John's review
The Black Swan by Thomas Mann
They say on the back cover that Black Swan is a kind of retelling of Death in Venice from the perspective of a heterosexual woman going through menopause. It is superficially: older person desires younger object of affection. But the writing is very different, almost purposefully clunky at times (only to give way to a strange kind of rushed elegance in the concluding pages). And the concerns seem different, too. The themes are less about sacrifice and beauty and more about the clash of systems of knowing the world: subjectivity/objectivity, emotionalism/ intellectualism, the nature/art/science nexus. Of course, the limits and pains of desire are beautifully present, but they work toward a very different total sensation. Think the limits of knowledge, not apocalypse.
