Ben Walker’s Reviews > Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family > Status Update
Ben Walker
is on page 640 of 731
The Frau Consul’s illness is upsetting to read as I feel I would act and feel the same as she does: angry at her illness and desperate to get better, unwilling to believe she is actually deteriorating. It reminds me of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in the sense that it feels like someone dying before their time and they feel this injustice. The way she is pushing away her family too and talking only to the doctors
— Jan 06, 2026 05:37PM
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Ben Walker
is on page 493 of 731
Love Thomas’ thoughts on success and age and the actual thing being less exciting than the buildup - ‘When it is finished the pleasure is already gone[…] When one gets one’s wish too late, or works too hard for it, it comes already weighted with all sorts of small vexatious drawbacks - with all the dust of reality upon it, that one did not reckon with in fancy’
— Jan 04, 2026 01:36PM
Ben Walker
is on page 170 of 731
I love this quote, in a letter Consul Buddenbrook to Tony : ‘We are not born for that which, with our short-sighted vision, we reckon to be our own small personal happiness. We are not free, separate, and independ entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way.’
— Dec 28, 2025 08:47AM
