Review: The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann

I have wanted to read this book for a long time, and decided to take the plunge on discovering this new translation by John E Woods. This is a monster of a book - at 854 closely typeset pages, it is going to take a long time to read: in my case it too me the best part of a month. One of the main themes of this books is the experience of “time”. The patients at the mountain sanatorium initially arrive for what they think is going to be stay of a few weeks, but inevitably they end up staying on for months and years, and even return for further “treatment” when they have tried to return to normal life below in “flatland”.

I read this book while I also was going through a period of waiting and I found that it complemented my own mood, giving me a bizarre feeling of empathy with the strange collection of characters in Mann’s novel.

My opinion on finishing is that if you like lengthy, meandering novel, with little "action" the it will be a tremendously rewarding book.  However, its still going to be a difficult read at times and you may find that some of the dense philosophical dialogue will need to be skim-read if you are not going to get bogged down in it.

There are many think I liked about The Magic Mountain:

• A unique setting and situation - the patients at a Swiss Sanatorium in the 7 years preceding the First World War.
• The closed world Mann creates with its obsessions and rivalries, its artificial manners and routines.This is a unique fictitious society, but one that is entirely credible in view of the situation its inhabitants find themselves in.
• The way it so perfectly captures the state of mind of the patients, their adaptation to their illness and the way they have found a community that accepts them as they are
• The creation of a timeless world where months merge into one another and years pass without notice;
  
• The way the sanatorium is a microcosm of Europe in the early part of the 20th century, with all the national conflicts in the wider world being played out in this intense community of tuberculosis sufferers.
  
• The perfect descriptions of obsessive states of mind that can be developed in such situations, imaginary love affairs, supernatural occurrences, intense antagonisms on the one hand and alliances on the other.

On the downside, the characters in the novel are incredibly verbose. When they speak, they ramble on for pages, and I found myself picturing the other people in the conversations standing politely waiting for the speaker to finish before they launch off into their own equally dense replies. However, this is all part of Mann’s creation of “timelessness”, and if you want to read this book in a hurry you’re going to miss the point.

The translation is modern and natural and while I do not read German, I suspect that the spirit of the author comes through the pages.

I am pleased to have read this and feel quite a sense of achievement. My only regret is that I felt the ending is a bit hurried (remarkable for this book!), and is not entirely satisfactory. However Magic Mountain is undoubtedly a pillar of 20th century literature and should not be missed - if you have the time to read it.