Geoff’s review of The Magic Mountain > Likes and Comments

This is a Geoff-book, for sure. There's no higher praise. :)

Oh wow wonderful to hear Mann had me in mind when he wrote it! I love that.

I actually became interested in this after seeing a documentary that briefly talked about this in relation to Kubrick's The Shining. Though I know I should be interested in it for any number of other reasons...

This is one of my favourite books, but so is Buddenbrooks. Based on your previous reviews and comments I have to agree with Kris that this is something you will probably enjoy

These are wonderful words of encouragement! I am very much looking forward to my ascent of Mount Magick!

Oh my god oh my god oh my god. You're going to read it and then review it and then my heart will give out in sheer happiness. I guarantee it.

I do not wish to stop your heart, Aubrey, you have such a bright future ahead of you! So I will read this in secret and write nothing on it. I will mask myself in silence for your sake.

Nooooo. You will make me very sad. And some types of sadness are worse than (metaphorical) death.

Okay then be prepared for an inundation of self-important verbose updates every three pages while I read! And then a 7,000 word review referencing Marx, Badiou, Nietzsche, Himmler, Goethe, Hölderlin, Joyce, Sterne, The Rosenbergs, circular time, Brazil (the country and the movie), Schiller, Fichte, thermal dynamics, inverse eroticism, Auschwitz, Cowschwitz, Cowpies, alpine cowbells, "the Aryan concept of blue"

Oops I hit "comment" by accident but was planning on going on and on. Lucky you my finger slipped.

Geoff wrote: "Okay then be prepared for an inundation of self-important verbose updates every three pages while I read! And then a 7,000 word review referencing Marx, Badiou, Nietzsche, Himmler, Goethe, Hölderl..."

Ha ha! I will hold you to this.

Let me be another voice in the chorus here. I am already looking forward to your updates and review.

Geoff, phew! My lungs are giving out 'cos I ran so fast through your time piece! Brilliant - and I don't say that lightly...

Fionnuala wrote: "Geoff, phew! My lungs are giving out 'cos I ran so fast through your time piece! Brilliant - and I don't say that lightly..."

Slow down Fi! We've got all the time in the world... and thank you!

You captured time in your review. Now you are the master of it and may shell it out where and when you like. Breathtaking review Geoff.

Oh man ! What a review , Geoff ! Splendid !

Geoff wrote: "Slow down Fi! We've got all the time in the world....."

Yes, you're right, Geoff, there is time, and so I took some this morning, a moment in the day when it seems as if there is all the time in the world for everything, when the sand has only begun to fill the bottom bell, and the moon still lingers in the early morning sky, and so, over a long slow breakfast, I reread your meditation on the magic mountain.
Hans as indecisive as Hamlet? Perfect, and all the other Shakespeare echoes make sense too, the notion of time out of joint.
Hans living outside Time as the awful countdown was happening, that occurred to me too, and I saw strong parallels with Proust which I was reading at the same time, but of course his narrator chose the opposite path.
Your metaphor of grammaphone needles and clock hands work very well too.
But the most powerful aspect of this piece is just how well it knits together; it is a real pleasure to read. I can say that with perfect honesty, having returned to read it a second time.

Having recently read Hamlet and now bumping into this review makes me ponder how on earth did I miss Time when I climbed the mountain with Hans. I realize now the aim wasn't hiking but lingering, suspended in Time, and allowing its waves to rock us in concentric reflection. A superb piece of writing Geoff, thank you.

@Geoff: Well, when I read this book in 2013, there were so many put down reviews that I ended up using mine to defend this book. So, my question is what were the most appealing aspects of this book to you & what were the least (if any)?

Stephen wrote: "You captured time in your review. Now you are the master of it..."

Ha! The master of time! More like victim of it, slave to it... but I do appreciate the kind words Stephen, thank you.

Agnieszka wrote: "Oh man ! What a review , Geoff ! Splendid !"

Merci beaucoup!

Fionnuala wrote: "all the other Shakespeare echoes..."

Dolors wrote: "Having recently read Hamlet..."

So yes, Shakespeare. The allusions in any book, the reflections, the mirrors or intentional invocation of other works, only go so far to making that work work. Ulysses would be nothing if it were only a modern retelling of The Odyssey, etc. you get it... but, the parallels and explicit references give a great depth to Mann's book- the ones I sited above, but also, Castorp was raised by his uncle after his father's sudden death, Castorp in many ways went against this uncle, and Dolors, having read Hamlet recently, we must recall the bloodshed with which Hamlet concluded, and the inevitable conclusion of this book, the SPOILER many ghosts, the return of Joachim's spirit before Hans' decisive taking of action- and to extend the allusion further- what presided over the coming of WWI? The murder of a would-be King! There is just so much to do with Hamlet here...

But what is the music often played on Sundays and that drifts from the little town in the valley to Hans Castorp's slumbering ears? A Midsummer Night's Dream! The deep winters, the snow, and his jealousy/fascination over Clavdia Chauchat, reminds me so much of Shakespeare's great, and underrated meditation on jealousy, The Winter's Tale, which, if you remember, has a striking, abrupt passage of 16 years in the middle of it! A play about the slippery nature of passing time as well... there's so much...

...and, something I wanted to add to my review above but ended up not doing- in the Mardi Gras chapter of TMM, when Hans finally confronts Clavdia, what game are the drunken revelers playing? They are closing their eyes and attempting to draw pigs. And this game is repeated later. Circe's island! Where Odysseus's men are transformed into swine and held captive!

And what of the extended meditation on Carmen?...

Like I said, the allusions do not make the book great, the greatness comes from how Mann extends all of these into his dreamy allegory of sleepwalking into the disasters of the 20th century. How all of these signifiers of Western culture sort of comment on or lead to this great cataclysm... but they function in the way things like this do in encyclopedic novels- to give resonances, recognitions, vibrations, to set the mind on many tracks, vibrating on many levels at once...

Mala wrote: " So, my question is what were the most appealing aspects of this book to you & what were the least (if any)?"

Hi Mala! I think what appealed to me immediately, and kept me engaged throughout (and sorry if this is not very profound) is Mann's prose style, which I called "patient realism", where he piles detail on detail until a kind of like dense realism is created, but you realize as you read through his dense writing, at a certain point, something is off, something has gone wrong or has become or was strange in the scene, and suddenly the "realism" begins to become more dream-like, and you get a queasy notion of sleepwalking through the book- Mann weaves trances- just as you would have to do in a book of this nature. Of course, I also adore the sheer breadth of Mann's intellect. It truly is a novel of ideas, a kind of summation of the course of Western European thought- that culminates of course in baffling disaster- but, this is one of those novels that seemingly contains the universe. So I guess what appeals most to me is its patience, its density, its depth, its intelligence and oh yes its humor! It is almost always funny! It might be unendurable if it didn't have its copious dark humor. So subtly funny all throughout. Much of its humor is irony too, a kind of very detached mocking or satire, but without a center- Mann does not choose sides here, the "we" of the narration kind of looks on smirkingly at our ill, sleepwalking, stupored guests...

also, John E. Woods, ladies and gentlemen!! (rounds of applause)

So I didn't find much that didn't appeal to me. It might be said the intellectualizing, the philosophizing, in the dialog is unrealistic, that "people don't talk like that" - but, I simply don't care about that. I care about prose style, and Mann is clearly a master.

So, the 5 stars, the "favorites"- I didn't find much not to like about this book. I even like that it took me forever to read- almost two months- that seems to make sense with a book like this...

Oh and Proust- hmm. I'll have to think on that, because despite both novels having Time as their central concern, the protagonists are quite different, and Mann was clearly making an allegory here, Proust was not. There are undeniable similarities, no doubt, but they are coming at the issue from different angles of attack, so to speak...

...not to mention that Hans Castorp is simply a much less likable character than Proust's narrator. My relationship to each, as a reader, was so different. While I was almost always sympathetic to Marcel, "on his side", Hans did not compel me to sympathy very often, or until his character began to change after "Snow" and when he became master of the gramophone. Those two chapters endeared me to Hans, but overall Hans was an unsympathetic character- an interesting one- but not very lovable, except in his naive curiosity maybe...

Geoff wrote: "Oh and Proust- hmm. I'll have to think on that, because despite both novels having Time as their central concern, the protagonists are quite different, and Mann was clearly making an allegory here,..."

I built my review entirely on the large area of common ground I found between the two, Geoff, but that only underlines how much there is to say about Magic Mountain.
And yes, to John E Woods. A fine translator.

Fi, yes! Just read your review- spot on, extremely observant and well argued- thank you!

I see you found the book as inspiring as I did! Very fine review. :)

Danke Lotz! Yes, a fantastic book, ripe for rereading...

Geoff wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "all the other Shakespeare echoes..."

Dolors wrote: "Having recently read Hamlet..."

So yes, Shakespeare. The allusions in any book, the reflections, the mirrors or intentional ..."

Many thanks for elaborating on the countless artistic references Geoff. Your comparison to Shakespeare is absolutely dead on, but after further reflection, I realize it was precisely the theatrical atmosphere and the archetypical (allegorical) characters that didn't quite work out for me. I wonder whether this novel of ideas would have worked better as a play, at least for me. Some chapters, like "Snow” or “Fullness of Harmony” were proof of Mann's sheer virtuosity in connecting the artistic with the human spirit, but my attention wandered in Naptha's long, digressing reveries which I considered hollow rhetoric, and I ended up losing interest.
That this is a timeless masterpiece is unquestionable, but truth is that I responded much more to your review than to the book itself. Yup, I am guilty! :/

Geoff, this review is a real work of penmanship! Hail Geoff the Penman.

That gramophone is just haunting, and those scandalous X-ray negatives!

I have enjoyed reading your updates, watching your constant climb, without losing time, and now at the summit your review is delivered.

Certainly a review not out of joint, with a deeper x-ray image of time as it is encapsulated, if it is, in this novel.

Wonderful...

@ Dolors - you say it might have worked better as a play, but recall the last words in the book : "Finis Opera". So Mann himself maybe considered it something theatrical too? Again, thanks for the kind words about the review...

@ Joshua - merci! With excremental ink on my own foolscap flesh I pen my reviews!!

@ Kal - thank you, lovely words from you will always make my day...

Geoff wrote: "@ Dolors - you say it might have worked better as a play, but recall the last words in the book : "Finis Opera". So Mann himself maybe considered it something theatrical too? Again, thanks for t..."

Geoff, an elegant checkmate as I have ever seen...

:)

great review. Can't wait to read this one.

Which of Mann's have you read? Joe and his Bros, right? Any others?

Joseph and His Brothers, Buddenbrooks, and Death in Venice. Although I need to re-read the latter.

Want to read all his works eventually.

Yeah after TMM, I'm sold. I'm doing Faustus next and then Joseph.

Megha wrote: "Let me be another voice in the chorus here. I am already looking forward to your updates and review."

And it really was worth the wait. Splendid review, Geoff.