/lit/ - Literature

>>16949489
The big Mann.

I'm reliably sure that that is the only English publication you'll be able to find in a single binding so, you might as well just go with it.

>>16746797
It's good to have a favorite, bro

>>16729967
How do you feel about hands?

>>16697536
JAHB > Buddenbrooks > Magic Mountain > Doctor Faustus
>disclaimer
I literally know nothing about music so my judgment on Faustus isn't in any way fair. It just seems to me that without some kind of education in music or musical theory, too much of it just goes over the head.

Can not stop will not stop

>>15209558
I'm glad I don't go completely unnoticed

>>15209554
All I can say is that JAHB and Buddenbrooks are my #1 and 2, but that may have been according to me going into them completely unassuming, whereas MM is so talked about that it just left me underwhelmed, and is kind of tied-for-third with Doctor Faustus (I need to read them again to have a more finalized opinion I think). I just feel that, on reading them back-to-back, JAHB tackled most (if not all) of the themes of MM in a better fashion, but that could even be a purely aesthetic affair for me.

*blocks your path*

>>14940361
Welp OP checking in again. Just left off reading today on page 139, I'm definitely enjoying the book a lot. Despite a minor linguistic anachronistic inconsistency here or there, I find the book to be very engaging. The epistolary style allows for a great juxtaposition of character profiles and motivations that I wouldn't say is otherwise prevalent even in the most psychologically explorative authors, and it does wonders for the pacing of narrative. The "time skips" (epistles dates thirty years apart side-by-side) aren't as jarring as I was immediately concerned with upon beginning the book. Overall very interesting, and I should read more Williams in the future.

>>14946053
Don't worry about not knowing the narrative, Mann is an apex-level story-teller who always does in incredible job of taking the reader by the hand and guiding them through the story set-piece by set-piece, furnishing it with the perfect amount of expatiation to deliver a clear picture. I didn't know the story as well myself before reading it but after reading it (twice) I wish there were any authors alive now who would or even could deliver novelistic adaptations of all of the most important Biblical stories as Mann does here. The amount of character, context, and psychological coloring he adds to the story that is otherwise not present in the original stories fleshes them out in such a degree that it really feels as if you knew the characters, were true friends with them, yet makes it especially harder to finish the book after a 1500-page, 50-year-long journey, and you have to bid final farewell to those seemingly lifelong friends. The hardest part of the book, imo, is the 40 page introduction where Mann endeavors to set the stage with regards to the context of the ideas of individuality vs tribal custom, the nature of the gods of their neighbors, and that in relation to the nature of the God of Abraham, the reconciliation of ideas, and other like philosophies that nowadays people may not give account for but was absolutely a consideration and an integral part of life for the people of back then. And I only say it's hard because you may open the book expecting the story to begin, and you receive a few choice lines of dialogue, but then you get unexpectedly hit with a (perfectly necessary) lore dump to set the historical stage before the story really starts unfolding. It's my favorite book of all time.

>>14828253
Is that my guy? I like the floral couch

Thomas Mann is my favorite gay author

Do you have any favorite writers who are of sexually enlightened denominations? Who are they? Thomas Mann is my favorite gay writer