Status Updates From Doctor Faustus

Ch 23-24: Rather easy to read chapters....not "debates" ! Adrian has moved to Munich. Goes for a walk in the country and finds a lovely house perhaps rent it in the future? Ch 24 Narrator (SZ), his wife, Adrain and his friend Schildknapp vacation in Italy. (SZ) remembers that Adrian has been infected with syphilis years before...and begins to see his friend change: he abhors contact with others "Touch me not"!

Ch 20-21-22: What? Ch 20 is a dialogue b/t A. and the devil. I didn't hear him come into the room. So beware, this is just a hallucination. Ch 21 What? SZ suddenly has a wife...so flash forward to 1943. Did not see that coming. Ch 22 Everything is a debate b/t A and the narrator (SZ): marriage, nature, music. Exhausting to read and probably just as exhausting to write!

Read ch 15-16-17 (90 min audio) - Ch15 was a metaphysical rant about art. Adrian (A) feels it is dependent upon the personality of the times. Heavy stuff before breakfast! Ch16 A. moves to Leipzig for music study sends letter to narrator Servenus (S) a/b apartment, city etc. Ch17 was S's analysis of letter. TIP: A's Faustian pact with devil symbolises Germany's cultural descent into fascism. 29 more chapters to go!

Read ch 13-14...dense digressions during Adrian's theological seminars are smth you just have to get through. There is a lot of "blah, blah" but Mann wants to show us how Adrian is absorbing his studies but foreshadows at the end of ch 14 that A. is about to make a huge U-turn...towards his music. How theology, music, Adrian and the devil all mix together we can only guess!

Read ch 10-11-12. Don't read too much of this book at a one time...it can overwhelm you. While this is not my favorite of Thomas Manns works, it might be his most important and personal.
Audio narrated by Scottish stage David Rintoul is the best way to read Dr Faustus. I keep an online version available just to check some passages. Rintoul does a masterful job bringing this very complicated material to life.