Scott’s Reviews > Doctor Faustus > Status Update

As a companion volume, you could read From Caligari to Hitler, which argues that German Expressionism was a stage to National Socialism.

There are a lot of dense conversations (isn't that what Eliot initially complained about in Paradise Lost?) that unravel this theme, a theme of the abandonment of the rational in the service of the communal and orgiastic.

Secondary characters enter the plot at this point, in one instance, a bad marriage to one of the narrator's friends. The war has begun to a collective jubilation. Composer Adrian's cold eye on life and death as it relates to his compositional practices, his use of parody (reminiscent of Stravinsky). Had to take a break for something contemporary, more colloquial.

Leverkuhn, the composer in the novel, seems to be proposing a system of composition similar to twelve-tone row. You can learn something about musical theory reading some of the conversations.