Charles Houser > Recent Status Updates

Having just finished reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which Mann intended to be a comic response to Death in Venice, I thought it would be a good time to read a new translation of that work. The one I chose is by Michael Henry Heim. Michael Cunningham’s introduction is very insightful.

I had trouble getting into this book, finding it difficult to identify with the main characters. Tolstoy “tells” more than he “shows”, which makes the novel seem more like an early career effort rather than the mature work it is. Fortunately, this seems to be changing about 70 pages in with the account of Katusha’s trial. Hope I’m right.