Magic Mountain

It’s been a while since I told you what I’m reading. That’s because it has taken me so long to plod my way through Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. I finally finished it tonight.

The story is set during the years preceding World War I in Europe. Hans Castorp, a twentysomething orphan who has been accepted to a shipbuilding apprenticeship, visits his tubercular cousin, Joachim, before taking the job. Joachim is at a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. And though Hans plans a visit of only three weeks, he ends up receiving his own “TB” diagnosis—or maybe his elevated temp and desire to stay is really due to infatuation? At any rate, he never does the internship. Instead he ends up outliving his cousin and continuing at the sanatorium for seven years (though time seems to pass differently atop the magic mountain--time being a major theme--so you don’t know for sure till the end how long it’s actually been).

Serving an international clientele, the sanatorium provides as a microcosm of Europe and her ideas at the time. The characters debate philosophy, theology, current events, politics, war, life, death. You name it. And brilliantly, I might add. That's part of why it's a slow read.

Mann published Magic Mountain in 1924 and went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book (translated from German) is ambitious at 725 pages. And it required me to keep my iPhone handy so I could use the online dictionary to look up all the French words, especially in the dramatic scene where Hans finally admits he’s in love. What a time to switch completely to a foreign language!

But Magic Mountain is not a love story. And the book is ambiguous. The author, in a separate section at the back, tells readers they really need to read it twice. Uh, no. Sorry. The first 725 pages were plenty. Still, the author demonstrated some serious talent as he blended ruthless realism with symbolism and irony to create a massive work of intellect.