Leigh’s Reviews > The Magic Mountain > Status Update

The novelty is wearing off a bit and the slowness of the book is starting to wear on me. Hopefully I'll find a new source of motivation soon!

(after long hiatus) Chapter 4 complete! It feels SO Modernist: 1) super-intense inward gaze on the momentary minutiae of living, calling attention to the artificiality of the author’s authoring, and 2) a gradually dawning sense of existentialist absurdity "wait a minute… This whole institution is a sham” which could be extended to any institution. I wonder what's left to do in the remaining 75% of the novel lol

it really is such a psychological novel — making mountains out of such tiny molehills of individual experience

Wow. Hans is having such an intense time! and Mann is really weaving all his elements together in a tight web of signification. And I get to feel like a genius because I think I’m catching some of what he’s up to, as it happens, and pat myself on the back when he takes another step along the path I noticed.

Settembrini is our first interesting character so far! Sleazy as he may be. The cousins are still pretty blank slates. Although maybe Settembrini is starting to rub off on Castorp, who has begun to philosophize about the nature of time…

Well, he did warn us in the foreword that this would be a book that takes its time! Just got through the section on Hans’ grandfather, which seemed both brief and lengthy at the same time — reflective and lingering on details but in a way that feels genuinely profound. And the prose of Lowe-Porter’s 1927 translation is a hearty meal. Buckling up for 700 more pages in that vein!