It’s finally here! My LAST Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain post! Trust me, I’m glad we got here too. For a minute there, I thought about giving up. Not giving up reading it! No way! It was too good! But I did think about giving up writing to you about it. It’s just such a long book and there is a lot to talk about. Just be glad we didn’t meet in a coffee shop, or worse, a bar, to talk about it. The proprietor would have to throw us out, over caffeinated or drunk!
In the story, things have gotten weird and moved to the supernatural. Let’s just say a homemade Ouija board has been made, that kind of weird. But I absolutely love the way Thomas Mann narrates!
“Who was Ellen Brand? We had almost forgotten that our readers do not know here, so familiar to us is the name.”
This happens throughout the book, the breaking of the fourth wall and I love it. It makes the story so personal.
“By little and little his morality and his curiosity approached and overlapped…”
Been there. Done that. Right? You know it’s not right. You have your principles! But… I wonder what it’s really like… oh, what the hell?! You only live once!
“…the calling back of the dead, or the desirability of calling them back, was a ticklish matter, after all.”
Isn’t it? We want to because we miss them, but then we wonder what might happen.
“What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief at not being able to call them back as it is grief at not being able to want to do so.”
Think about it. Say you’ve lost someone you loved dearly and had the opportunity to call them back to life to talk to you. Would you want to know what they had to say about death? Would knowing make dying yourself easier? Or would the whole thing terrify you? So, you don’t call them back and now the guilt sets in.
I read these last scenes in the dark before dawn and it sent shivers down my spine. I was breathless as I turned the pages, trying not to look up at the dark windows surrounding me in my living room. It was so delicious. It reminded me of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland; the covered lamps, the round table, the bell for the spirits to ring when they arrived… so good!
And then it was over, and I sighed. One whole month of reading, with a week’s break for another book. Thirty-two hours together and now it’s over. Magic.
I thought it was over but there was a bonus! An Afterword written by Thomas Mann himself and I found a few beauties to share from there too.
He wrote about releasing the book translated into English and said, “I am relying on the healthy and sympathetic attitude of the American mind toward the personal, the anecdotal, and the intimately human.”
Americans are weird that way. We love books that give us glimpses into the intimacies of another life. This book did not disappoint on that front!
“You will have got from my book an idea of the narrowness of this charmed circle of isolation and invalidism. It is a sort of substitute existence, and it can, in a relatively short time, wholly wean a young person from actual and active life.”
I think something very similar and far more widespread is happening today. We pathologize so much of normal life, and hideaway from actually living. The widespread use of the internet has made this possible for almost everyone. The pandemic induced us to all to give it a try. We can work and learn from home, order online anything we need, and never leave our bubbles. It can be comfortable, but it isn’t healthy.
Personally, I’m only just now starting to get back into the world and it feels like everyone has forgotten how to communicate and operate in real time. I don’t fret too much though because it seems that there are a lot of people, just like me, who want to get back to real, in-person life. We just need to do it and be tolerant of each other while we get the hang of it.
“A work of art must not be a task or an effort; it must not be undertaken against one’s will. It is meant to give pleasure, to entertain and enliven. If it does not have this effect on a reader, he must put it down and turn to something else.”
This book, like a lot of things, isn’t for everyone. If you are enjoying it, keep reading and you’ll get so much out of it. If you’re not enjoying it, put it down and find something else. That’s what art is all about, finding what speaks to you.
“What he comes to understand is that one must go through the deep experience of sickness and death to arrive at a higher sanity and health; in just the same way that one must have a knowledge of sin in order to find redemption.”
I’m going to bring up parenting and homeschooling again, sorry. It’s what I know best, my most recent experience, and I’m still processing a lot of it.
One of the reasons I homeschooled my kids was because I wanted them to be out in the world, experiencing it firsthand, from a young age. We learned from books, movies, and the internet, and then went out to discover what’s out there and relate to it. We cannot hide away from the world, in specialized places and groups, and then emerge into the world fully formed, like a butterfly. We live and learn, making mistakes as we go, getting hurt and picking ourselves up again to move on.
I loved this line because it confirmed what I thought was going on throughout the story. Hans wasn’t sure how to proceed into adulthood and found a socially acceptable way to escape, at that hospital. But he also found a way to grow up and evolve, to finally leave and experience the real world, head on.
Like I said weeks ago when I started this book, I’ve had this book on my shelf for over a year and didn’t start reading it because… well… because it was SO fat! I just knew it would be old and boring and long… so long… but it wasn’t! I mean, sure, it WAS long, but it was not boring, not even a little bit. I loved every page!
I hope you liked reading it with me! What’s next? Hmm… that’s the fun part! I’m going for a non-fiction book next, The Year of Living Magically by Joan Didion.