tolstoy. Formally steady pre-modernist approach: no real structural or extended language-y experimentation (other than a 17-page essay on the connection between cellular structure and galaxies). Content-wise, every page seems infused with intellectual talk — it’s explicitly hyper-thematic, a novel of ideas in which the major conflicts are theoretical, a novel that climaxes with a confounding blizzard of argument between opposing intellectuals (“Operationes Spirtuales,” p 432-460) followed by a sublime chapter (“Snow,” p 460-489) in which the main dude Hans sets out for some solo skiing and gets lost in an actual blizzard of wind-driven snow that gives way to abstractions and hallucinations, like how conflicting theories about Progress or Spirit or the necessity of terror or humaneness are manifested in reality — first, escalating into real physical conflict between the two intellectual adversaries (the humanist Settembrini and the protofascist Naphta) and then later on real physical conflict among nations driven to war by ideas: “What? Ideas, simply because they were rigorous, led inexorably to bestial deeds, to a settlement by physical struggle?”
Overall, on a meaningless/arbitrary reading-experience ratings scale of one to five stars, I’d award three stars for maybe 600 total pages of this and nine stars for another scattered 106 pages, mostly during three parts: 1) the Mardi Gras bit (“Danse Macabre”) in which italicized English indicates French is spoken, 2) the aforementioned chapter called “Snow” and much of the chapter before it that introduces Naphta’s horrific backstory (note: freaking Naphta doesn’t appear until page 367 — try getting away with that these days, writer friends — also, GR reviews mentioning a certain Herr Naphta helped me make it through the first 300+ pages since it was clear that a major character was yet to appear), and 3) the riveting final 20 pages or so (really gets going on page 686 – won’t give things away).
All in all, things seem intentionally shaped like an arduous ascent in itself. It’s a novel that knows it’s arduous, trying to induce irregular, elastic experiences of time in readers similiar to those of the characters (time is one of the novel’s major themes; its elaboration/presentation here kicks the crap outta — ahem, ahem — semi-recent Pulitzer winners also concerned with time). It’s a novel that tries to induce a confounded sense in readers, too, erring on the side of a sort of highly managed confusion intermixed with occasional passages of extreme clarity (eg, at one point there’s a description of moments when the sides of mountains all around can be seen through temporary openings in the clouds).
It’s structured like an upwardly undulating slope that ends sort of in open air. The language is always accessible but it’s rarely propelled by a narrative engine running on high-viscosity plot. For the most part, the plot involves questions like: Will Hans get sick? Will Hans stay long? Will Hans get the girl he likes? Will Settembrini or Naptha win the struggle for Hans’ burgeoning intellectual soul? Will Hans get sicker and die and or freakin’ leave this jawn, healthy or not? It’s sort of like Paradise Lost, where their sickness (moist spots) and their actual/theoretical removal from the flatlands is their innocence, and Hans over the course of his time on the mountain must awake from his stuporous dream-life where he plays king while expertly wrapped in blankets and waxes about the stars and weighs various philosophies including one involving the supremacy of emotions over the intellect (imagined Pepperkorn in the film played by none other than Don Quixote).
Any demerits when rating my reading experience seemed related to my restlessness not always dealing with the novel’s requirements for audacious readerly patience, not to mention its somewhat underdrawn minor characters, the semi-hokey thing about Hans’s unrequited love for a semi-Asiatic pretty boy in grade school he revisits with an alluring lady with similarly slanty eyes and pale skin. Not really a book with many favorable female characters other than one protoliberated object of Hans’ lust known for slamming doors.
In general, felt like a month-long vacation somewhere I often wanted to leave that nevertheless offered dramatic experiences and vistas and insight. Now I’m glad to be home — I really look forward to reading a few quicker, easier, shorter books in a row — but also I feel like the effort was rewarded, especially in the last twenty pages.
I’d recommend the experience of this book to anyone with ample patience or, better yet, anyone interested in trying to slowly but surely overcome their readerly ADHD; everyone else, make sure to read the chapter called “Snow,” just under thirty of the finest/most vivid pages I can remember reading in my life here in the flatlands, pages I’m sure to read many more times. Anyway, a major mess-with-me-not weapon to wield against those who argue against the presence of ideas in fiction. Highly recommended to pretentious little fuckers everywhere, of any age over 30 (if younger, I’d wait to read it).
(A note on names — Naptha’s name seems to relate to naphtha: “Naphtha normally refers to a number of flammable liquid mixtures of hydrocarbons . . . It is a broad term covering among the lightest and most volatile fractions of the liquid hydrocarbons in petroleum. Naphtha is a colorless to reddish-brown volatile aromatic liquid, very similar to gasoline.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naphtha)
Doctor Faustus (1947)
Got up before dawn one morning to finish the last two chapters with coffee, knew I wouldn’t be able to read the final 17 pages the previous night — didn’t really want to put the book down over the last few reading days as it started to take off toward its finale thanks to way more dramatization than in, well, most of it. Like all Mann I’ve read it requires and it rewards patience. Like in The Magic Mountain, if you make it through the first 250–300 slow, dense pages, things take off at a pretty good upwards clip, plus the long opening semi-slog becomes a super-strong foundation on which Mr. Mann builds his dramatic and thematic pinnacles. I’m glad I read this after Stefan Zweig’s Holderlin, Kleist, and Nietzsche: The Struggle with the Daemon, which presents three real case studies of melancholic genius/madness in Germanic artists — Adrian fits the bill. I streamed F.M. Murnau’s 1926 silent film version of “Faust” earlier in the year — and I really only remember a few images from it: a dark cloud enveloping a city that’s also Satan’s wing, the ending image of the Christ-like embodiment of Love (“Liebe”). (I’ve never made it through more than a few pages of Goethe’s “Faust,” deeming it maybe untranslatable.)
In Mann’s version, no archangel swoops in to rescue the damned. A divine little boy makes a stand toward the end but not for long, thanks to Adrian’s pact, which is sort of the point of the novel’s end — after Nazi horrorshow, the mass destruction and murder but also the eternal damnation in the narrator’s eyes of all things German (the land, the people, the language, the culture), redemption/hope for humanity won’t come easy. Only after everything is destroyed, including Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” which Adrian’s “The Lamentations of Dr. Faustus” reverses, do we have a chance.
I found the narrator (the POV/approach) pretty problematic through most (not all) of the novel. I was all like why’s Mann mussing his story with this mask? Why not just tell the story of the damned musical genius and parallel it with WWII hell and otherwise get outta the way of its awesomeness? Temporally, Mann probably needed the musical overthrow of polyphony to precede Nazi overthrow of humanity, since it wouldn’t have made historical sense if they occurred simultaneously? Maybe Mann also wanted to formally disrupt the story the way Adrian uses dissonance? Regardless, it’s hard to believe that the narrator isn’t Mann himself. When Zeitblom says oh how badly I’m writing, I think something like oh how badly Mann is trying to express his story through this narrator who of course shouldn’t write as well as Thomas Mann but then, well, every once in a while takes on these jags of straight-up towering literary artistry.
Four point five stars for my reading experience rating since I can’t shake the sense I had through the first 250 pages that such a lengthy development wasn’t totally necessary, that these pages could have been reduced and integrated after Adrian’s pact with Satan, although of course that would’ve been a sensationalist way to start the novel. It helps I guess that we have young Adrian’s secret, almost ashamed discovery of the harmonium, the image of his arrogant laughter, the characterizing repetition of that gesture of a sort of absence as he turns away with a slight smile. There’s also the foundation of the relationship the narrator has with Adrian, the boyhood chumminess/love complete with use of the informal familiar tense, and then the loss of that and the narrator’s jealousy for the friendship, most likely also of the flesh, per Adrian’s confession at the end, between Adrian and the flirty violinist. As in a lot of Mann, there’s suggested homosexuality — this time between Adrian and the violinist. There’s also maybe the suggestion that Adrian contracted syphilis from “touching” the girl with the flat-nose/mermaid/Esmeralda/muse that leads to migraines and madness?
One of the most memorable scenes is when the virtuoso violinist sits in with a little chamber orchestra in a room of a hotel with a glass floor, wows everyone, and then insists on skiing behind the horse-drawn sleigh. He’s clearly doomed at that moment — a superhuman figure, who like little Echo the golden boy, is doomed.
Loved the two teachers early on — the typical proto-Nazi German and the American stutterer who conveys his passion for music to Adrian.
The music elements weren’t as pronounced as I thought they’d be — I couldn’t quite follow all of it but I got the gist for the most part. At one time I pulled out my guitar to confirm that the notes written out for the refrain that acknowledges Adrian’s muse sound like the devil’s tritone, which we all know from “Black Sabbath”.
Loved the few pages where Adrian relays what it’s like to journey underwater in a diving bell, passages that extrapolate out to discussion of the infinite cosmos — reminded me of Hans lost in the snow in “The Magic Mountain” and Joseph in the well in Joseph and His Brothers, still by far my fave of the Mann I’ve read. Mann excels when he places a sensitive young dude in potentially tragic solitary confinement. In this one, Adrian’s confinement is all-encompassing and intellectual rather than physical.
In general, after a slow start thanks mostly to long essayistic stretches, the story takes off, addled by cliffhangers and some melodrama, sure, but it’s all saved by the heft of the pacts Germany and Adrian have made with evil. Really an amazingly ambitious artistic achievement — worth re-reading though I doubt I will anytime soon — 4.5 stars for now although I’ll maybe knock it up to five over time as I remember the strong finish/overall sense of it and everything else falls away.
Joseph & His Brothers (1933–1943)
A six-star masterpiece of authority, erudition, execution, insight, wisdom, relevance, characterization, and epic adventure. Move over, The Magic Mountain — this one deserves your reputation and readership. Despite 1492 dense “Everyman’s Library” pages, this one is much more engaging, moving, thematically hefty, and its incorporation of ancient history, mythology, and DETAIL more often boggles than numbs the mind.
There’s an older translation with more biblical language, but this one by Woods flows like Tolstoy’s take on a bit of the Old Testament. It’s Mann, though — you can tell by the gentle irony, massive doses of description, ridiculous depth of knowledge, and of course the old man’s authorial crush on his pretty boy proto-ubermensch, proto-Christ, super-Jew protagonist, Joseph. The story as a whole suggests the story of Jesus, as well as the story of Osiris, but what I found more interesting was the subtle, intentionally ambiguous critique of Nazi Germany — at times Joseph is the arrogant Aryan superman, at times his brothers are the brownshirts, at times Egypt is the aggressive expansionist empire. Toward the end, the story suggests post-Depression-era New Deal programs and Soviet collectivism.
Like all great lit, this one explicitly champions ambiguity. Joseph is thrown into a well by his brothers — a scene that rivals (maybe even surpasses) the one in The Magic Mountain when Hans is lost in the snow while skiing — and sold into slavery, but it’s all ultimately part of a playful “holy game” God plays on the brothers.
Beyond exceptional social, historical, and theological thematic stuff, Mann’s storytelling skills are ridiculous. He’s long-winded at times, sure. He says “in short” and then rips off a meaty summarizing paragraph. But he’s so in control and does such an extraordinary job of orientating the reader I at least never felt lost, never wondered who was talking (I’m looking at you, Proust), always felt right there in the desert with soft-spoken Rueben with his column legs, cross-eyed Leah, Rachel with the beautiful eyes, little Benjamin, on and on. So many characters, all of them with their reinforced distinguishing traits over several hundred pages. Very few women, most of them either idealized beautiful mother lovers or sultry and deceitful witch temptresses, but there are two dwarves in this. One even gets cudgeled by his master as things almost veer toward comedy. Especially toward the end, it’s good clean fun when the narrator more often directly addresses the reader, but all along you feel Mann leading you through the story, in absolute control of its every aspect, including giving it air and life.
Considering that this extrapolates a few opaque lines in the bible into 1492 pages written over 16 years coinciding with the rise/fall of the Third Reich — considering that this monumental novel about some of the earliest Jews was written while Mann’s country exterminated six million of their mid-20th century vintage and tried to take over the world — this might be a prime example of high-lit heroic insurgency. At times it reads like he’s raising a huge middle finger and directing it at his tragically misguided homeland. But it’s more than that. There’s wisdom, instruction, even a few moments of magic, and hope that it’s all part of God’s plan, even the worldwide horror of WWII.
Anyway, towering literary artistry to the nth degree. Considering how long it takes to read this one, the $40 hardback is totally worth it — plus it comes with one of those snazzy built-in bookmark ribbons. Easily one of the top reading experiences of my life.
*
To support the kind publishers who have taken a chance on my writing, please acquire a copy of Chaotic Good, Neutral Evil ))), and/or JRZDVLZ (all from Sagging Meniscus). Or my translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador. Or Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters From the Eyeshot Outbox directly from the publisher. Or even a copy of The Shimmering Go-Between directly from me (the publisher is kaput).