Introducing Thomas Mann

Several years ago, I read several books by Mann, and I'm really excited about his being our year-long author this year, as there is at least one book (Doctor Faustus) I'd like to reread and several I'd like to read that I haven't read. Since lilisin is away, I thought I'd post some links to background info about him to get things rolling.

Here are some links for more information about Mann.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann
Nobel Prize talk: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1929/mann-speech.htm...
Nobel Prize bio: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1929/mann-bio.html

In addition to Doctor Faustus, I've read The Magic Mountain (twice), Buddenbrooks, and Joseph and His Brothers. I especially loved the last two.

I am terrible at joining in group reads, but there is a lot of Mann I'm still interested in reading, so maybe I'll be able to participate.

I've read Death in Venice and Buddenbrooks. I liked Buddenbrooks a lot. The women characters were great. Death in Venice still haunts me, though I haven't reread it since I was in college. I tried to read Magic Mountain, but it seemed rather the same as Death in Venice only much slower, which didn't appeal.

The friend who recommended Buddenbrooks said not be bother with Joseph and His Brothers, since I already knew the story. Not sure if that's useful advice or not. What's your take, rebeccanyc?

I'd like to at least finish the other stories in Death in Venice and seven other stories.

So far I've only read the H.T. Lowe-Porter translations. Are there other translations into English that should be given consideration?

I haven't read Death in Venice, although I think I saw part of the movie years ago. I tried reading The Magic Mountain three times (in my teens, 20s, and 30s), before finally reading it an liking it in my 50s. And I loved Joseph and His Brothers -- knowing the story is only the beginning. I wrote a in which I said:

"Taking the biblical stories of Jacob and Joseph as the center of the book, Mann creates wonderful characters, believable psychology, and vividly depicted natural settings and human activities and pageantry, interweaving this with investigations of the nature of history, the nature of of time, mythology and the mythological origins of modern western religions, cultural anthropology, the repetition of events and motifs, and the interconnectedness of human stories. And I'm sure I missed a lot in this summary! But although there are places where he directly explores these ideas, in most cases they emerge from the stories themselves.

And I should have mentioned translators above. All the editions I read were translated by John E. Woods. In his introduction to Joseph and His Brothers, he says that Lowe-Porter used a lot of "biblical" language and he (Woods) tried to use the varied and more down-to-earth language that Mann actually used in German. I found Woods' translations very readable, and was glad to know they are closer to the language Mann used, but I have no basis for comparison with Lowe-Porter (except that it was the Lowe-Porter translation of The Magic Mountain I never could read!). I believe Woods is in the process of translating all of Mann.

Any advice on which book to start with for someone who hasn't read any of his books?

I would start with Buddenbrooks. It is very readable and more like a nineteenth century novel than a 20th. Joseph and His Brothers is also very readable, but it is a TOME!

I read Der Zauberberg, Der Tod in Venedig und andere Erzählungen, and Lotte in Weimar all in 1993 and 1994. Some were rereads of book I had read in 1985 and 1990. I haven't read anything by Thomas Mann since 1994.

I will ask my mother to bring Joseph und seine Brüder to China when she comes to visit me by the end of January. I may re-read some of the short stories in Die Erzählungen, and have editions here of Buddenbrooks. Verfall einer Familie and Doktor Faustus & Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus.

4: I'm with rebeccanyc on Buddenbrooks, though Death in Venice (a novella) and Magic Mountain are the usual starting points.

3: That's very helpful about translators and Joseph et al. I wonder if Magic Mountain seemed so ponderous because of the translation? I'll have to try and get the newer one.

#7 For me, I think it was that I got older, but the translation may have played a role too. I would not recommend The Magic Mountain as a starting point: it turned me off Mann for at least 35 years! It was only because I loved Buddenbrooks so much that I felt I wanted to once again try to read The Magic Mountain.

Buddenbrooks sounds good to me. I'll plan on reading it in 2014.

Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain are both among my all-time favorites. I agree that Buddenbrooks is a great place to start. I also read Death in Venice and some of Mann's shorter works in German in college, but I haven't kept up with my German so I'd have to read them in translation now.

I'm planning to read Joseph and His Brothers and, time permitting, Doctor Faustus.

I will probably read Death in Venice which, amazingly, I've never read, and will also probably reread Doctor Faustus and hope that I understand more this time. I also own but haven't yet read Felix Krull.

Many of you, at-least in the US, should have no trouble finding that Anchor paperback which was required college reading in the late 1950s through the seventies. It has Death in Venice along with about half-a-dozen other stories, all of them of compelling interest. One of the many fascinating aspects of DinV is that it is the work of a rather young man, particularly striking (to me, anyway) in its Autumnal wisdom, the kind of thing most people only achieve (if at-all) after years of life-experience.
A word about Faustus. It is pretty heavy going unless you have a pretty sound background in formal music, ("classical", church, or perhaps both), also Christian theology. When Mann wrote this book, these were commonplaces among literate people in Europe and the Americas. He was assuming a level of musical sophistication in his reading public, a sophistication which, in the intervening generations has become far from commonplace. He himself was a fine amateur pianist, and his non-fiction work on Richard Wagner was written not simply from the view-point of an opera-goer or record-collector.
Back to the matter of what was a cultural commonplace, it should be noted -- though there is much debate about the degree of this contribution -- that some of the more technical passages of Faustus were written by Mann's fellow-exile, the musicologist and philosopher Theodor Adorno.
Finally, for those of you who DO read Faustus, you might pay special attention to something which you might otherwise take for granted, namely the effort to re-create, so-to-put, music which was never created in the first place. There are barns full of literary descriptions -- most of them wildly inadequate -- of "real" music. But to evoke in the inner ear music which was never heard by the outer ear is a real tour-de-force. As someone who has tried this himself with varying degrees of success, I would like to hear from readers who can think of other examples.
Vorwaerts!

I love Mann's writing. I've read The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice, and Buddenbrooks. So I think I will try for Doctor Faustus and Joseph and His Brothers.

I'm planning on reading Joseph and His Brothers as well. But I've been telling myself that for at least the last five years... It's heft is somewhat intimidating - but that's what I've got on the shelf, and I do actually want to read it!

Cross-posted from JD's thread -

Damn it all - I've just checked and I've got the Lowe-Porter translation {of Joseph and His Brothers}. Arggh! I have the Vintage Classics edition published 1999. Disappointing. I might have to replace it when the chance arises, OR just dive in to the 'Tales of Jacob' biblical language and all...

I just finished Tonio Kroger and started a spoiler thread if anyone else wants to discuss it.

Thomas Mann is a new author to me; not in terms of his name, but in the sense that I've never actually read his works. So I thought I'd ask those of you who have read his works before, if you could give your opinions on why you think the rest of us should read him. What makes him great? What aspects of his style appeals to you? What do you think us newbies should look for? I'm not looking for links to an article or to Wikipedia. I want to hear it from the mouths of our very own amazing LT members.

Also, thank you rebecca for setting up the thread and initiating the conversation. I'm back from my vacation and thus have access to a computer and internet.

I took "German Studies" in college, and picked up there that both Mann's are emblemetic of modern German thinking, culture, and letters -- and read him for those reasons. (Well, that and it was required.)

I'm not sure I'd be reading him if I hadn't come to Thomas's writings that way, but now that I have, I don't feel strongly enough that he's not. So I suppose for me it's largely about wanting to keep somewise abreast of modern German culture.

I realise I'm damning him with faint praise. I actually like what I've read and will probably keep reading him because of that, and that he's readily available in both translation and the original German.

>18 lilisin: lilisin......I have been a huge fan of Thomas Mann for several years. In some respects I think of him as the German Charles Dickens. He writes with such incredible use of language that he brings the details of setting and story to life. He manages to tell an engaging story while enabling the readers to immerse themselves in the historical and social context so that by the end the readers' lives are enriched on many levels. Themes play out on the individual, interpersonal, and social levels, and are the themes I love to read about.....meaning of life, love, family, death, socio-historical eras.

#18 I am huge fan too, although it took me years to become one, as I struggled with The Magic Mountain in my teens, 20s, and 30s, before finally reading it all and loving it in my 50s. What got me into it was reading Buddenbrooks, a very different kind of novel, which truly does tell the story of a family and society in decline. What makes it so extraordinary, aside from Mann's story-telling ability, characterization, and psychological insight, is that Mann wrote meaningfully and realistically about characters decades older than himself, as he was only 26 when it was first published. It is extremely readable.

Of the other books by Mann I've read, I would put the mammoth Joseph and His Brothers in the same readability category. As I said in my review, "Taking the biblical stories of Jacob and Joseph as the center of the book, Mann creates wonderful characters, believable psychology, and vividly depicted natural settings and human activities and pageantry, interweaving this with investigations of the nature of history, the nature of of time, mythology and the mythological origins of modern western religions, cultural anthropology, the repetition of events and motifs, and the interconnectedness of human stories."

I found The Magic Mountain different in that it is much more a novel of ideas and philosophy, and therefore was harder to read, although Mann still creates interesting characters and paints a vivid picture of their environment, both psychological and real.

Finally, I was mystified by a lot of Doctor Faustus, which is why I want to read it again.! Like The Magic Mountain, it is a novel of ideas -- I just wish I understood them better!

I cannot urge everyone strongly enough, if you are reading Mann in English translation, to read the newer John Woods translations not the old Lowe-Porter translations, for the reasons I explained in #3.

I am looking forward to reading other works by Mann that I haven't yet read.

I read a lot of Mann in college - in English. No way would I tackle the Magic Mountain again, but I would like to reread Dr Faustus and Joseph and his Brothers again, in German this time. One of my favourites then was The Holy Sinner. This is a retelling of a medieval epic. It is quite weird, but is one of his shorter books.

I don't think you can dismiss Joseph by saying that you know the story. Mann takes over 1300 pages in the single volume printing for a story that covers 14 chapters in Genesis. He must have added something. As teenager I enjoyed it. Not sure what I will think now.

Disclosure: I'm only a lurker on this thread, but I wonder why no-one has mentioned Königliche Hoheit, Felix Krull or Lotte in Weimar yet? They're not quite as daunting as the Magic Mountain or Joseph.

23: I haven't mentioned them because I haven't read them.

Why read Mann? I wouldn't have gone back to him after reading Death in Venice in college if it hadn't been for the Auden-Isherwood connection. They were the next generation of writers to try and deal with alternative sexualities. They were Germanophiles, obviously liked Mann, and Mann obviously like them. I wanted to read more of him to see if I could see what they might have liked.

Then I read Buddenbrooks, which I just loved, and thought that maybe I'd missed something in the other Mann I'd attempted. So here I am, trying again. I have to echo the person who above who talked about sense of place. I didn't really enjoy Tonio Kroger, but I don't think I'll ever forget the Danish boarding house.

Thank you for the warning. Iʻll stay away from Faust. But I want to say: Tell us about The Magic Mountain. I read it a long time ago. In the English translation, his style or his viewpoint and the philosophical way of the subject, death, moved . . . with a compelling rhythm. I donʻt know how to say it. It was an experience. When I compared parts of the English translation to the German original --well, one sentence, sort of in the middle of the book, went on over a page long, but did end safely (my German is not great -- it was an experience: curiosity grappled by rueful doubt), that is, surprisingly understandable! Still, itʻs fearsome. I might try to look for that interminable, wonderful, confidence-shattering sentence. But it could be good for oratorical training. ... Imagine Faust centre stage. ( I shudder. ) Give me the Magic Mountain, instead. Even Death, in Mannʻs hands, is alluring . . .

On The Holy Sinner (13)

Thatʻs one of my favorites, too, Marthajeanne. In fact,
maybe the only one of those
that Iʻve , as they say "tackled", which I could even
call a favorite. "Medieval" it certainly is, but not based on an epic -- more on the little that is known of politco-religious history of its era.
I think the German title, Der Erwahlte" means "The Chosen" or "The
Elected". The crudely paradoxical English title was probably the publisherʻs idea.
Some of the German dialogue was in Northern dialect, and was translated by
the translator, a German woman, Lowe-Porter,* into a mish-mash of
English or U. S. substandard speeches.

Projected reads: Doktor Faustus by T. Mann and his brother Heinrichʻs Henry IV.

*Thanks to this thread, I
finally remembered her name. I donʻt own any titles by Mann.

Holy Sinner is based on Gregorius. I wrote a paper about it at the time.

So glad I found this group since one of my goals for 2014 is to read 4 of his books. I have already read Buddenbrooks a couple of years ago and The Magic Mountain at the beginning of this year. I am planning on reading Joseph and His Brothers, Death in Venice and Doctor Faustus. Buddenbrooks was very readable and the Magic Mountain gave me alot to think about in terms of death and knowing your going to die soon. I wouldnt say Mann is a favorite author of mine but will have to read a couple more to say one way or the other.

Thanks everyone for replying to my question about what makes Mann a must-read. I decided to wait for my reply as, shortly after you guys replied, I finished my first Mann, Death in Venice, accompanied by two more stories. I decided to wait to see if I felt what you guys were trying to tell me but overall, despite my wait, all I found was myself forgetting what the stories were even about. Unfortunately, I just was not intrigued by either the plot or the writing and am certainly not motivated to read more by Mann.

Well, although I haven't read Death in Venice, I would encourage you not to give up on Mann altogether even if it was a disappointing one to start with!

If I'm simply indifferent to the particular book, I usually try to give the author another chance. I figure reading two books form an author gives you a better idea of their work than just reading the one, and plus, reading another of their works might help you even understand the previous work better as you get used to their writing. I'm actually doing that right now with Dostoevsky. I read his Crime and Punishment many years ago and was a bit indifferent and not understanding why such the accolade for a work that seemed very straightforward. Now I'm about a third of my way through The Idiot which I'm enjoying more but am still deliberating over Dostoevsky. I tend to not find myself as engaged with the Russians, but at least I'm trying again.

However, even so, it might be a while before I choose to read the second Mann work.

My recollection is that Mann's short stories are very different to his longer works.

I have run into the problem on Joseph that the editions I found had 8 or 9 point type (at best) and that I just can't cope with it.

I wonder if I can find an e-book. (German, not Kindle) Doesn't look like.

Here is a link to the German e-file for the short story "Tristan" that I read.

Here are files for other works by Mann in German. The other short story I read doesn't seem to be in here but maybe the title is different in German so I can't be too sure.

I had checked Gutenberg. I want Joseph. Picky, I guess.

>34 MarthaJeanne:, thanks to the Disney rat, Thomas Mann's works are still under copyright and will continue to be so until 2026.

Mickey Mann, the son no one likes to talk about.

34 - Not picky at all!

35 - My Google-ing skills are off today as I couldn't find any mention of a Mickey Mann or copyright issues.

But I did just now realize that Mann was a Nobel Prize winner. Somehow I missed that.

>37 lilisin: If Disney had not intervened, Thomas Mann would have entered public domain 50 years after his death (2006). The extension of twenty years (life + 70) keeps Buddenbrooks, published in 1901, locked up for more than a century.

But Gutenberg does have Buddenbrooks (in German).

>39 MarthaJeanne: Because of the US clause of anything before 1923 is public domain. Corporations are hard at work to revoke already granted public domain status and according to the principles of the treaty of Berne, one could actually make a case of revoking the Buddenbrooks public domain status in the US. It would make little commercial sense (how many Americans read it in German) and would generate a lot of ill will/awareness, so the sleeping dog is left in peace. A lot of more recent works that had already entered public domain had their public domain status revoked.

It is a crazy copyright world. See also the recent article in the New Yorker about a fair use case of a photograph in art.