Reading 1001 discussion

(I know a lot of people seem to be reading this one recently, so I thought there was a thread, but none came up when I searched. So, if I just missed it, let me know).

Anyways, listened to this book on audio last month, which is appropriate given the pandemic. I was between a 3 or 4 star for this one, but settled on 3. I did enjoy it, and found it a lot more easy listening than I thought it would be, but I did also find that it dragged on really long for a lightly enjoyable character comedy and didn’t resonate extremely deeply with me.

Comedy is a bit of a weird way to describe a story about a seven year stay in a tuberculosis sanatorium that ends with WWI- but it still kind of is? Not in a bust your gut laughing comedy way- but it is far more a comedic look at a cast of zany and eccentric characters and their social interactions than a tragedy. The protagonist-Hans Castorp- first arrives to visit his cousin but ends up having his departures delayed by his own health. Some of the cast of characters include a Jewish turned Jesuit Marxist authoritarian (try sorting that one out), a grief consumed Mexican woman who keep repeating one phrase, an Italian encyclopedist, a horny older spinster, some gossips of various nationalities, the “exotic” love interest with a French name (and many more). The isolated Alpine Sanatorium (in Davos in the Alps) environment creates a strong in-culture that is also a diverse microcosm of European life at the time (pre-WWI). After Hans finally leaves, it is suggested he enlists and perishes in the army, making the book feel like a rumination on the tensions of the pre-war atmosphere in Europe.

This is a story set in a tuberculosis sanitorium in the Alps published in 1924. It is a story of a young man who withdraws from life to live in the sanitorium. Surely an example of a person who prefers to be sick to avoid responsibilities. The author started to write this works during ww1 and that event does influence the text. But mostly the novel is about time, sickness, death. There are various philosophical discussions through out that explores these topics. The author's wife had TB and spent time in a high altitude sanitorium. It is meant to be the lighter side of the novel Death in Venice. I also appreciated the look at the medical practitioners and what their motivations might be in keeping people on the mountain when they aren't even sick. It looks at both medical and psychiatric health care. Disease is proudly regarded as a ‘talent’. Thomas Mann calls his work a novel about the general seductive forces of dissolution and death. The novel is influenced by Freud, Einstein, and Nietzsche. Mann also examines the deterioration of family. The protagonist Hans is an orphan, orphan, is disposed to illness, doesn't like work, and retreats to a hermetic life on the mountain.

"Narrative, however, has two kinds of time: first, its own real time, which like musical time defines its movement and presentation; and second, the time of its content, which has a perspective quality that can vary widely, from a story in which the narrative’s imaginary time is almost, or indeed totally coincident with its musical time, to one in which it stretches out over light-years (531)."

The sanitorium is run on strict schedule of daily and weekly events, such as rest cures, temperature measuring, and lectures. In addition, the facility is by seating arrangements in the dining-hall, organization of rooms but encourages the abandonment of the rules of the flat lands. It can be said that time is cyclic, tied to the seasons which also are blurred by the mountain climate. The mountain is like a place that is outside of time. Even though one would think that time moves slow. In no time at all our protagonist has been there 7 years. The author uses the picture of preserves in canning jars that are at a stand still in time.

It was also interesting to read about the sanitorium. I've seen several and have read about them. The idea was that the thinner air was healthy for the the tuberculosis suffer. They slept in the cold. I've read that windows were open and residents would wake with snow on them.

I read somewhere that this tome would be a suitable read while quarantined by COVID-19, and it was an inspired suggestion. The hero of the story is a young engineer from Hamburg, who visits his tubercular cousin in Davos for a three week vacation between finishing his studies and starting work in his family's shipbuilding business. His short vacation stretches to seven years, which is, one hopes, far longer than the period of time those stuck in places which have not controlled the virus will face. The ideas which are discussed by the inmates of the sanatorium where he stays are the kind of philosophical discussions we find ourselves having right now: the way time passes somewhat elastically in isolation; the proximity of death; humanism versus authoritarianism; and the way biological function and medical jargon become commonplace. The setting is the early twentieth century, before the advent of World War One. The novel was published in 1924, so every reader would have been aware of how that era was completely annihalated by the war (to end all wars). Again, it is hoped that nothing so cataclysmic awaits us in the near future, but otherwise this dense, thoughtprovoking, but also slyly amusing story is a novel for our time. I listened to an Audible version, narrated by David Rintoul, who did an amazing job of clear enunciation, capturing the rhythmn of the prose quite beautifully. I anticipated listening with pleasure, the only jarring note for me being "pedagogy" pronounced with a hard G, which I had never met before. A small matter, and an acceptable alternative, apparently.

This was a rather difficult novel for me to get through. Onto a fairly simple framework of a story, Mann built so much angst, loneliness, the difficulties of human relationships, all under the threat of death by disease. Sounds a lot like the past year, doesn't it?
I particularly found interest in the discussions of the perceptions of time's passing at different rates.
The philosophical- religious debates of Settembrini and his foe I could have done without, or at least wished they were shorter. Nevertheless it was worth sticking with it.
Thanks Pip for the suggestion. (less)

Amanda wrote: "(I know a lot of people seem to be reading this one recently, so I thought there was a thread, but none came up when I searched. So, if I just missed it, let me know).

Anyways, listened to this b..."

Amanda this was a book for a "special events" topic posted by Diane Z late last year. I took a long time to read it, but persisted. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

Rating: 4 stars


A satirical story about a young man who visits a cousin in a TB sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. His "short" visit extends for several years. I enjoyed the dark humor and reading about the questionable medical techniques used to treat tuberculosis during that time.