The Magic Mountain in Classics Without All the Class

Apr 22, 2017 Marina rated it really liked it

Almos 5 months to finish this. I did not know what I was in for when I started.
I enjoyed some aspects of the story, the concepts, the dialogs between the main character and Settembrini (character who representes perfectly every intelectual I have met in my 26 years, they can be incredibly dense if you wanna know my opinion).
But I do think the author was trying to convey such broud scope of human conflicts that the by the end of the book the reader is overwhelmed and confused.
I will have to rea ...more

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Nov 12, 2015 Leo Walsh rated it it was amazing

It sounds cliché, but “they don't write novels like this anymore.” That is the over-arching impression that ran through my mind the entire time that I read Thomas Mann's masterpiece “The Magic Mountain,” possibly the quintessential continental European Modernist novel of ideas. There is no action that a contemporary would reader expect. Unlike writers circa 2015, who are force-fed the order to “illustrate ideas with embodied action, not explanations” in MFA classes and writers workshops, Mann's It sounds cliché, but “they don't write novels like this anymore.” That is the over-arching impression that ran through my mind the entire time that I read Thomas Mann's masterpiece “The Magic Mountain,” possibly the quintessential continental European Modernist novel of ideas. There is no action that a contemporary would reader expect. Unlike writers circa 2015, who are force-fed the order to “illustrate ideas with embodied action, not explanations” in MFA classes and writers workshops, Mann's characters do little but talk and think.

So, needless to say, “Mountain” is slow. There is no science fiction subplot that run rife in contemporary classics like “Infinite Jest” or “Cloud Atlas.” Instead, it's just people talking. And talking about elevated ideas instead of grounded, every-day things.

But once you accept Mann's style, which reminds me of a better-read and less-Buddhist Hesse, it is an excellent read about spiritual development.

The novel's plot is simple. Recent university graduate Hans Castorp visits a cousin in a tuberculosis sanitarium in the Alps, becomes ill himself, and ends up an inmate. There, Castorp meets a variety of people and learns that much of what he learned at university is bunk. He comes in a positivist, reading tome upon tomes of rational scientific literature to pass his time. But gradually, the greater world beckons – though nothing much really happens. Instead, Castorp learns about the life of the soul.

Castorp's tutor in erotic love is the ravishing Russian Clavdia. And he is faced with death, both of his fellow inmates and of his cousin, who eventually leaves the sanitarium but is killed in World War I. And then he meets the vibrant, irrational yet magnetic Nietzschean Peeperkorn, who teaches through his actions the secret of being truly alive in a dynamic, Dionysian way… far removed from Castorp's detached, Apollonian mode of living.

After Peeperkorn dies, Castorp becomes increasingly engaged in a more mature intellectual life. He seeks out and becomes an active participant in the disputes of two priests with opposing views of human destiny and religion. The measured humanist Settembrini argues for the gradual improvement of humankind through use of science and reason to beat back the darkness of unknowing. The lapsed priest, Naphta, on the other hand is a raging Marxist, with often violent Hegelian views of the world. In his view, humankind must throw off its bonds to free itself. Changes to him are violent and sudden -- like quantum leaps.

Castorp, as usual, absorbs and learns. He sees both sides, and realizes there are limits to both the humanitarian and the Marxist views.

After seven years in the asylum, Castorp emerges, a whole, integral and complete human. His body mends, reflecting his psyche, and he descends from Olympian heights. But he descends into European culture that is as in-decay as Castorp's former body. WW I is in full swing, with people being treated like pawns in a pointless war.

All told, this book is brilliant, but very slow moving. I read a lot, and I read quickly. But I found that I needed to sip this book. Unlike many other notable Modernist classics – “Ulysses,” “To the Lighthouse,” “Sound and the Fury,” etc. – this book is a very slow-burn BECAUSE the characters are intellectuals who argue ideas that matter. That requires that you slow down to read and understand. While the other classics rely on stream-of-consciousness and stylistic innovation to tell a story, Mann's style is straight forward. But his ideas wind about, and weave a complex fugue. Indeed, they are center stage.

Overall, an excellent book that took me a long time to read. In fact, the only thing that put a fire under me to finish it was my goal of reading 100 books in 2015. So I stayed up late the past several nights. Five-stars… though my contempt for the passive and self-absorbed Castorp and Mann's over-reliance on Sigmund Freud for the symbolism tempted me to shave a star. But it is a classic, and I found it a captivating intellectual, though like Hesse unemotional, read.

I will read it again, and hopefully several more times before I die. Since the story it tells is quite spiritual, and I know further readings will reveal more.

Aside: Holy crap. This is my 100th book of 2015. It's New Years Eve, and I just now finished my goal. talk about "by the skin of your nose." ...more

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