Book # 97 - The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

It has been a couple days since I finished reading The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann, and it is still sitting there in my brain slowly being digested. Before starting it someone told me that it is one of those books that doesn't directly say what it is really about. The Wikipedia page describes it as "ambiguous" and even the book's introduction says that if you're reading it just for the plot you'll be disappointed and won't get much from the book.

In thinking about "the plot" in order to summarize it, I realize that there is technically a beginning, middle and end, but the "action" never builds to a climax and just like in real life it is just a serious of events with both ups and downs. The book starts somewhere around 1905 with Hans Castorp, a young German man, going to visit his cousin that is staying in a clinic high in the Swiss Alps to treat his tuberculosis. He plans to stay for three weeks but ends up being diagnosed with the same illness and ends up living there for seven years. Finally he leaves to go fight in WWI.

During his time there he meets a variety of characters, makes friends, falls in love, deals with death, discovers new music, ponders his own mortality, has strange dreams, and sees time slowly passing by. The book could be about so many different things every reader will probably interpret it differently. And the Wiki page is right... it is ambiguous. Some parts of it reminded me of my own twenties, and I found the passages about the passing of time especially meaningful. After a few years Hans gets to the point where everyday is just the same for him and distinguishing time becomes difficult and suddenly years have past by.

Even though it is a huge book without an exciting plot I enjoyed it immensely. There may have been a few parts that dragged a bit (mostly the discussions between his friends Settembrini and Naphta) but there is just so much to ponder here and take in. Mann once said that to really understand his book you'd need to read it twice. I guess someday I'll have to pick it up again and hopefully I'll get even more insight into it. A+