'the magic mountain'...

let's put this one in the pantheon, general literature chatters...just an enormous work...true greatness...beautiful prose...a hefty intellectual masterpiece, general literature chatters...

time, life, death, reason, sensuality, irrationality...mann takes on the great questions and answers of humanity and exposes them all to his critical thought and big brain...

brilliant...

leave room on your literary mount rushmore for this book, general literature chatters...put it in the pantheon...

savor the prose...marvel at the brilliance...understand that this is an epic, masterwork general chatters...

ROAR!

I have a brand new hardback copy of Everyman edition (tr John E Woods) sitting next to me for last couple of weeks. This mountain has to be climbed. Been planning to read it since 1994 when I read Walker Percy like a fanatic and found out about Mann as one of the major influences along with Soren Kierkegaard. Now that I have bought a copy, I must read it but so many books are piled up around me that really, really need to be read. Maybe after Issa Valley which I will definitely start after finishing The Master and Margarita that I am reading these days.

It's a stupendous novel! It required hark work from me, and I won't say it was thoroughly satisfying, but for its breadth of scope and ambition and delicate characterisation, Thomas Mann created a masterpiece!

It's a wonderful masterpiece, with so many facets. Take the "how do you write about new technology in a novel" thread I've just responded to. Mann shows you exactly how to do it when Castorp encounters a phonograph. I now love my CD player all the more...

I read the whole thing and slightly feel like I wasted my time (except at the closing chapters). I guess that was the point though.

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Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow

I have a brand new hardback copy of Everyman edition (tr John E Woods) sitting next to me for last couple of weeks. This mountain has to be climbed. Been planning to read it since 1994 when I read Walker Percy like a fanatic and found out about Mann as one of the major influences along with Soren Kierkegaard. Now that I have bought a copy, I must read it but so many books are piled up around me that really, really need to be read. Maybe after Issa Valley which I will definitely start after finishing The Master and Margarita that I am reading these days.

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Bulgakov and Mann....exquisite taste
The Magic Mountain chained me to the couch. I have to read it again someday.
...and again. The End is -imho- a bit dissapointing. It hurt me somehow being pulled out of that magic world into the cold reality of the 1st World War. Too sudden for me.

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Originally Posted by crusoe

...and again. The End is -imho- a bit dissapointing. It hurt me somehow being pulled out of that magic world into the cold reality of the 1st World War. Too sudden for me.

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That's how the start of WWI felt, though: a lightning bolt that came out of a blue sky and that made everything people knew different.

Society lost its naïvety, to some extent.

That's what the Magic Mountain was supposed to portray.

I should really read it, but I don't have the courage (I have had it in a great German hardback version on my shelf for about te years, I think... :blush:)

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

That's how the start of WWI felt, though: a lightning bolt that came out of a blue sky and that made everything people knew different.

Society lost its naïvety, to some extent.

That's what the Magic Mountain was supposed to portray.

I should really read it, but I don't have the courage (I have had it in a great German hardback version on my shelf for about te years, I think... :blush:)

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I read up to page 218 of my German paperback before it was overtaken by events and put aside. I have just dug it out and reading the opening description of Hans Castorp's journey from Hamburg to Davos in Switzerland shows what makes a great writer. My copy has 767 pp but although I feel compelled to read it from the beginning, there isn't a lot of time these days for novels that need to be read on different levels due to their complexity.

Finally started reading it yesterday. I am scared of it because if I gave up, I'd lose my confidence as a reader but it has to be read. I love my life and it is great to be alive when you have access to such greatness so easily.

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Originally Posted by Emil Miller

...My copy has 767 pp but although I feel compelled to read it from the beginning, ...

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My old German p'back edition is 2 volumes. I never got thru it in school, but I got the audiobook to read along.

There is a wonderful essay by Michael Harrington in his "The Accidental Century" (1965) about Mann & his agony in writing Mountain & Faustus, called "Images of Disorder": seems Mann began Mountain B4 WWI & intended for it to be a comic play; & very short. I admit I was shocked (seldom happens when reading) by the faceoff betw. Naphta & Settembrini.

I think the most amazing literary feat of The Magic Mountain is the "pencil echo" incident. I was just stunned at how clever that was. So too the colonialist magnate's suicide device was just so perfect. All of its components were made from materials extracted from European colonies in Africa, South America and Asia. It was also hilarious when the old lady at Hans' brother's funeral wanted to ask the musicians play Beethoven's Eroica but instead requested "Erotica". The part about the patients trying to square the circle was kinda lost on me, but the novel's general theme of the doomed haute bourgeioisie was both fun and sad. It is a very cool book and I wish I still had my copy of it

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Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow

Finally started reading it yesterday. I am scared of it because if I gave up, I'd lose my confidence as a reader but it has to be read. I love my life and it is great to be alive when you have access to such greatness so easily.

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Relax, that Book doesn't make you an individual reader. No Book does.
Being afraid of giving up or losing confidence as a reader are false
reasons to read this work. You don't like it after 50 pages ?...toss it.
Time's too precious to waste it on books "one HAS to read...":chillpill:

And here I am thinking it was something about the magic boat.
I have already made a start on this and nothing about a mountain however.

The main character, Hans Castorp (?), is going to a sanatorium in the Alps (Davos?). That's the magic mountain. It is magic, because everyone there seems to be totally blivious to what is going on in the world (as society was pre-WWI).

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

The main character, Hans Castorp (?), is going to a sanatorium in the Alps (Davos?). That's the magic mountain. It is magic, because everyone there seems to be totally blivious to what is going on in the world (as society was pre-WWI).

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Kiki I was reading your French signature and just made me realise the word
fin sounds exactly the same as the word faim ,which means hunger in French.
So la fin/the end and la faim/hunger. They both sound exactly the same.
I was wondering if it is a play on word since there are son many FIN in this line.
One point are you sure it 'le fin du fin' with a LE? because fin is feminine.
Sorry I do not mean to derail the thread.

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Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow

Finally started reading it yesterday. I am scared of it because if I gave up, I'd lose my confidence as a reader but it has to be read. I love my life and it is great to be alive when you have access to such greatness so easily.

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I think you should get through it all right - it's no more difficult than War & Peace and a lot easier than Proust. I was also wary of its reputation, but it's not that difficult, unless I missed the higher levels completely. In any case, I still have confidence as a reader, in fact it restored my confidence after (another!) bad session with Joyce.

Can you *really* lose confidence as a reader? There's always something you can read. I can't face later Joyce or the Old Testament, but I'm still reading Dickens and Conrad with confidence.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I think you should get through it all right - it's no more difficult than War & Peace and a lot easier than Proust. I was also wary of its reputation, but it's not that difficult, unless I missed the higher levels completely. In any case, I still have confidence as a reader, in fact it restored my confidence after (another!) bad session with Joyce.

Can you *really* lose confidence as a reader? There's always something you can read. I can't face later Joyce or the Old Testament, but I'm still reading Dickens and Conrad with confidence.

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I am the slowest reader imaginable. I have read quite a lot but it has always been a labour of love instead of pure enjoyment like it is for most readers. These days I heavily rely on audiobooks. With a full time job and the family, reading has become a rare luxury whereas my audiobooks always accompany me on my daily walks (1 hour)and drive to and from work (1 hour) plus at least one more hour that I manage to extract out of my busy life. Reading a physical book is something else, what with my busy life and an already slow reading speed exacerbated by a deteriorating eyesight.

I have read 100 pages of the Mountain. It is not boring at all, in fact it is lovely. So far the dominant metaphor is 'the silent sister' or a thermometer without any markers which only the physicians can read by placing it against a scale. This is the metaphor for time in its purity, 'the locus of pure possibilities', the pure being against which one can measure the authenticity of his or her being. A lot of Kierkegaard and Heidegger's 'modes of being' in play here. Hans Castrop is looking at life in its purity. He has all the time to read life and slowly understand it after making some mistakes and carrying out several misreadings (He thinks of a teacher as a seamstress, a writer as an organ grinder) He is innocent but thoughtful and is facing time in its purity, making an entrance to a contemplative life.

Finished reading The Magic Mountain this morning after spending whole night on the last 100 pages. Can't keep my eyes open now and will come back for more thoughts on this book but suffice it to say that reading it is hard work but at the end of it, it was well worth it. It gives you that unique feeling of having lived a whole eventful life while reading it that only very great literature can evoke.

BUCKLE UP!

mynheer peeperkorn, general literature chatters...that's really all the doc needs to type...what a character!

ROAR!

I haven't read any of Thomas Mann's books but I have read Colm Toibin's recent book of essays 'New ways to kill your mother' and the best essay concerned the colorful Mann family, you can read it here http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n21/colm-to...th-all-of-them