Leigh’s Reviews > The Magic Mountain > Status Update

Finished Chapter Five with the incredible Walpurgisnacht section, in which our hero finally gets the courage to talk to his crush at the Halloween party, almost entirely in untranslated French… and she (not unkindly) ruins his life. Amazingly rich scene, building on what’s come before, playing with language-as-intimacy, and very very funny. Devastating fumble. And staged so cinematically! I picture Dustin Hoffman

Finished “The Dance of Death,” one of the longest sections in the book! I’m glad to see Hans Castorp (and Mann) finally engaging with some of the material realities underlying this sanatorium — people die! And even the visceral experience of having surgery. But it still often feels abstract & intellectualized. Interesting description of the “Bioscope” cinema and how it changes our relationship to time

I was already feeling targeted by Castorp’s intellectual musings about the two kinds of Latin before he started talking about Don Carlos 😅

Finished "Research" ("Forschungen") and I think it's my favorite section so far! It's just Hans sitting on his balcony reading (from anatomy to biology to chemistry to physics) but it stacks up such an ecstatic density of profound proclamations. Reminds me of reading Nietzsche. Also makes me realize this whole novel feels like an allegory of my experience at liberal arts college

Just finished “Humaniora,” which perhaps could also be titled “The Anatomy Lesson.” I can never decide whether this is a novel of ideas, or a parody of one! At one point (261) the narrator directly addresses the crisis/slippage of narrative voice — “such, at least, were Hans Castorp’s impressions, which we here reproduce.”

We almost had a conflict between two characters!! Almost.

There’s a brief moment where Joachim says “we seem to be cured; no fever” and they go for a walk, and that could have been the end of the novel… but then they run into Frau Chauchat and Hans gets so excited by her saying “good morning” that he spikes a fever of 100.4 lmao

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