Some themes and key scenes in The Magic Mountain and three questions about Mann's novel

So many great aspects in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (1924 - previous posts said 1927, but that's the date of the Engl. translation) - the strangeness and beauty of the setting; the amazing arc of characters as we watch the protagonist (Hans) grow and mature over the course of his 7-year (!) stay at the Swiss TB sanatorium; the intellectual battle for Hans's soul between the liberal humanist (Sebbetini) and the dogmatic Jesuit (Naphta) - though who can really understand what Naphta is saying or arguing?,;the fantastic array of secondary characters including the above-mentioned plus of course Frau Chauchat, Peeperkorn, and Han's cousin, Joachim; the scary inside look at the bizarre treatment of lung infection, which at times seems like it must be a scam to keep the wealthy patrons/patients addicted to the treatment at the sanatorium; a few amazing set pieces, including the death of J., Hans's clueless skiing trip during an Alpine blizzard, his confession (in French!) of his obsession w/ the beautiful and inaccessible Frau Chauchat, the seance scene - the strangest hour of Hans's life, it's said, near the conclusion, the duel, and the list could go on. Most of all, the novel is strangely allegorical, and on multiple levels: Hans's stay in the the Berghof is a retreat from an active life is a phase that most people can recognize as part of their life or of their desires - but he changes, grows, matures, and we have to wonder, is he an "Everyman"? Is his journey through life an analog for the course of all lives, for the course of history and knowledge among nations? And what about the vantage we have in looking back on his life, not only as one taking shape in the years before the First World War, but a foreshadowing of what we now know as the horrendous course of life in his native Germany in the 20th century? With all these ideas in mind, I have three unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions. First: Did Hans ever have sex w/ Frau Chauchat? He confesses his obsession w/ her, but at the end of that passionate scene she speaks to him in the formal "vu" and tells him good-night, seeming to put him in his place. But then she reminds him to return the pencil to her (and it's her last night in the sanatorium) - is that an implied invitation to follow her to her room? (Note the sexual innuendo when she loans him the pencil; she troubles to explain to him that the pencil-led must be "screwed in" (visser) for the pencil to work. Hm. Second: Mann ends a chapter with the sudden revelation that Hans has been undergoing psychoanalysis with one of the staff physicians (who delivers to all the patients biweekly lectures on this new medical area). Why does Mann drop or lose this thread? We never see or learn anything about Hans's analysis and how this changes his behavior and self-knowledge, if at all. Finally, when late in the novel Hans sees the vision of his dead cousin Joachim during the seance, why does Hans say "Forgive me." For what? For staying in the sanatorium rather than returning the the "flat land," as his cousin did? For some unknown slight or character flaw? For making nothing - to that point - of his life?

Can Thomas Mann create a comical character?

Thomas Mann is by no means known as a “comic” writer; sure, there are a few laugh lines in The Magic Mountain (1927), but it’s 700+ pages, so a laugh here and there is inevitable, law of averages! But wait: Suddenly, about 600 pp in, this great novelist, the preeminent novelist of ideas, introduces a character who’s hysterical: Mynheer (Dutch for Mr.) Peeperkorn. This character bursts on the scene as a new guest at the Berghof sanatorium (for TB patients, primarily) and he dominates the scene from his moment of arrival: big, blustering, boystrous, out-sizing everyone in his presence through his booming voice, his extravagant expenditures, his excessive eating and drinking, his gambling, a Falstaffian giant, but a deeply flawed magnificence. As it happens, mostly because he’s half (or wholly) drunk all the time, he can never complete a thought or sometimes a sentence. He starts off each utterance w/ a grandiose pronouncement, and in short order his words fall apart and he ends up spouting nonsense or saying nothing (nothing intelligible, at least). He’s a really a Dickensian character, and who knew that Mann could or would create a character in this mode? Yet he’s by no means here for “comic relief,” that rather ridiculous concept (Who really needs to be “relieved” while reading a book or watching a show? Relieved from what?). He comes onto the stage of MM as the new sexual/romantic partner of the strange and beautiful Clavdia Chauchat – the married Russian woman on whom the protagonist, Hans, has developed a huge crush. After declaring to her his love on the eve of her temporary departure (her life is a matter of roaming from one spa or resort to the next), he eagerly awaits her return in hopes of winning her love in some manner; he’s crushed when she returns w/ this new, ridiculous, but hugely wealthy man – but we, of course, see that Hans to her is a plaything, that she could never be serious about him in any way – she’s far more experienced, and far more cruel, than anything he could imagine.

The most powerful death scene in 20th-century literature

I think it’s fair to say that Joachim’s demise, in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain (1927), is the greatest death in 29^th-century literature (Tolstoy death of Prince Andrew [right character?] in W&P is the greatest in the 19^th century). To watch this brave and stoic young man wrestle with his condition, keeping his thoughts and fears largely to himself, refusal to blame anyone include the questionable medical staff at the Hofhaus clinic, maintaining the illusion – to himself – that he might return to his post in the army, and his gradual slipping away from those around him, including his mother and his cousin Hans, is incredibly sad and probabably clinically accurate, and in that sense even palliative as his physical suffering is minimal. What reader will fail to remember this scene, or the medical director’s rebuke to the protagonist Hans cannot for some time grasp the gravity and inevitability of his cousin’s fate (the fate, ultimately, of us all)? Perhaps the drama of this scene is heightened as played against the extensive and relentless arguments of the two intellectual antagonists – the humanist Settembrini and the, I don’t even know what to call him, doctrinaire and combative Jesuit (convert from Judaism) Naphta. I suspect that no reader can follow all the nuances of their arguments, which become so intense and obscure as to be almost comedic (and how can we not be overwhelmed by Mann’s knowledge as well!) – though the stakes are of the highest. They are dueling for Hans’s soul, and in that sense for the soul of all huamnkind, in an intellectual debate that becomes physical and tragic.

Congrats to the Times magazine on the all-fiction Covid19 issue

Haven’t quite finished reading last week’s NYTimes Mag devoted to fiction about the Covid19 lock-down; the editors solicited short stories composed in the mode of Boccaccio’s Decameron, that is, to form a collection of stories that entertain and distract us during our enforced isolation. Usually, these ideas don’t come off so well in that most writers of literary fiction don’t take on-demand assignments; but this collection is better than I’d expected, in part because the editors did a great job in getting a diverse line-up of contributors, with particular attention to international literature – a great idea, in that this virus, as many have noted, knows no national boundaries. Sure, some of the stories rely too heavily on a tricky ending and some have no ending at all. But a few of them work well. The best I’ve read so far is Charles Yu’s Systems, a story or essay or poem perhaps that is made up entirely (or nearly so) or Internet search terms (e.g., Harry and meghan). Rachel Kushner’s The Girl with the Big Red Suitcase is fine as well, and much more traditional – in fact, of all these stories it hews closest to the “storytelling” frame of Boccaccio; it reads a little like a Conrad or James story, in which the narrator and the audience are established as part of the work – a fine piece, even if you may be able to see the ending before you get there. Margaret Atwood’s Impatient Griselda – in which the narrator/storyteller is a creature from another galaxy; sounds kind of trite, but Atwood does a great job creating a narrator who speaks English as if through a Google Translator app – very funny. I also liked Leila Slimani’s story, The Rock (translated from the French), a short and enigmatic piece about an author who gains some prominence when attacked for no apparent reason while delivering a speech. There’s one thing I didn’t like at all, however, and that’s the horrendous typeface that the Times used to give author’s name and title on each piece (as well as in the ToC and on the cover. Get this: The first rule of type design is, or should be, be legible.

At last, Hans speaks to Frau Chauchat, in Mann's Magic Mountain

At last, at about the midway point in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain (1927) the protagonist, Hans, gets up the courage to speak to the woman he’s admired from afar for about 6 months, a fellow “patient” at the Berghof sanatorium, Clavdia Chauchat, a beautiful, exotic married woman af about 30. Has literally blunders into a conversation w/ her by asking the nearest person – her – if he could borrow a pencil (an exchange that echoes a memory from his school days when he asked the student, a boy, on whom he’d had a crush, for the loan of a pencil, make of that what you will). They then begin their first conversation; it’s obvious that she knows he’s been staring at her for months, and she knows quite a bit about him. This is his opening, and he embarks on a long and complex declaration of love (most of this part of the novel is in French, fine if you can read French but I wonder why the Vintage edition couldn’t provide a translation for those who can’t) – gushingly romantic dwelling in a weird way on her skin, her elbows, her kneecaps, totally strange. Her reaction is what we would expect: after leading him on she pretty much says “see you later, kid” – she’s decamping the next morning. It’s obvious that if any relationship were possible it would be one in which she’d lead him around like a puppy on a leash. Over the next few chapters we’ll see how, or whether, he will recover (will his minimal disease flare up in a more dangerous manner?) from this flirtation, teasing, and, ultimately, dumping – that is, putting him back in his place (he seems completely naïve about love and sex; she is obviously experienced – and dangerous, with her Russian husband somewhere in the background).

Thoughts on the ideas in Mann's Magic Mountain

Nearing the halfway point in Thomas Mann’s monumental novel The Magic Mountain (1927), which is rightly known as one of the great “Modern” novels (20^th century) and one of the greatest novels “of ideas,” which do in fact become a major part of the plot. The plot itself is deceptively simple: 24-year-old Hans Castorp takes a 3-week vacation (before starting a new job, unpaid, as an apprentice in ship design), travels up to the TB Sanatorium, the Berghof, in Davos to spend the weeks w/ his cousin, Joachim; while on the visit, he decides to take part in the cure, which involves a lot of outdoor rest breathing the cold and fresh air and extensive eating. As he nears the end of his stay, he visits the presiding doctor, Behrens, who detects a slight abnormality in Castorp’s lung, and he in fact becomes a patient. This diagnosis of course plays into his laziness, his desultory pursuit of a career, his lack of close ties to the world below, the “flatland,” and his sexual yearning for the 30-ish Russian woman whom he worships from afar, with out ever – yet – getting up the courage to say a word to her. So why is this novel so special? First of all, the ideas that drive the narrative are complex and arresting: the associate doctor, trained in psycho-analysis (new at the time of course, esp. in the prewar setting, ca. 1910), delivers lectures suggesting that the illness all in the hospital suffer from occurs because of repressed desires, which psychotherapy, the “real” cure, can abate; and in fact, the Berghof is rife with sexual tension and expression, though Hans holds himself at a distance from that. His repressed desires are unclear even to himself, but to the reader it’s clear that his attachment to the Russian woman, Frau (yes, she’s married) Chauchat, occurs because she reminds him of a young man he’d had a crush on during his school days. That said, the whole novel feels in some ways closer to Poe and Kafka than to the other great “modernist” novelists (e.g., Proust, Joyce); Hans and his fellow “inmates” are as if imprisoned in the hospital – once you get in, it seems, there’s almost no chance of getting out alive – that Hans faces this fate w/ bizarre equanimity, as if he’s been drugged and deluded by all the excess of food and the enforced rest. Throughout all of this, Hans engages in many conversations w/ a self-described “humanist,” Settembrini, kwho recognizes that Hans – not nearly so ill as he thinks he is – is in danger of turning his back on life when he should be committed and engaged – but Hans is getting pulled deeper and deeper into the whirlpool of life at the Berghof, as if this strange place w/ its multinational clientele is representative of the world at large, which it is not. Rather, it's a perversion of the world at large, and Hans will die unless he can release himself from its seductive spell.

A rare story that encompasses an entire lifetime: A Transparent Woman

Hari Kunzru’s story in the current New Yorker, A Transparent Woman, accomplishes what few short stories do or even try to do: Telling the story of an entire lifetime, without feeling like a hasty summary or highlight reel. Kunzru – an author I know nothing about, but will look forward to reading more of his work – tells the story of a young woman living in East Germany before the fall of the wall and its way of life; it did take me a while to figure out the precise time and place, but we see pretty quickly that the young woman is deracinated, nearly homeless, working crappy jobs, trying to find some peace and means of expression in her life, and she gets drawn into (or willingly joins) a counterculture group and part of a three-woman punk-rock band (The Transparent Women) that becomes attains some success playing, first locally and then at venues around the country, at various head-banging concerts and anti-government scenes. It doesn’t take long before an agent in the Stasi begins following, then threatening her, and we watch in close-up how she is pressured to be a spy and how she is abused by the system – this may remind some of the movie The Lives of Others – and ultimately how her seeming collaboration colors and eventually ruins her life, both before and long after the reunification. I have no idea as to the authenticity of this story, but it feels credible and to his credit Kunzru focuses on his central character and her sorrowful and difficult interior life and not on the mechanisms and methods of the Stasi police. Kunzru’s one of those stories about which we think, for a moment, maybe this should be a novel – but then we realize, no it’s perfect as is.

Some of the issues in Mann's Magic Mountain

Reading for I think the 3^rd time Thomas Mann’s 192 novel, The Magic Mountain, and finding it, through the first 100 pp or so (and it’s a 700+-page novel) to be just as I remembered it, smart and engaging and mysterious, sometimes esoteric but always within reach, the classic 20^th-century “novel of ideas.” I actually recollected some of the events surprisingly well – so often I’ve gone back to a classic and it was as if I were reading the novel for the first time – but of course there’s always an extra richness to go through a novel when you have a pretty good idea of the outline of the plot and you can therefore focus your attention more on character, setting, and the ideas the the characters (and the narrator in this case) articulate. There’s also – and I see this more on the current reading – a creepiness about this novel that almost makes it a grand horror story: the 24-year-old Hans Castorp, taking what he believes will be a 3-week vacation (he’s an apprentice ship-building/design) to visit his cousin, Joachim, who is a patient at a TB sanatorium in Davos. Joachim and the 2 doctors who run the sanatorium encourage H to follow all the protocols of the patients: long resting periods on their outdoor balconies, an abundance of food (and drink), casual walks – what could be wrong w/ that? But has Hans follows the protocol, he begins to show signs of incipient disease and he battens down for a long stay. Is he just succumbing to an innate laziness and dilettantism? It’s as if he, and many of the others, are captives; there’s a weird sense that no-one gets well, that there all are doomed (as in life itself?). Plus, there are the pansexual yearnings; on arrival, Hans is seriously upset by the sounds of sex coming from the Russian couple in the adjacent room; over the course of his stay, he becomes attracted to a beautiful Russian woman patient, but in his dilatory way he can never quite approach her – but he recognizes that she reminds him of a childhood crush he’d had (he would never put it that way) on a young man in his school. The issue of Hans’s repressed homosexuality (and Mann’s?) is unspoken but omnipresent, which may be one of the reasons for Hans’s illness (bleeding profusely from the nose) and his unwillingness to return to his diurnal life.

Few other novels are as subtle and moving as Crossing to Safety

Wallace Stegner’s great novel Crossing to Safety (1987) is unusual and unexpected in so many ways. Notably, it’s one of the few works of literary fiction that I know of that is about the lifelong friendship of two adult couples. The scope of the novel is at once narrow – there really are no significant characters across the nearly 300 pages aside from the 4 in the foursome, Morgan (the narrator) and Sally Lang and their friends Sid and Charity – and wide: We see their friendship from the outset, as they meet when the two men are young professors in Madison, Wisc., and their wives are each pregnant, across a 50-year span of time to the verge of death and widowhood. The novel begins at the end – a gathering at Sid and Charity’s Vermont summer colony – and then steps back in time to the early days of their friendship. The novel has what seem like 3 “movements” – early friendship (young couples struggling to make it in academe, though notably Sid’s family is extremely wealthy, whereas the Langs are struggling), a year’s interlude together in Italy after the two men had each achieved academic tenure, and the final gathering in Vermont. But we see nothing in the interludes between these three moments; the children and other relatives are nonexistent, never see either family in a college/academic setting after the first “movement,” the friends and colleagues introduced in the Madison section of the novel disappear (until the final moments, when Morgan wonders what happened to them in the course of their lives – it’s as if he never knew them). There are a few near-tragic moments in the course of the narrative, which I won’t divulge, but Stegner handles these deftly, never for a moment pushing the narrative toward melodrama or calamity. In fact, this novel defies all expectations, as Stegner himself is well aware; in a few “postmodern” moments the narrator tells us about the work he’s composing, noting that there will be none of the expected and anticipated psycho-social dramas in a typical novel about adult couples: no infidelities, financial crises, struggles w/ children or aged parents, reversals of fortune. The tensions within the novel are twofold, and quite subtle: first, the mostly hidden rivalry and jealousy between the 2 men, as Sid feels humiliated by his lack of academic accomplishment (he does get a tenured post at Dartmouth, a clear example of the kind of academic logrolling and good-ole-boy networking prevalent then and to a degree still) in comparison w/ the more ambitious and talented Morgan (Sid doesn’t have to work at all, of course, which is part of the problem); and second, the dawning recognition that Charity, energetic, intelligent, a great entertainer, is a controlling and hard-headed woman who has made Sid’s seemingly idyllic life into a hell of misplaced ambition: She’s pushed him too far and made him feel like a failure. The novel as a whole is subtle at all times, and in the end deeply sad without being sentimental or mawkish for even a moment. Though it's narrow in scope - anything but diverse! - there are few other novels as subtle and moving this one.