296. The Magic Mountain

The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
1927
Around 720 pages

It's been quite awhile since my last post. Blame the Pittsburgh Public Library system, which was slow in supplying my greedy hands with this enormous tome. I was able to significantly expedite the system by ordering from our Overlord Masters (Amazon.com). Suddenly, the library couldn't wait to hand over their copy. Suspicious, to say the least.

In the decade before World War I, Hans Costorp decides to visit his cousin, who is staying in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. Most of the patients have been diagnosed with tuberculosis. In the early 1900s, the only treatment just seems to be lying down outside and taking your temperature enough to add mercury poisoning to your list of ailments. Hans finds it easy to slip into this strange world, which seems to exist outside of space and time.

I fully expected to have to slog my way through this one. I have never clicked with Thomas Mann before, as he is a little too Humbert Humbert-y in his writing. But I actually really enjoyed this. True, the action is very slow. But it's consciously done. Our protagonist is marveling at how little story time has actually passed even though we are already 200 pages in. I loved the chapters that delved into the perennial and fugacious nature of time, particularly in an isolated setting.

And then there's the brilliance of having each character being deeply symbolic of the archetypes of the time. Hans Corp is the waffling and somewhat naive member of the bourgeoisie without truly feeling at home with that world. He's complemented by his cousin Joachim, who has a much more dutiful nature and is determined to become well enough to enlist. There are plenty of other memorable characters as well, with the elderly patient Settembrini providing the best humanistic commentary. He's often at odds with his intellectual nemesis, Naptha, a Jesuit revolutionary.

It's an exhausting work, but it's richly rewarding to unpack all the allegorical significance of each piece of the story.  A must read if you are interested in this period of European history.

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

Was inspired by his experience visiting his wife at a sanatorium in Switzerland for several months.

The progress on the novel was interrupted by World War I. After the War, Mann revamped the earlier work to include post-War ideas and more political commentary.

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