This book had been sitting, unread, on my bookshelf for some time. It has the reputation like Ulysses. It doesn’t help that I know people who gave up half way into both. But I read Joyce, and with this book, there was a group reading it. So I read it. And liked it far more than I liked Ulysses. The two books are somewhat similar – massive, dense, reputations. I always had the impression with Ulysses that Joyce was showing off how smart and clever he was, and that feeling interfered with the enjoyment of the novel. This is not the case with MM. Mann is clever, but he isn’t shoving it down the reader’s throat. He too is puzzling the idea, worrying the bone. Unlike my dog, Mann wants to share his bone, and maybe he and the reader can crack it together. In many ways, the Magic Mountain is about the undying lands. Those lands that a man (and it is usually a man) travels to, loses himself in, until he leaves and realizes how many years have passed. It’s a version of Rip Van Winkle. The mountain and the sanatorium that occupies it are a modern version of this, travel to not be horse or magic – but by that new romantic travel railroad. It is a Neverland. And like Pan’s home there is a dark edge to it. In part, this fairy land saps not only the health of those who resides, supposedly to heal; this other world holds time and spends it rashly. It is unreal, but it has its attractions. The feel of putting off death, of not having to deal with life. And that is the danger that always is the danger. It always feels as if it would be nice to get off the ride for a bit. The awakening, the reader knows, will be rude. The reader knows what comes to the mountain, the war that will change the map of Europe. The post 1950 reader knows even more that the Great War which wrecks the mountain also leads to the Second. A double awakening that Mann was not fully aware of. Knowing how Mann was not received in Nazi Germany makes the book even more powerful. This coming harsh reality even makes the reader at times wish for the timeless of the mountain. And that would be the point. It is the sense of the otherworldliness that echoes even in the style. At times the reader despairs of the density, and then the page turns, light shines though the rose window in the dark gothic cathedral and all is beautiful. Until the cloud comes. But then it goes, and all repeats. The unreality raises questions. Would Hans’ fate, would Europe or Germany’s fate, had been different if he had not visited his cousin? Which is worse giving up on life, letting past or being told to do it by someone who simply wants your money? Is the phrase for health a mind altering trick or a prophecy? The answer to the above, to all questions that the novel raises and poses is the Holy Grail that Mann speaks of his in afterword. The Grail that we all, Mann, the reader, all search for.
