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Joseph and His Brothers

Thomas Mann,

John E. Woods (Translator)

Start date: January 1, 2024

Finish date: March 31, 2024

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Feb 08, 2023 Manybooks rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: book-reviews, thomas-mann, tedious-and-dragging-writing, bible-stories, bible-adaptations, too-longwinded, too-arrogant-style-wise, tedious-and-repetitive

Well and first and foremost, I do tend to think that Thomas Mann's writing style (his choice of words and in particular his syntax, the way Mann constructs his sentences and his paragraphs) is in particular with his longer novels far too often ridiculously long winded, too much into info and in particular name dropping and generally also seemingly exaggeratedly wordy simply for the sake of being wordy (and which I have always found majorly infuriating and frustrating when I am reading and indeed Well and first and foremost, I do tend to think that Thomas Mann's writing style (his choice of words and in particular his syntax, the way Mann constructs his sentences and his paragraphs) is in particular with his longer novels far too often ridiculously long winded, too much into info and in particular name dropping and generally also seemingly exaggeratedly wordy simply for the sake of being wordy (and which I have always found majorly infuriating and frustrating when I am reading and indeed no matter what I am reading). And thus sadly, and sadly, what I have textually found and what I have received from my buddy read with my Goodreads Friend Chrissie of Thomas Mann's four mega-volume Joseph and his Brothers series (and which I was reading online on Open Library in the original German as Jospeh und seine Brüder whilst Chrissie was perusing the English translation) has been almost exclusively the latter, has been painful and not at all pleasant to read for me, as well as admittedly also once more a textual justification of why I only very rarely end up enjoying Thomas Mann stylistically when encountering his lengthier prose (that I always appreciate and often even love Mann's short stories and novellas but tend to get totally annoyed and frustrated with and by anything longer than say three hundred pages from Mann's pen, except for the very rare instances of this not being the case, such as with the absolute brilliant Lotte in Weimar and also with the family saga Buddenbrooks).

But no, I also do not automatically mind and despise wordiness in longer fiction titles as a matter of course, if this makes actual and common sense and has a decent and useful purpose, which for example I do believe has totally been the case regarding Alfred Döblin's spectacular and wonderful Berlin Alexanderplatz, as I do not really ever have an issue with Döblin's text being long (since each word of Berlin Alexanderplatz has been carefully and thoughtfully chosen by the author, by Döblin to show and describe Franz Biberkopf's life, his psyche and how he is falling apart and being metaphorically consumed). However, with Thomas Mann's longer novels (or rather with many, with the vast majority of them), yes, I definitely and certainly think that Mann is much too often actively trying to show off his verbosity to his audience, to his readers, and that indeed, this does for and to me tend to generally get pretty massively and majorly textually annoying (as well as hugely draggingly tedious) and that reading Joseph und seine Brüder most definitely and most certainly falls into the "I do not like Thomas Mann's writing and style" category for me,

And yes, with Thomas Mann's four Joseph novels, while I have not really enjoyed reading any of them (although books three and four about Joseph in Egypt are definitely more readable and also just a bit more enjoyable and less densely painful than books one and book two, than the stories of Jacob and young Joseph have been), I do think (albeit admittedly more than a bit grudgingly) that Joseph und seine Brüder as a series does provide some interesting enough stories and an intriguing take on the Old Testament stories of Jacob, Joseph and his Brothers and the time Joseph spends in Egypt, provided of course that you are willing and also able to wade through Thomas Mann's excessive descriptions, constant stylistic changes, author excursions regarding religion, philosophy, history and so on and so on. But for me personally, no, I really must admit that I have actually textually majorly resented all of this, since in my opinion, Thomas Mann's writing style for Joseph und seine Brüder is not only tedious and preachily pedantic, but that I feel the same kind of extreme author arrogance permeating the presented text and the featured stories which I so despise in his (in Mann's) Der Zauberberg, The Magic Mountain (and well, that Thomas Mann also stylistically and sometimes also thematically strongly reminds me of Umberto Eco, this is definitely not meant to be a compliment on my part by any stretch of the imagination).

Finally, I also wonder what Thomas Mann's intentions were with regard to Jospeh und seine Brüder (the actual reasons why he wrote these four novels). For honestly, if Mann wants to make the Old Testament stories of Jacob, of Joseph and his brothers approachable, interesting and palatable to and for readers not well acquainted with the Bible, in my humble opinion, Mann's extreme and exaggerated wordiness, the dragging writing and that much of the specific story details of Joseph und seine Brüder are not readily available and often appear lost under tonnes of superfluidity, lists of names and with a narrator that meanders all over the place constantly and seemingly intentionally so, no, I definitely do think that Thomas Mann's penmanship for his four Joseph novels would probably turn many people away from the Bible and the stories of the Old Testament rather than be encouraging and intriguing. I mean, I know my Old Testament, I enjoy the Old Testament as literature and Joseph und seine Brüder has mostly been mind-numbingly tedious, not at all a joyful or enlightening, gratifying reading experience, and that my two star rating for Joseph und seine Brüder is actually probably pretty generous on my part and mostly because I do albeit only really grudgingly appreciate what Thomas Mann is trying to achieve, but that Mann certainly has not done a very good job presenting the Old Testament in a manner that makes me retain interest and feel even somewhat, even remotely textually satisfied. ...more

26 likes · Like · see review

Aug 31, 2022 Chrissie rated it did not like it

Shelves: classics, hf, 2023-read, iraq, swedish-narration, travel, religion, donkeys, dnf, long

Manybooks (Gundula) and I read this together. She and I discuss it here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Our views have turned out to be quite similar.

I went into this book thinking I would like it. It supposedly gives readers a recap of Genesis. I thought learning more biblical history would be good for me, given that I know as little as I do! Informed that it dealt with Joseph, his brothers and their father’s relationships, I thought it would be interesting. Individuals’ relationships ...more

24 likes · Like · see review