Ok, fine, Henry, fine! You broke me! I was aiming to buy no new books in Q2. But this made me -- forced me -- to buy Buddenbrooks and read asap. Forced my hand! Look at what you have done to this noble visage, this former pillar of steely willpower....
I grew up in Northern Germany, and I know the milieu that Mann describes well. He is able to make it specific to a time and place - Lübeck and at the same time universal.
A completely insane book for a 24 (!!!) year old to have written. I still don't quite trust Mann’s date of birth. Are we sure we wasn't 34, or 44? He was the age of full-on-doofus Hans Casthorp at the beginning of The Magic Mountain.
I think Thomas Jr. writes a lot of himself into Thomas Sr., and a lot of brother Heinrich into uncle Christian. Curious his decision to kill himself and his father off in Hanno and Thomas respectively. The dentist visit is one of my all time favourite literary deaths.
Everyone talks about the Schoppenhauer chapter (as they should) but few talk about how gorgeously sad Thomas's decision is to put the experience behind him and return to normal life.
It was devastating on my first read through to realise Hanno/Mann’s experience of school was more or less exactly the same as my own, despite the 100 year interval.
I wonder how it compares to Bernhard's Gathering Evidence. I have Buddenbrooks at home, but I've held back on it, immaturely, in respect of Bernhard's deep distaste for Mann in Old Masters. It's high time I got over that hangup.
They are not especially comparable. All Bernhard's autobiographical works are written dacades after the fact and tend to be quite fragmentary, while Buddenbrooks is historical, one event after another. Bernhard cannot write for any great length of time about other people, other minds, or other experiences (this isn't a criticism, just an observation). Buddenbrooks is almost entirely about other people - the extended Mann family - with a relatively brief Thomas Jr. cameo at the end.
Mann feels a lot more ambiguous about his heritage. He is young, he is closer to it. Bernhard feels utter, merciless rejection of his own childhood (except the beloved anarchist granddad). The suicide opening of Die Ursache ist one of the bitterest things anyone has ever written.
Worth nothing that a lot of the victims of Bernhard rants, especially in the later novels, are people he had been influenced by earlier in life: Adelbard Stifter, Gustav Mahler, Alfred Brendel, Thomas Mann. I don't remember the Mann rant being as bitter as the rant against Bruckner, say. It is very funny to describe anyone's work of 'stinking of filing cabinets' to paraphrase the Auslöschung rant. As a prose stylist (in German) Mann can reek of offices and ring binders. As a novelist, he radically succeeded at hundreds of things Bernhard never tried.
Well, as "comparison" btwn Buddenbrooks and Gathering Evidence, I'm not asking for better or worse judgments. Both are of course about culture, growth, interiority and the world, i.e., they're both Bildungsromane. And they both accept a Bildungsroman template as laid out by Goethe. However, while one is about how exteriors (the world, business) slowly impinge on interiors (the self, home, extended family), the other is the reverse, where the world structures the narrative and builds the interior.
To me, the opening of Bernhard's Die Ursache is incandescent (pun intended), and the three main characters (Bernhard, his grandfather, and the grocer Podlaha) are like Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda in Star Wars, in relationship and story line.
Ok, fine, Henry, fine! You broke me! I was aiming to buy no new books in Q2. But this made me -- forced me -- to buy Buddenbrooks and read asap. Forced my hand! Look at what you have done to this noble visage, this former pillar of steely willpower....
I grew up in Northern Germany, and I know the milieu that Mann describes well. He is able to make it specific to a time and place - Lübeck and at the same time universal.
I enjoy the thoughts of T.Mann's hedonistic children splashing the proceeds from Buddenbrooks in 30's Munich. Frances
A completely insane book for a 24 (!!!) year old to have written. I still don't quite trust Mann’s date of birth. Are we sure we wasn't 34, or 44? He was the age of full-on-doofus Hans Casthorp at the beginning of The Magic Mountain.
I think Thomas Jr. writes a lot of himself into Thomas Sr., and a lot of brother Heinrich into uncle Christian. Curious his decision to kill himself and his father off in Hanno and Thomas respectively. The dentist visit is one of my all time favourite literary deaths.
Everyone talks about the Schoppenhauer chapter (as they should) but few talk about how gorgeously sad Thomas's decision is to put the experience behind him and return to normal life.
It was devastating on my first read through to realise Hanno/Mann’s experience of school was more or less exactly the same as my own, despite the 100 year interval.
I wonder how it compares to Bernhard's Gathering Evidence. I have Buddenbrooks at home, but I've held back on it, immaturely, in respect of Bernhard's deep distaste for Mann in Old Masters. It's high time I got over that hangup.
They are not especially comparable. All Bernhard's autobiographical works are written dacades after the fact and tend to be quite fragmentary, while Buddenbrooks is historical, one event after another. Bernhard cannot write for any great length of time about other people, other minds, or other experiences (this isn't a criticism, just an observation). Buddenbrooks is almost entirely about other people - the extended Mann family - with a relatively brief Thomas Jr. cameo at the end.
Mann feels a lot more ambiguous about his heritage. He is young, he is closer to it. Bernhard feels utter, merciless rejection of his own childhood (except the beloved anarchist granddad). The suicide opening of Die Ursache ist one of the bitterest things anyone has ever written.
Worth nothing that a lot of the victims of Bernhard rants, especially in the later novels, are people he had been influenced by earlier in life: Adelbard Stifter, Gustav Mahler, Alfred Brendel, Thomas Mann. I don't remember the Mann rant being as bitter as the rant against Bruckner, say. It is very funny to describe anyone's work of 'stinking of filing cabinets' to paraphrase the Auslöschung rant. As a prose stylist (in German) Mann can reek of offices and ring binders. As a novelist, he radically succeeded at hundreds of things Bernhard never tried.
I thought it was much better than Gathering Evidence
I love this picture of Elisabeth. I can really imagine all Tony’s dialogue coming from her mouth.
Well, as "comparison" btwn Buddenbrooks and Gathering Evidence, I'm not asking for better or worse judgments. Both are of course about culture, growth, interiority and the world, i.e., they're both Bildungsromane. And they both accept a Bildungsroman template as laid out by Goethe. However, while one is about how exteriors (the world, business) slowly impinge on interiors (the self, home, extended family), the other is the reverse, where the world structures the narrative and builds the interior.
To me, the opening of Bernhard's Die Ursache is incandescent (pun intended), and the three main characters (Bernhard, his grandfather, and the grocer Podlaha) are like Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda in Star Wars, in relationship and story line.