Aaron Schmid’s Reviews > The Magic Mountain > Status Update

There are a surprising number of typos in this edition! It's also annoying to have no translations for the pages of French...I have found my own methods of translation. There's no editor's or translator's notes of any kind. It's unfortunate actually. Peepercorn was fantastic. Castorp has become a bit of a sullen hipster though. I don't blame him. Dude needs to leave. Literally get a life. I kinda envy him though lol.

Somewhere after the mid-point, the book seems like it gives a new beginning, as well as an ending. Naphta sparks a new form of compulsion, and then Mann creates the strangest sort of "death" I've ever read. It's so tragic and lonely and there's still so much further to go... It's a masterpiece, for sure. I thought I might give it a 3 at first, but now I'm at 4, tipping towards a 5! I miss reading proper long books.

Mann, Walpurgisnacht must've had some influence on Pynchon and Bulgakov. The profane and pagan ideas of love mixing with, or stemming from, or contributing to disease, and the baseness of the body and its carnality - it's all so fraught with a sort of pedantic youthfulness and empassioned naivete. Oh to be young and wealthy and unencumbered and dumb... So dumb. Castorp, for all his bourgeoisie intellect, is lost.

Hans reminds me of my younger self, a little too much for me to love him. He's a romantic, and caught up in novelty. It's not exactly an easy read, but it's not woefully difficult either. I've used plenty of book darts already, so I'm definitely enjoying it, but I'm not sure I believe the book will be able to keep me interested for the whole 762 pages, unless something happens that I'm not currently anticipating.

Started this in audiobook format before and it was good, but I'm definitely enjoying it more as a first time read. I was struggling to pick up what it reminded me of, but I think it's Proust, which would make sense, considering they lived at the same time and wrote about similar things, albeit rather differently. I've only listened to the abridge Proust on Audible, but this makes me want to dive into that journey!