Should i read the magic mountain?
>>24990933It’s pure comfy kino
>>24990933it's a pleasant read with some interesting ideas to digest, but at times it suffers from the german 'I am going to overexplain everything to the smallest insignificant details' problem
It's boring. The author apparently meant for it to be boring. Irony, metaphors and all that. But that doesn't mean it's not boring. The periods of drama culminate when the MC descends from his room to eat lunch and stare at a Russian woman from across the table. He does this three times or so every chapter. In this faintly yearning way, Mann displays the imaginative excellence and forlorn ennui of the average /lit/ scribbler. And the fiftieth time the main character very droll-y made his bedsheets on the balcony I checked out (so to speak).
>>24990933reading it in German was a very beautiful and formative experience, the Walpurgisnacht chapter especially. there's so much beauty in the language that I think even as a novel which are more resilient to being translated, it might lose something essential in translation (as Goethe assuredly does, he is untranslatable).
>>24990933Yes, it's great. I like Doctor Faustus more, but Magic Mountain feels more polished.
>>24990933there's a charming TV mini series adaptation from 1981. you may find a 3 hour version on youtube, although I prefer the full 8 hour experience on DVD.
>>24990933I agree with this guy>>24990938I'm about halfway through, it's a nice book to read leisurely.If you need a book where things "happen" then I wouldn't recommend it.Heads up, there is a conversation entirely in French that was not translated in my copy, I had to google a translation for it.
>>24990933one of like 3 actually good 20th cent novels i've read
>>24990933Not sure why I found the setting so comfy considering it’s a sanatorium where everyone is both mentally and physically unwell, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been so bummed out about finishing a novel and having to leave that world behind
