i read _Doctor Faustus_ (my first and so far only experience with Thomas Mann) earlier this year and was absolutely floored. it's definitely one of the very best books i've read in 2020 and might even go down as one of my favourite novels ever
There is also an important counterpoint to the title giving motive in the novel. The family is declining in a material way as well as concerning social status from generation to generation. Starting from the practical grandfather who built up the family business, to Thomas struggling with his position, to Hanno definitely unfit to carry on the family business. The counterpoint to this is the increasing sensitivity to philosophy and the fine arts in the characters from generation to generation. i don't learn very much about the grandfather other than that he is practical. Thomas on the other hand almost breaks down reading Schopenhauer, but in his way pulling together and carrying on, never talking about it again. Hanno at last is the most sensitive of them, playing the piano and all. This is especially interesting if you keep in mind that the basis for this novel is Thomas Manns own family. He actually got a lot of grief from them after publishing it. Sorry, i am not a native speaker and can't express this any better. On the upside, I have the pleasure of reading Thomas Mann untranslated.😉 Thank you very much Mattia, for sharing your thoughts on books. I am always looking forward to another one of your videos.
A very interesting point! I definitely got the impression that Hanno was meant to be more of a stand-in for the author (so far as we can/it makes sense to judge these things) than most other characters ;) thank you for the comment!
A extraordinarily beautiful exposition on "Buddenbrooks" which I have right now nearly finished. In 2019, as well "The Magic Mountain", "The Confessions of Felix Krull" and several of the short stories, I loved reading "Joseph and His Brothers". Exodus is often cited as the best Bible story with literary merit, but the Joseph story is extraordinary. And it’s really Mann’s magnum opus (he thought so). At around 1500 pages, it's actually four books in one, and it's worth noting that the same story takes a mere 40 pages or so in the Bible, an expansion brought about by Mann's own Muse of course, as well as Quranic, Persian poetic, Egyptological, rabbinical, philosophical (Nietzsche and Schopenhauer) and psycho-mythic Jungian and Freudian sources. Would love to enjoy a " TheBookchemist" response to it!
i enjoied your review, and now have a certain idea of what is the novel about, but what is more important is that it was a pleasure to hear how you structured the review. thanks, sincerely.
great video!! i read Buddenbrooks last summer and it completely blew me away. i loved the chapter about Hanno’s life too and found it a highlight among many of an incredible story. thanks for the discussion!
Had The Magic Mountain on my future reading list for a while, waiting for when I'm getting into a big book. Now I'm going to have to choose between that and Buddenbrooks!
Wow! This video made my day! I first read Buddenbrooks back in high school when I was 16, and I really loved it, but I was extremely depressed by it. As you said, the characters are very human, but also cold, calculating figures, and it makes reading the book pretty uncomfortable, especially when it starts making sense how their materialistic values will cause their personal downfalls. It is just marvelous how Mann helps you understand their perspectives- it really isn't like a fictional novel, more like a real slot of life the reader witnesses. I think that creating this personal closeness, moral critique, and at the same time making the book feel universal is a huge achievement. Many times when rich people write about their own class it can come of as self-pitying and narrow minded, but not here. I actually read Gravity's Rainbow right after this novel, and it certainly helped me understand Pynchon's parody of "western sins", in fact I think I might have misunderstood many points of GR without Buddenbrooks! Yeah, I also think Hanno's day is the greatest part of the novel, especially considering how, and how quickly it ends afterwards. I think the point of that very intimately described day is to illustrate how this kind of capitalist identity could only survive through elaborate justification, and always decays after a while- the Consul could only be a successful capitalist by drawing strength from religion, Thomas ceased to be a successful capitalist because of his romantic nature, and Hanno was ultimately "unfit for life" because his personality made him unable to conform into the ideology of his background. Also, I agree that Death in Venice isn't really good (in it's, at least, more maybe as a prologue to The Magic Mountain, which is also great! I recommend it, though it is very different than Buddenbrooks.) Mann's shorter novellas always come off as self-absorbed and mediocre compared to his longer novels. Anyway, sorry for the long read, I was just made very happy that one of my favourite RUclipsrs now read one of my favourite novels and felt like I needed to vent:D Cheers!
Great review. Might want to add two comments. The book is very entertaining, the situations they are in and other people they meet are very interesting and "cringy" or even caricatures. So it is a serious story but and wonderfuly detailed, immersive and an entertaining read. The second note: on release of the book a lot of poeple in Lübeck and in T.Mann's family clearly noticed who was who in the novel and were not happy abou this. Antonie is T.Mann's aunt, the furniture and things described in the book are real things from T.Mann's family history. It is a real treat to visit the Buddenbrook Haus in Lübeck and see the things from the book come to life in form of photos, documents and other things on display.
Lol I was eating crayons at 26 1) the time warp and different characters taking central control perhaps relates to the power of the family 2) what they can't control is death however. However much space they take, eventually death takes them, and not at their choosing. 3) the counter is that the time warping actually suggests 2, in that it is more of an impotent situation for the family as they decline.
I've only read Doctor Faustus and The Magic Mountain and consider both of them masterpieces. Glad to know you have such a good opinion of The Buddenbrooks. I will definitely check it out
Buddenbrooks is beautifully written, a really flowing narrative with terrific characters . I cannot think of a better multigenerational family saga I've read. The Magic Mountain however is quite different. It has many wonderful segments but there are a lot of theological/philosophical discussions which may have had a lot of resonance when it was written but which were too dense for me. It felt like you had to have studied theology and philosophy to get it. Buddenbrooks is , for me, the better book, very accesible, just a great read.
I just read Buddenbrooks last month coincidentally . I am interested at how the translator handled some of the passages that use the language of "plattdeutsch" as i read it in the german original. In my Opinion the use of that language adds alot of character to the novel and the characters themselves and is quite funny to read in german as it is a quite an informal language.
There's a translator's note at the beginning of the book remarking on this - I believe the translator decided not to try to reproduce German dialects and popular registers with English equivalents, and had to sacrifice a lot of these nuances. These sense of how different characters speak differently (and of the importance that's attached to this) still comes through in the translation, but I do not doubt that reading this in the original must be an unparalleled pleasure ;)
I wondered if I had lost some essence of the novel reading it in English. The descriptions of the characters reminds me of Dickens. Maybe this simply reflects 19th century writing
Mann did not write it at 26. It was published when he was 26. He wrote it at 21-25 which is unbelievable. I have read it 4 or 5 times. One time I even "studied" the hyper luxury edition with a separate "Kommentar-Band" which has more pages than the novel itself. I have no doubt that this is the greatest novel in the German tongue. You have certainly noticed Mann's use of "Leitmotive". Mann deeply admired Wagner. I would like to encourage everybody to read it. It is relatively "easy" to read, it is immensely fascinating and once you have read the first 100 pages you cannot stop reading the next 700. However, I wonder if it may be adequately translated to English. I can also recommend Joseph und seine Brüder (Joseph and His Brothers) which is even longer than Buddenbrooks. Unfortunately, I found his last novel "Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull " (Confessions of Felix Krull) very disappointing. The film with a brilliant Horst Buchholz is fantastic, but the novel is rather boring.
I am very happy that you enjoyed reading Buddenbrooks and that you praised the novel in this video! It is one of my favourite novels by Thomas Mann and in general. The author Katharina Döbler recently said that the novel is unsophisticated (www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/klassiker-neu-gelesen-buddenbrooks-frauen-kommen-extrem-zu.1270.de.html?dram:article_id=486833) but I think that is not true!
![THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann 🇩🇪 BOOK REVIEW [CC]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/i1yFpjxrWKw/mqdefault.jpg)
![THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann 🇩🇪 BOOK REVIEW [CC]](/img/tr.png)
Mann - my favorite writer, The magic mountain - my favorite book
Mine too!
Buddenbrooks is a great novel, and I enjoyed Magic Mountain even more. Hope you'll have time (and interest) to read it, too!
It was over thirty years ago that I read it. I remember enjoying it.
i read _Doctor Faustus_ (my first and so far only experience with Thomas Mann) earlier this year and was absolutely floored. it's definitely one of the very best books i've read in 2020 and might even go down as one of my favourite novels ever
The best review of Buddenbrooks I've come across. Bravo! Will definitely be subscribing to your channel and checking out your other videos.
There is also an important counterpoint to the title giving motive in the novel. The family is declining in a material way as well as concerning social status from generation to generation. Starting from the practical grandfather who built up the family business, to Thomas struggling with his position, to Hanno definitely unfit to carry on the family business.
The counterpoint to this is the increasing sensitivity to philosophy and the fine arts in the characters from generation to generation. i don't learn very much about the grandfather other than that he is practical. Thomas on the other hand almost breaks down reading Schopenhauer, but in his way pulling together and carrying on, never talking about it again. Hanno at last is the most sensitive of them, playing the piano and all. This is especially interesting if you keep in mind that the basis for this novel is Thomas Manns own family. He actually got a lot of grief from them after publishing it.
Sorry, i am not a native speaker and can't express this any better. On the upside, I have the pleasure of reading Thomas Mann untranslated.😉
Thank you very much Mattia, for sharing your thoughts on books. I am always looking forward to another one of your videos.
A very interesting point! I definitely got the impression that Hanno was meant to be more of a stand-in for the author (so far as we can/it makes sense to judge these things) than most other characters ;) thank you for the comment!
A extraordinarily beautiful exposition on "Buddenbrooks" which I have right now nearly finished. In 2019, as well "The Magic Mountain", "The Confessions of Felix Krull" and several of the short stories, I loved reading "Joseph and His Brothers". Exodus is often cited as the best Bible story with literary merit, but the Joseph story is extraordinary. And it’s really Mann’s magnum opus (he thought so). At around 1500 pages, it's actually four books in one, and it's worth noting that the same story takes a mere 40 pages or so in the Bible, an expansion brought about by Mann's own Muse of course, as well as Quranic, Persian poetic, Egyptological, rabbinical, philosophical (Nietzsche and Schopenhauer) and psycho-mythic Jungian and Freudian sources. Would love to enjoy a "
TheBookchemist" response to it!
i enjoied your review, and now have a certain idea of what is the novel about, but what is more important is that it was a pleasure to hear how you structured the review.
thanks, sincerely.
I really enjoyed the John E Woods translation in the Everyman edition of the Novel , beautiful prose .....
great video!! i read Buddenbrooks last summer and it completely blew me away. i loved the chapter about Hanno’s life too and found it a highlight among many of an incredible story. thanks for the discussion!
Had The Magic Mountain on my future reading list for a while, waiting for when I'm getting into a big book. Now I'm going to have to choose between that and Buddenbrooks!
Wow! This video made my day!
I first read Buddenbrooks back in high school when I was 16, and I really loved it, but I was extremely depressed by it. As you said, the characters are very human, but also cold, calculating figures, and it makes reading the book pretty uncomfortable, especially when it starts making sense how their materialistic values will cause their personal downfalls. It is just marvelous how Mann helps you understand their perspectives- it really isn't like a fictional novel, more like a real slot of life the reader witnesses. I think that creating this personal closeness, moral critique, and at the same time making the book feel universal is a huge achievement. Many times when rich people write about their own class it can come of as self-pitying and narrow minded, but not here. I actually read Gravity's Rainbow right after this novel, and it certainly helped me understand Pynchon's parody of "western sins", in fact I think I might have misunderstood many points of GR without Buddenbrooks!
Yeah, I also think Hanno's day is the greatest part of the novel, especially considering how, and how quickly it ends afterwards. I think the point of that very intimately described day is to illustrate how this kind of capitalist identity could only survive through elaborate justification, and always decays after a while- the Consul could only be a successful capitalist by drawing strength from religion, Thomas ceased to be a successful capitalist because of his romantic nature, and Hanno was ultimately "unfit for life" because his personality made him unable to conform into the ideology of his background.
Also, I agree that Death in Venice isn't really good (in it's, at least, more maybe as a prologue to The Magic Mountain, which is also great! I recommend it, though it is very different than Buddenbrooks.) Mann's shorter novellas always come off as self-absorbed and mediocre compared to his longer novels.
Anyway, sorry for the long read, I was just made very happy that one of my favourite RUclipsrs now read one of my favourite novels and felt like I needed to vent:D Cheers!
A great contribution - thank you :)!
Thomas Mann is a titan , liked your Death In Venice review, though I like it more than you did.
Mann was only 25 when he wrote this masterpiece…let that sink in.
Great review. Might want to add two comments. The book is very entertaining, the situations they are in and other people they meet are very interesting and "cringy" or even caricatures. So it is a serious story but and wonderfuly detailed, immersive and an entertaining read. The second note: on release of the book a lot of poeple in Lübeck and in T.Mann's family clearly noticed who was who in the novel and were not happy abou this. Antonie is T.Mann's aunt, the furniture and things described in the book are real things from T.Mann's family history. It is a real treat to visit the Buddenbrook Haus in Lübeck and see the things from the book come to life in form of photos, documents and other things on display.
Lol I was eating crayons at 26
1) the time warp and different characters taking central control perhaps relates to the power of the family
2) what they can't control is death however. However much space they take, eventually death takes them, and not at their choosing.
3) the counter is that the time warping actually suggests 2, in that it is more of an impotent situation for the family as they decline.
Great review I have had this novel on my bookshelf for a while now. Maybe this is rhe evening ?
I've only read Doctor Faustus and The Magic Mountain and consider both of them masterpieces. Glad to know you have such a good opinion of The Buddenbrooks. I will definitely check it out
Great review! Makes me want to read Buddenbrocks very soon! Could you do one on Döblin‘s Alexanderplatz?
Buddenbrooks is beautifully written, a really flowing narrative with terrific characters . I cannot think of a better multigenerational family saga I've read. The Magic Mountain however is quite different. It has many wonderful segments but there are a lot of theological/philosophical discussions which may have had a lot of resonance when it was written but which were too dense for me. It felt like you had to have studied theology and philosophy to get it. Buddenbrooks is , for me, the better book, very accesible, just a great read.
I just finished this book and I love it so much! Your review was spot on! Tony and Hanno were my favourite characters.
I just read Buddenbrooks last month coincidentally . I am interested at how the translator handled some of the passages that use the language of "plattdeutsch" as i read it in the german original. In my Opinion the use of that language adds alot of character to the novel and the characters themselves and is quite funny to read in german as it is a quite an informal language.
There's a translator's note at the beginning of the book remarking on this - I believe the translator decided not to try to reproduce German dialects and popular registers with English equivalents, and had to sacrifice a lot of these nuances. These sense of how different characters speak differently (and of the importance that's attached to this) still comes through in the translation, but I do not doubt that reading this in the original must be an unparalleled pleasure ;)
I wondered if I had lost some essence of the novel reading it in English. The descriptions of the characters reminds me of Dickens. Maybe this simply reflects 19th century writing
Read Stoner by John Williams!
Have your read The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles? Or any of his short fiction? Bowles had a massive impact on me.
I haven't!
facts, king
Mann did not write it at 26. It was published when he was 26. He wrote it at 21-25 which is unbelievable.
I have read it 4 or 5 times. One time I even "studied" the hyper luxury edition with a separate "Kommentar-Band" which has more pages than the novel itself.
I have no doubt that this is the greatest novel in the German tongue.
You have certainly noticed Mann's use of "Leitmotive". Mann deeply admired Wagner.
I would like to encourage everybody to read it. It is relatively "easy" to read, it is immensely fascinating and once you have read the first 100 pages you cannot stop reading the next 700.
However, I wonder if it may be adequately translated to English.
I can also recommend Joseph und seine Brüder (Joseph and His Brothers) which is even longer than Buddenbrooks.
Unfortunately, I found his last novel "Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull " (Confessions of Felix Krull) very disappointing.
The film with a brilliant Horst Buchholz is fantastic, but the novel is rather boring.
Speaking of time shifts, how about Neal Stephenson in Seveneves where the story abruptly ends and begins again 5000 years later?
Please review Don DeLillo's The Silence.
I am very happy that you enjoyed reading Buddenbrooks and that you praised the novel in this video! It is one of my favourite novels by Thomas Mann and in general. The author Katharina Döbler recently said that the novel is unsophisticated (www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/klassiker-neu-gelesen-buddenbrooks-frauen-kommen-extrem-zu.1270.de.html?dram:article_id=486833) but I think that is not true!
Do you find now that you have completed your studies that you are free to read the books that you want to read?
Oh, yeah!!! I read so much more, and so much more freely, now that I'm not working in academia. (I currently work in publishing).
You didn't read Magic Mountain? Vero?
Gnadenlos!! Courious, courious..
m.ruclips.net/video/Jv1wiZHcC9w/видео.html
Para lectores en castellano.