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/lit/ - Literature

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5898035 No.5898035 [Reply] [Original]

opinions? best book?

>> No.5898050

I read Death in Venice and thought it was a snoozefest

>> No.5898060

>>5898035
His short stories are a bit hit and miss, with way too many people dying of broken heart. Tobias Mindernickel is one of the most disturbing things I've ever read though, in a good way.

>> No.5898064

The Magic Mountain of course. He has very ornate prose and seems to have the sort of stale Realist writing, but actually his world is really as magical as the title makes it out to be. It follows the same Faustian kind of tale like A rebours and Bouvard & Petruchet about a man delving into the fruits of knowledge to try and find a way to live. Everything is alluding to something else. Everything has multiple layers.

>> No.5898068

his german is beautiful

>> No.5898075

Magic Mountain is dense, but pretty boring too if you don't know what he alludes to with each character, dialogue, symbol, etc. Then it just becomes Settembrini vs. Naphta and a guy sitting on his balcony measuring his temperature.

I much preferred Buddenbrooks, even though that one is just him describing his own family, and you read it and you're in awe of the prose and the tight story, and then you read that he published it when he was 26 years old.

Mario and the Magician is pretty cool - Death In Venice is weird (and pretty gay too). You can read both in an afternoon.

>> No.5898084

Mann, Thomas. Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up.
Death in Venice. Asinine. To consider it a masterpiece is an absurd delusion. Poshlost. Mediocre, but anyway plausible.

>> No.5898147

Doktor Faustus had some great moments. Specially when he talks about music.

>> No.5898683

>>5898075
he was supposedly gay, but married because open homosexuality was not as accepted back then. so he lived out his fantasies in wonderful writing. poor, talented guy.

>> No.5898693
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5898693

>>5898084

>> No.5898696
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5898696

>>5898084

>> No.5898700

>>5898084
That's my exact opinion about Nabokov and "Lolita" (but Lolita isn't even plausible).

>> No.5898707

>>5898035
Doctor Faustus > Joseph And His Brothers > Buddenbrooks > Magic Mountain

>> No.5900345

>>5898035
I've read "the buddenbrooks", amazing book for an 26 yo guy, but far away from the masterpiece tier.

>> No.5900469

He was a true mann

>> No.5900487

>>5898050
yeah, I liked the allusions to Greek mythology and all but there the plot about him stalking the boy I just found uninteresting. It kinda scared me away from Mann but I still hope to read Magic Mountain some day.

>> No.5900500

>>5898693
saved

>> No.5900526
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5900526

Tomase Chan better writter