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The Magic Mountain
New School Classics- 1915-2005
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The Magic Mountain -- Spoilers July 2022 Long Read (previously a Buddy Read)
Wow, you're good. I haven't set up folders for any of my buddy reads yet. This is going to get me motivated to organize better. I'm not planning on participating but this definitely sounds interesting.
MMG, I've linked to this thread on the schedule list, so people that are interested can come here and comment.Brina, don't worry there's plenty of time! Some of these books might win a group read yet (I'm still hoping so for The Odyssey)
Awesome! Thanks, MMG!
Pink wrote: "MMG, I've linked to this thread on the schedule list, so people that are interested can come here and comment.
Brina, don't worry there's plenty of time! Some of these books might win a group read..."
Thanks for creating the link, Pink!
Brina, don't worry there's plenty of time! Some of these books might win a group read..."
Thanks for creating the link, Pink!
Looking forward to discussing The Magic Mountain with my MM buddy readers next month. I've started in on both the LOTR and MM, just to get a head start on Oct. Way overcommitted here.
I have my copy of the book, but haven't started it yet. I'm still finishing up a few books I started at the beginning of the summer. During the summer months, I'm not able to read as much, because most of my free time is devoted to vegetable gardening (and canning and freezing), hiking, and canoeing. We have such a short summer where I live, I have to maximize my outdoors time, and milk it for all it's worth! I'm looking forward to MM, and to the discussion!
Same here, summer-wise. I was in Albany a few years back on the way to Lake Placid for a lacrosse tourney. Beautiful drive up through the Adirondacks. No wonder you spend so much time outdoors. Same applies to me here in Oregon: gotta get out and enjoy the summer before the rain starts.
Yes, the Adirondacks are beautiful, Steve! That's where we've been spending much of our free time, in fact. We also spend a lot of time in the Catskills to the south, and the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. I feel lucky to live within a short drive of so many lovely hiking opportunities. I'm glad you enjoyed your trip to Lake Placid. Some day, I'd like to visit Oregon. I have a couple of friends who've moved there, and an uncle/cousins who live in Astoria.
Looking forward to this buddy read also. I likely won't be starting until mid October though
MMG wrote: "I'd like to visit Oregon. I have a couple of friends who've moved there, and an uncle/cousins who live in Astoria."Seems you love the outdoor life, so you'd love a visit here. We've got it all: snowy peaks, forests, high desert, scenic Pacific coastline...Crater Lake. You name it. The west side of the Cascades is wet and the east side dry. The coast up around Seaside and Astoria is great for surfing and salmon fishing. You can canoe and kayak pretty much everywhere.
Sue wrote: "Looking forward to this buddy read also. I likely won't be starting until mid October though"Oct. 1 or Oct. 15...It's all good, Sue. :)
Hi, everyone! I'm starting The Magic Mountain today. I'm looking forward to our discussion. Our "official start date" is Saturday!
Hi MMG! I'm on Chapter 9. Taking lots of notes for discussion. Love this book! Also reading LOTRs for group read. Can't get any better than this: my two all-time favorite reads at the same time!
Got my copy from the Library. Hoping to start by the end of the week
Sounds good, Steve and Sue. :)
I am on for thiscurrently clearing the decks, needing to finish The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The House of the Spirits
but should get to start MM early in October...
Darren wrote: "I am on for this
currently clearing the decks, needing to finish The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The House of the Spirits
but should get to start MM early in October..."
I loved both of those books, Darren. I hope you're enjoying them. I'm glad you'll be joining the MM read.
currently clearing the decks, needing to finish The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The House of the Spirits
but should get to start MM early in October..."
I loved both of those books, Darren. I hope you're enjoying them. I'm glad you'll be joining the MM read.
Hey everyone. So I went and bought the book today which means that I will be joining you. Looking forward to it. Just fyi, I will be reading the German version as I am German and it makes sense to me. So if throughout the discussion anything is not entirely understood please lmk and I'll try my very best to describe what I mean :D
I Started! Two chapters in and liking it so far. The mountain is seeming pretty creepy and I hope that changes since I'm a lover of mountains for their power to spiritually awaken . Will it be possible to have two threads (or more even) for spoilers and no spoilers? I'd love to have 4 threads for every 200 or so pages because I have a feeling this is going to be a great book to discuss before the end.
Darren wrote: "I am on for thiscurrently clearing the decks, needing to finish The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The House of the Spirits
but should get to start MM early in October..."
I'll love to know what you think of The Unbearable Lightness of Being Darren. I want to read that so bad, but It's one of my favorite movies and I'm worried about it living up.
Sue wrote: "I Started! Two chapters in and liking it so far. The mountain is seeming pretty creepy and I hope that changes since I'm a lover of mountains for their power to spiritually awaken . Will it be poss..."The mountain is beautiful and perilous and already weaving a spell about our ordinary hero, Hans Castorp, whose two-day journey to these "extreme regions" is preparing him for an unaccustomed sense of freedom and adventure by distancing him in time and space from the flatlands below, where duty and obligation reign supreme. Note how he ignores the book he's brought along, "Ocean Steamships," as if he's already lost interest in his chosen profession and doesn't realize it. Not yet. Hans' overheated, flushed cheeks reflect the effect, not just of altitude, but of a general unconscious readiness and excitement to embrace the physical and metaphysical awakening to come, though he doesn't know anything about that yet, not consciously. In short, he's about to experience the profound mystery of what Carl Jung called "the soul as the giver of all given conditions," i.e., our lives are lived by powers within that we don't even begin to understand and these powers determine our fate. The adventure of life is to encounter these, often dangerous, powers and find a way to integrate them into our conscious lives. So, with uncertain first steps, Hans Castorp begins a process of transformation or individuation.
I'm concerned about spoilers. I'm on Chapter 5 and this is my umpteenth reading of TMM, so I'm going to be very careful about going overboard. Please let me know if I do.
Steve wrote: "Sue wrote: "I Started! Two chapters in and liking it so far. The mountain is seeming pretty creepy and I hope that changes since I'm a lover of mountains for their power to spiritually awaken . Wil..."Sounds wonderful Steve. I had a bit of this feeling but then there's also creepiness so I'm glad that this is the more dominate theme. I think I'm going to love this to death!
Sue wrote: "Sounds wonderful Steve. I had a bit of this feeling but then there's also creepiness so I'm glad that this is the more dominate theme. I think I'm going to love this to death! "
Hey Sue, I'm really glad you're enjoying TMM. As for creepiness: illness and death play a major role in the novel, but as strange as this sounds, the view from the mountain is in "sympathy" with both as fundamental features of being human. It is only from where we stand, the flatlands, that illness and death are repressed and separated from life.
Steve wrote: "Sue wrote: "Sounds wonderful Steve. I had a bit of this feeling but then there's also creepiness so I'm glad that this is the more dominate theme. I think I'm going to love this to death! "
Hey S..."
but some of these doctors sure are creepy and not very respectful of death. In fact, I haven't met a Dr. yet that I like. They all seem to be extremely unenlightened. I'm only through most of Chapter 3 but Hans already seems more enlightened than any other character. I like how he's philosophizing about time and it's clear there's more to come on that.
Sue wrote: "Steve wrote: "Sue wrote: "Sounds wonderful Steve. I had a bit of this feeling but then there's also creepiness so I'm glad that this is the more dominate theme. I think I'm going to love this to de..."I see what you mean but I don't necessarily think that Hans is more enlightened than the other characters. It is just that we get more insight into his thoughts than the other characters' thoughts. The others seem the be characterised by his perception of them. What I can agree with. however, is the fact that all the characters seem very fatigued in comparison to Hans Castrop which is probably to differentiate between his perception of a daily routine and the perception of those who have been in the sanatorium for a longer period. You're also not far from meeting a character that seems just as "enlightened" as Hans, yet brings his own manner to it. Especially when we look at the theme of time and body/soul!
As for reading thoughts so far: I'm only halfway through chapter 4 but I really enjoy it so far. It is quite different to read from anything I have read before but I knew what I signed on to here. Mann's style of writing (at least in German) is exhausting, yet not discouraging. This could also come from the fact that I am quite young and struggle with some of the words he uses.
What could be a motivating factor on my side is that I have been to Davos before on holiday and I can imagine exactly how the sanatorium and the Mountains are situated. That definitely positively contributes to my reading experience.
Sandro wrote: "Sue wrote: "Steve wrote: "Sue wrote: "Sounds wonderful Steve. I had a bit of this feeling but then there's also creepiness so I'm glad that this is the more dominate theme. I think I'm going to lov..."How cool that you've been there Sandro. I've been to the Colorado Rockies often as my family has a vacation home there and I've also been to the Italian Alps. I love mountains which is one of the reasons I wanted to read this.
I'm finding this to be a difficult read too, but I still like it because I like philosophical stuff . It's taking me a lot longer to read than most books. I feel like I should be twice as far as I am for how long I've read. Chapter 2 was a breeze as it wasn't as philosophical. I noticed that your edition has a lot more pages. Is it a mass market paperback? I'm hoping that the translation didn't cut out a lot.
Mann plays the reliable and somewhat intrusive (in a good way) narrator. Yes, he spends a lot of time in his main character's POV, but it's important to remember he's always filtering and providing a lot of narrative irony. For example: Hans takes a "you people up here" and "I am not sick at all" attitude during his first few weeks, but as you will see, his insisting he's nothing but a "visitor" turns out to be very ironic, and the doctors' comments to him give you some foreshadowing of what's coming. Mann based the novel on personal experience. In 1912, His wife, Katia, traveled to a sanatorium in Davos for treatment and he visited her up there for about a month. While there, he was examined by the resident physician who diagnosed him with a "moist spot" and prescribed a six-month cure. The sales pitch bounced right off Mann, whose critical faculty was sharper than a razor blade, but he came away with the idea for a short story, which evolved into the novel you're reading.
When he arrives at the Berghof, Hans is your typical ordinary bourgeois young man on the rise, a denizen of the flatlands with a future all laid out for him. But the atmosphere "up here" has an instant effect on him. Like a dormant flower (the air "up here" is good for curing illness, but it is also good for bringing latent illness to full flower), he opens up to an astonishing range of new ideas and ways of thinking and behaving. His musings on time are an early example. But his sudden openness makes him susceptible to both the light (Apollonian) and shadowy/dark (Dionysian) aspects of being human. Mann was heavily influenced by the philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as well as the composer Wagner.
Life on the mountain is a microcosm of Europe just before World War I.
Sandro wrote: " Mann's style of writing (at least in German) is exhausting, yet not discouraging. This could also come from the fact that I am quite young and struggle with some of the words he uses."Hey Sandro, it can be dense and exhausting in English, as well. I read that in German you really get the effect Mann was trying to achieve, i.e., making the narrative come off as a musical score (a "polyphonic novel") with leitmotifs that return over and over, etc. I think much of that gets lost in the translation. So I envy you.
Sue wrote: "Sandro wrote: "Sue wrote: "Steve wrote: "Sue wrote: "Sounds wonderful Steve. I had a bit of this feeling but then there's also creepiness so I'm glad that this is the more dominate theme. I think I..."@Sue it's a mass market edition here in Germany but it has an introduction of Mann himself in it. Don't really know why it appears to be so much longer than your edition.
@Steve Kind of like that. It's not really the motifs than are confusing but the Syntax. As you probably know in German we have really long sentences but he is the master of them all. One single sentence can be up to half a page long which is immensely long. So it's not really a matter of content of topic but of typographgy.
Sandro wrote: "One single sentence can be up to half a page long which is immensely long. So it's not really a matter of content of topic but of typographgy. "Half-page sentences! Hmmm, I don't envy you so much now. :)
Steve wrote: "Mann plays the reliable and somewhat intrusive (in a good way) narrator. Yes, he spends a lot of time in his main character's POV, but it's important to remember he's always filtering and providing..."thanks for the background info Steve.
We have half-page sentences too Steve! You probably don't realize because you're used to it. Also I don't think that bothers some people as much. It does me. I understand things better when there are more breaks including sentences and chapters. It's easier to stop and think about what you read and also to go back if you think you missed something. I'm having to go back a lot with this book. With long chapters and sentences, my ADD kicks in and I start involuntarily thinking of other things & daydreaming. I hate it, but I can't help it. I should start having a cup of Matcha before I read this!
It also takes me longer because there are terms and phrases I'm not familiar with and names I'm not sure how to pronounce in my head etc... I wish I had this on Kindle but it's not available for the easy look up factor. Like Blue Henry. Never heard of that before even though I read a book that had an American TB sanatorium in it.
Sue wrote: "I'm having to go back a lot with this book. With long chapters and sentences, my ADD kicks in and I start involuntarily thinking of other things & daydreaming."Sue, it can be a difficult read, no question about it, but it's every bit as rewarding as it is difficult -- kind of like climbing a steep mountain with the summit as your goal. I've lost count of how many times I've read it, and I still get bogged down in certain chapters and have to sit and stare out the window, groping to understand what's on the page and even, without clear understanding, why what is written resonates with me in such an amazing way. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, it's a "mighty mythic novel" that conjures all the wonder and ambiguity of one's life as a modern human being. I count going on the journey with Mann and Hans Castorp to be very close to the top literary experience of my life thus far.
Steve wrote: "Sue wrote: "I'm having to go back a lot with this book. With long chapters and sentences, my ADD kicks in and I start involuntarily thinking of other things & daydreaming."Sue, it can be a diffic..."
I think I'm going to find it worth it also. I'm already invested with a deep affinity for Hans. It feels like I have similarities in his circumstances, personality and journey so far. I won't be giving up, but it may take me all month to read it, esp since my head is in the baseball clouds right now. Go Cubs Go!
Sue wrote: "Go Cubs Go! "TMM in a month is no small accomplishment, seriously. I'm not much of a baseball fan. Football, yeah, but my Oregon Ducks suck this season. Why'd you have to go, Chip?
Sue wrote: " I won't be giving up, but it may take me all month to read it,"Thank godness that we decided to read it for two months! I wouldn't be able to read it through in one month in addition to the scheduled reads for the group! My edition of Invisible Man just arrived and it has more pages then I anticipated! Need to keep up with my reading in general...
But about TMM: I kind of feel like I know where the plot is going. Still rather intrigued by all the different personalities in this book. Especially love the relation between Hans and Mdm. Chauchat! Can't wait to read more of her and also Settembrini! :)
Sandro wrote: "Can't wait to read more of her and also Settembrini! :) ."And there are several more major characters waiting in the wings for their moment to make an appearance in the narrative.
Sandro wrote: "Sue wrote: " I won't be giving up, but it may take me all month to read it,"Thank godness that we decided to read it for two months! I wouldn't be able to read it through in one month in addition..."
I'm hoping to read it in a month because I'm done with the group reads that I'm doing. Not up for Invisible Man now, maybe some day. I do want to get to Romeo and Juliet for a buddy read too though. Still, even if I finish in a month, I'll still check back for comments
I started this about a week ago and am finding it well-written and intriguing110 pages in and Hans has just bought 2 blankets. oh yes. ;o)
slow going - not heavy going, but slow going - although the writing style is (deceptively) simple, I'm finding it very "dense" i.e. needs concentration to fully appreciate - am thinking I will do well to finish this by the end of November!
Darren wrote: "I started this about a week ago and am finding it well-written and intriguing110 pages in and Hans has just bought 2 blankets. oh yes. ;o)
slow going - not heavy going, but slow going - although t..."
Welcome aboard Darren. I'm glad you are enjoying it. I'm slowly making my way through. I'm up to chapter 5 which is 25% in my edition. Dense is a good description. In my edition there is very little white space due to long paragraphs & chapters.
just read a chapter in which Hans reminisces about having borrowed a pencil from a schoolmate when he was 13... one of the best bits of writing I've ever come across
how is that even possible with virtually nil subject matter!!?? :oO
Hey Darren... The novel is extremely well-written and filled with subtle ironies, allusions, motifs, and symbolism. You can read it, literally, a dozen times and on the twelfth reading still be gob-smacked by something you missed on the first eleven passes. Wonderful book. Mann was a very deserving Nobel Prize for Lit winner.
still only on p170have decided I need to get more disciplined, and will try to read 20-25 pages each day, which will get me finished by end Nov...
Hans has just bought (and used) a thermometer!
nearly half way through nowjust read the famous "en francais" love scene (triggered by wanting to borrow a pencil... again!) - wish my french was better, but got the general drift and was still extremely effective, to the extent that I would say it was the best "declaration of love" scene I've ever come across.
I've been unable to wait until the buddy read and finished this in September. Really appreciate all your thoughts; what should I contribute?The most moving passage for me comes closer to the end, where Mann deals with music Hans listens to. For the better part of the book, I felt remote, as if it was coming to me from a long distance, like watching a star 100 bn light years away, when it's probably extinguished already...
That might be exactly what Mann intended, though.
Darren wrote: "nearly half way through nowjust read the famous "en francais" love scene (triggered by wanting to borrow a pencil... again!) - wish my french was better, but got the general drift and was still ex..."
In the Woods translation, the scene in which Hans "kicks over the traces" to declare his love for Clavdia (and winds up returning a pencil in a scene that goes unwritten and is probably the more powerful for it) is in English.
Darren wrote: "nearly half way through nowjust read the famous "en francais" love scene (triggered by wanting to borrow a pencil... again!) - wish my french was better, but got the general drift and was still ex..."
I just read the pencil love scene. So good. I loved the way he thought of her as the person he first loved and borrowed the pencil from in grade school. It was so cool. That circular time thing, wow!
Nente wrote: "I've been unable to wait until the buddy read and finished this in September. Really appreciate all your thoughts; what should I contribute?The most moving passage for me comes closer to the end, ..."
That's a good description Nente. I feel very remote also
So where is everyone at in the book? I'm at page 458 and my edition has around 850 pages. I need to finish this by the 28th because I've already renewed it twice from the library! 40 pages a day is my goal. Normally that would be a cinch, but this book takes me so long to read and I can only do about 20 pages in a sitting before I have to switch to something easier and more fast paced.
Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)
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I'm looking forward to reading The Magic Mountain with you.