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/lit/ - Literature

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6311211 No.6311211 [Reply] [Original]

Anyone read The Magic Mountain? What did you think? I've never read Mann before and this may be my first.

>> No.6311230

I've actually just started it. I'm 50 pages in and enjoying it immensely.

So far it has a unique vibe and is a very cozy read.

>> No.6311234

I want to pick this up soon. Watching thread.

>> No.6311275

>>6311211
I gave up after 450 pages. I still wonder what happened to Hans Castorp, but the fucking Italian and the Jesuit was a bit too much for me at the time.

>> No.6311277
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6311277

>>6311230
>isolated community out in the snowy mountains

That is what drew me to it, seems very cozy

>> No.6312170

Good book. What I learned will stay with me for a long time.

Took me several weeks to get through it all. Spent a whole day on several pages of untranslated French dialogue. Paid off.

I love Death in Venice very much, but The Magic Mountain is something else.

>> No.6312351

Fantastic book, left me wanting more at the end.

>>6311277
It's grade A certified cozy.

>> No.6312358

one of my faves

>> No.6312412

>>6311211
Mann was an hack.

>> No.6312526

I read a translation last winter break. It's extremely well-written, and I still remember many individual scenes and passages because of their beauty and intelligence. The actual plot of the novel is inconsequential when compared to the psychological details hidden inside the environment, the characters, and the conversations they hold with one another. It's fascinating just to watch people think and speak in this book.

Can anybody recommend me another novel which manipulates the reader's perception of time as well as this one? I was on another planet while reading the last two-hundred pages or so.

>> No.6312558

>>6311277
The funny thing is is that comfy guy image is almost exactly described in Magic Mountain. There are a few scenes where he describes sitting out on a porch in the cold alpine air being 'artfully' wrapped in a thick camel hair blanket.

It will really change the way you think about heath, the mind, nature and history.

>> No.6312566

>>6311211
im srsly in love with that clawdia bitch

>> No.6312599

Mann is the best storyteller writer I've read: Magic Mountain, Joseph, Doctor Faustus, Buddenbrooks, everything detail is polished and assembled so meticulously it makes one's eyes shine.

>> No.6312620

What's the best translation?

>> No.6312647

I find Mann's style to be plodding and garrulous. His images prove to be nothing but cliches (a more ambitious sentence often turning out to be an accumulation of several cliches), and his humor remindful of that of Max & Moritz. I moreover find Mann's psychology artificial and his characters made to develop so as to fit the author's teleological purpose.

>> No.6312653

>>6312620
John E Woods.

>>6312526
> another novel which manipulates the reader's perception of time as well as this one?

In Search of Lost Time

>> No.6312668

I wasnt sure if the ideas in that book were supposed to be like satirical of a 23 year old's clever thoughts or serious. If satire why did he tell the same joke over and over thank you.

>> No.6312719

>>6312412
kek nice contrarian 'opinion' :^)

>> No.6313549

I read the Magic Mountain on a trip to Finland last summer, and have since read it twice more. Although my perception of the novel may have been influenced by my surroundings (I stayed in a hotel which was physically very similar to the Berghof) I can say that it's a superb novel. Mann's novel is about the comfiest book I've ever read- it feels like densely spaced gardens, snowy nights, skiing, and being wrapped up in a blanket beside a fire whilst listening to a local band play somewhere in the distance. Moreover, the voice of the character Settembrini has some of the best prose ever written in any language.

>> No.6313761

>>6311211

Favorite novel, the Settembrini/Naphta dialogues are still poignant political allegorizations and Castorp's inner world I think is the most adept literary depiction of the phenomenon where Mann I think perhaps trumps even Joyce.

>> No.6313921

What's the reccomended >translation?