More Mann to Come (?)

I'm somewhat surprised to see that people seem to have responded rather favorably to my somewhat casually strewn thoughts on Doctor Faustus. They were even partly responsible for a very intelligent post from James Higgs over here, in which he addresses at least one conern I had about the novel:

The novel is conceived as 'a biography' of Leverkuehn written by his rather sycophantic friend, Serenus Zeitblom. As such it can examine matters that no essayist would touch. Mann's novels are, to my mind, flawed masterworks, a continuing battle to find a style capable of discussing ideas in a way that only a novelist can. One can't take a novel, strip it of its fiction and turn it into an essay without losing something essential. Any novel worth the name is an atomic unit, very probably flawed, but nonetheless indivisible.

Faustus is clearly the kind of book that requires a lot of time; that is, not only to read it through once, but to go back to it and stick with it for a while to really work out your ideas on it.

Since people seem to be interested, I'd like to do just that right here in the upcoming weeks. To say the least, these are going to be rather busy weeks for me, but to my mind if I'm ever going to revisit this book it would be right now--right after I finished reading it and an still familiar with everything my first reading has brought to mind.

Comments

[Nigel Beale]

Scott,

At the end of the edition of The Magic Mountain I have Mann in an essay called The Making of the Magic Mountain, pleas with the reader to read the book twice. "Only so can one really penetrate and enjoy its musical association of ideas. The first time, the reader learns the thematic material; he is then in a position to read the symbolic and allusive formulas both forwards and backwards."

...not sure if I'm capable of this, it's been about 10 years since I first read it...but I'm willing to give it a second go...if you're planning to read it.