Thomas Mann

I'm german, we had to read buddenbrooks in school. half of my class didn't even finish reading it because literally everything is described in detail (curtain colors and stuff like that) and the story wasn't very "exciting".

You have to really like this kind of writing style but i found it highly enjoyable and magic mountain is a great read as well. Look out for the symbolism of recurring elements, you get the most out of his books if you read between the lines.

>we had to read Buddenbrooks in school
Auf welche Schule bist du denn gegangen du reicher Pinkel?

Ganz normales Gymnasium in NRW mit Deutsch LK
So ungewöhnlich?

Ja, als Buch ist das doch viel zu lang um es Gymnasiasten zu lesen zu geben. Die Trottel in meinem Jahrgang haben nicht mal Danton's Tod (ganze 60 Seiten) auf die Reihe gekriegt. Als Lehrer würde man hier für so was von einem wütenden Elternmob gekreuzigt werden in BW.

I've read Death in Venice but no other Mann -- what next?

Is Settembrini Veeky Forums: the character?

You saw the best Story he wrote. Now read the other short Storys, then everything else and then Death in Venice again. After that you can hang yourself or read Steppenwolf

Haben dich die Beschreibungen so gestört? Mir sind sie gar nicht so extrem aufgefallen.
Ich hatte sehr viel spaß mit den wunderbar geschriebenen Charakteren und der Stadt Lübeck als Schauplatz desu.

Kann mir jemand etwas genaueres zu Joseph und seine Brüder sagen? Och steig da noch nicht ganz dran lang worum es da gehen soll und würde gerne sicher gehen, dass es mir auch gefallen könnte, bevor ich anfange so'n riesiges Werk zu lesen. Sonst würde ich nachher 'n schlechtes Gewissen haben wenn's mir nicht gefällt und ich es wieder weglese.

Wow was, dann aber GK oder?
Wir hatten buddenbrooks und noch drei andere bücher je ~200 Seiten und ich kenne das von anderen Gymansien in meiner Stadt auch so. Hatten zwar immer genug dabei die auch die kurzen nicht durchlesen konnten/wollten, aber dass wenn sich da Eltern beschwert hätten wären unsere Lehrer aber wütend geworden. Wahrscheinlich hattest du einfach Pech

mir hat es wirklich gefallen, aber der größte Teil hat sich nur beschwert und Zusammenfassungen aus dem Internet gelesen und ich kann auch nachvollziehen, dass man das jetzt nicht so furchtbar spannend findet

>GK
hatten wir nichtmal. Ich hab buchstäblich 15 Punkte abonniert gehabt und der Rest des Jahrgangs war schrecklich schlecht. Landkinder eben. Ja ich denke ich hatte Pech, das war eine richtige Klischeesituation, in der man auf die Fresse kriegt wenn man einen mit einem Buch erwischt. Süddeutschland, not even once.

Wir haben gar keine Bücher im Unterricht gelesen. Aber ich war auch auf 'ner Hauptschule..

I just love it when my thread changes languages. Thank god I'm learning german this year.
Thanks for the rec guys, I'll definitely pick this one up.

>Is he good?

Magic Mountain is probably one of the comfiest books I have ever read.

>Thomas Mann
No self-respecting man is going to be called after a cartoon cat. Stop forcing this meme author.

what a waist of trip trips. I'm so disappointed in you satan

and yes, I said waist

>mfw i can understand this
Rec me some German books that aren't too hard guys, i want to start reading in German this year. (I speak Dutch and had only one year of German in Highschool, but we had an exchange, which helped a lot. )

Take any book you've read in Dutch/English and read it in German.

So that would be Hesse, Goethe, Mann, Schopenhauer or Nietzsche? Do you think i could read any of those in German? ( I haven't read a whole lot of German authors). Thanks btw.

if you don't mind you can try reading young adult books first. Language wise you shouldn't have too much trouble.
Herr der Diebe , Die unendliche Geschichte, Momo, Märchenmond or any books you remember when you were younger
could be quite hard but if you try to read them side by side it might work

No, possibly Hesse, but probably not. Idk read children's books.

It's not an easy read if you get bored easily. Lots of descriptions, but I liked it quite a lot.
There's a lot of symbolism involving Hermes, keep his looks in mind and reading will be much more magical

It doesn't really have to be works by German authors. If you're interested in learning the language then translations will do just fine. As mentioned above, young adult books are a good entry point if you're not particularly versed in German.

>asking if he should read an internationally, historically renowned book

I don't know if we're living in the age of anxiety, or these people just want to advertise what they're reading

I think it's more of a "someone suggested it, or I saw in on some random book chart, so I'm gonna ask other anons so I can get a consensus so I can agree with the in-group. I obviously cannot take action or form opinions on my own and require the input of the anonymous herd"

Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up.

no
try Siddhartha maybe but I wouldn't count on it
I can read basic French but reading literature without a side-to-side translation is fucking impossible

This.
As someone, who has spent time in hospital, I can really imagine my self as Castorp.
Although I`m only half-way trough the book..
It makes me miss the rhythm of the comfy mental-hospital life.

No, I just wanted to read what this board thought about the book because sometimes people give interesting insights. I couldn't care less about belonging to Veeky Forums's eternal circlejerking.

Thanks guys, i think i'll try a childrens book first (any rec's? ) and then Demia because it's so short and i have a read copy to hold next to it.

>tfw i can read (basic) literature in French (The Stranger e.g.), read pretty much anything in English and read anything in Dutch all pretty much without effort because of Belgian education.

So much this, i could tell from the first pages that it would bring that whole sense-of-escapism-with-lots-of-nostialgia.
Makes me miss being a child without any responsibilites and having to follow the basic rhythm of school.

Being Belgian really does have it's perks.

I feel bad recommending this book to people after taking a class on it because they won't have the benefit of the class like I did

It's an incredible book, the layers of allegory are insanely deep and carefully constructed, drawing on a dozen sources of German intellectual and cultural background. The whole novel is an allegory for Europe's rest cure after the First World War, Castorp is the model young average bourgeois, the mountain is a liminal realm between our world and the underworld, the baggage porter was Charon, the two doctors are Rhadamanthus and Minos judges of the underworld, Settembrini is the stagnant Apollonian of Enlightenment bourgeois values, Chauchat is Eros or the Dionysian and a representation of Decadence which Mann rejects as a tempting but ultimately unsuccessful rejection of what Settembrini represents, it just goes on and fucking on and on

I'd at least read some critical commentaries on it because goddamn going to that class is like having a mystical awakening for a pleb like me, I can't even pick up the book anymore without feeling like I'm handling some numinous religious text

That seems very interesting. Do you know any complementary texts regarding this book?

>tfw I can read German and English fluently and read basic literature in French
Dutch is completely useless so I would think twice about who lucked out here buddy.

Hey, you're that guy again, I'll have to be honest with you and say that as a German, I had absolutely no problem catching up with the symbolism in this book. He's talking about classsic historical archetypes, there's loads of depths and subtext but most of it has to do with European artistic history. You definitely don't have to read commentaries if you keep those themes in mind, Mann is a story-teller that is very upfront about the things he describes, it's not like Joyce where there are thousands of hidden allusions that you won't get. Thanks for your passionate input though, it's appreciated.

Sadly no, I googld on once and wondered how much my professor was pilfering from it though. It was a blow-by-blow cheat sheet that pointed out many things he did.

Thanks for this. I'm glad it's not TOO bad but like I said, I'm a pleb, so I never would have gotten a tenth of it without having it spelled out to me. It's not so much the specific references like "Gary is a reference to Garylaeus the Greek! For no reason!", moreso the whole idea that the novel is supposed to be this murky uncertain phase transition between life and death. But a lot of little things too - like how in the beginning of the book, when the sooty train smoke blows into the carriage window and lands on his Ocean Liners book, the book that represents his bourgeois life and his former vocation and purpose, dirtying it and making it "tuberculous" to represent that Castorp needs the rest-cure in the strange land too. Seems simple enough because why else would Mann include that? But it went right over my head until pointed out to me.

>read anything in Dutch
No offense, but there's literally 0 books in Dutch which are worth learning the language. Not to mention it's the ugliest language in existence.

so much this, felt the same with buddenbrooks in my class, it completely changed the way i read books.
there were so many small things like how often it was mentioned that something was "yellow". i would have never watched out for this before but when we had to analyze it it was so obvious. (yellow was used as the color of death, yellow teeth, yellow nails, yellow face, yellow furniture always gave you a hint that said character was going to die)

and ever since i browse at least the authors Wikipedia page

Das ist jetzt ein deutscher Faden.

These are the posts i come to Veeky Forums for. Quality thread OP.

I didnt have to learn it, as its my mothertongue and have you not heard of Mullisch or Noteboom? Or Verhulst or Claus? It's no Mann or Joyce or Tolstoj, but it sure isn't shit either.

Ist es tatssächlich so ungewöhnlich? Wir haben mit unserer Klasse (Ok, die meisten haben es wohl nicht ganz gelesen oder verstanden) der Zauberberg von Mann gelesen. Niederländisches Gymnasium.

Ook eek ik van der vooern ook ik.

Lees de Schachnovelle van Stefan Zweig - redelijk dun boek met een pakkend verhaal in niet al te ingewikkeld Duits. Tip: als je een woord niet kent, gewoon opzoeken, uiteindelijk helpt het je Duits enorm vooruit. Das Parfum of Der Vorleser lezen ook vrij gemakkelijk weg, zeker als je de films kent. Vaak is het ook een kwestie van herkenning dat je verder helpt.

Trouwens - maar een jaar Duits? Hoe dan?

just cause you're an inexperienced reader doesn't mean everyone else is (not trying to be insulting)

that's not to say magic mountain is a walk in the park, but to say you can't get large portions of the book without a class and in depth commentary is silly.

mann does recommend reading the book at least twice though and i second that.

I'm not saying there aren't good authors or works, I'm saying whatever there is, it's hardly worth the effort of learning Dutch in my opinion. I'd be glad to be wrong, though. Thanks for the suggestions.

I saw your previous post a few days ago.. do you think
amazon.com/Companion-Mountain-Studies-Literature-Linguistics/dp/1571132481
amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Thomas-Companions-Literature/dp/0521653703

do you think any of these would aid in unwrapping this novel?

There's hope for Veeky Forums yet!

its the only book I've bothered to create OC for.

If you can invest a significant amount of time and have even a basic understanding of modernism, Greek mythology, or Europe in transition between the 19th and 20th centuries, it's a fantastic book.

If you're at uni, some of the library websites have free digital editions of the Cambridge companion guides. Just a thought.

Bedankt voor de tips. Ik ken de verhalen achter Das Parfum en Der Vorleser, dus dat zijn misschien inderdaad wel goede start punten. Ik hoor veel goeds over Zweig, dus ik zal die er ook bij nemen. Met een 4, 5-tal boeken zou ik mijn Duits wel redelijk vooruit moeten helpen denk ik. Ik ben al gewend om woorden op te zoeken, ik kan behoorlijk goed Engels maar voor Moby Dick, Infinite Jest en de meeste stukken van Shakespeare had ik toch hier en daar hulp nodig.

Wij hadden dat enkel het laatste jaar in het middelbaar, er voor konden we kiezen tussen Duits of extra praktijk (tekenen, schilderen, beeldhouwen). Ik had beter voor 2 jaar Duits gekozen.

Btw German fags, can you guys actually read this?

Yeah, i'd have to agree, i wouldn't learn it if i wasn't born into it, but being born into a country that encourages you to learn four language's is a bonus in my book.

Great thread op ... just coming off of the recognitions and hunger. The magic mountain seems particularly relevant considering the current state of affairs...200 pages in at the moment. Enjoying it so far.

Naptha > Settembrini

Turns out Veeky Forums isn't completely dead after all.