The Magic Mountain discussion

Let's discuss! How far through are you? What do you think so far (no spoilers!)?

I finished recently and am working up a review. Very interesting book, but even after a careful read, I don't feel that I have a full grasp. Still mulling it.

But keep going. We should all know this boo, even if you never really know it (if you know what I mean).

...I'm always reading The Magic Mountain... It's one of those books that never seems to leave me, a dream you know you had but can't quite remember.

I keep thinking I should read Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family again.

Anyone else had the feeling, while reading the book, that the patients were being poisoned by the management? In addition to their affliction that is.

Daniel wrote: "Anyone else had the feeling, while reading the book, that the patients were being poisoned by the management? In addition to their affliction that is."

They're being poisoned in their minds, they are taught to be hypochondriacs. While Behrens is always finding something that could mean youre sick, is Krokowski teaching everybody how it lifts up your character and your mind when you are a sick person.
People in the sanatorium are sick (at least most of them) with Tuberkulosis, but some of them are just being taught to be very afraid and cautious to become sick one day.
Tuberkulosis was a very common and uncurable, deadly disease in the 1920s.

In one chapter, when Behrens is pretty pissed about the fact, that Joachim wants to leave, he tells Hans Castorp, that he is also free to leave if he wants. But Hans already got used to the decadency of the life on top of Magic Mountain, so he insists to stay.

"Nine-tenths of the books that happen into my hands are too greatly expanded by superfluous description, talky dialogue, and unnecessary minor characters, hence fail in magnetism and dynamic power. Even in the most celebrated classics the many sandy and dragging passages disturb me, and often I have laid before publishers the bold notion of a comprehensive series of the literature of the world from Homer through Balzac and Dostoievsky to The Magic Mountain thoroughly curtailing the superfluous in each; then all of those works whose timeless value is undoubted could acquire new life and influence in our day."
—Stefan Zweig (in "The World of Yesterday')

The Magic Mountain ended up being one of my favorite books. I could see it made into a horror movie!