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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, Classic Literature,
By -_Tim_- (The Western Hemisphere) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories (Paperback)
Thomas Mann wrote "Death in Venice" in 1911. The protagonist, formerly a self-controlled and respectable public figure, gives himself over to obsessively stalking a 14-year-old boy for whom he has erotic feelings. While these feelings would be unacceptable to most people in our era, it is still difficult for us to appreciate the degree of condemnation they would have attracted when this story was written. Yet, Sigmund Freud had published The Interpretation of Dreams a decade earlier, and German intellectuals like Thomas Mann were aware that censurable urges lurk beneath conscious notice within all of us. Through this story, the author was surely struggling to come to terms with his own homoerotic urges. Judging from what he wrote, these were deeply troubling to him: corruption, decay, and condemnation are the themes he presents to us. While the images conveyed through this story are repugnant and shocking, the writing is beautiful and affecting.Several of the other stories in this volume are of similar quality, and similarly deal with troubling themes ("Mario and the Magician," "The Blood of the Walsungs"). Yet, Mann was also capable of an extended and sincerely felt appreciation of the more benign and wholesome aspects of our world ("A Man and His Dog"). These stories are worth reading and re-reading. Thomas Mann won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, and these stories, if not Nobel prize quality, at the very least show Mann to be an engaging and entertaining writer.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Wonderfully Complex Writer,
By
This review is from: Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories (Paperback)
Mann is to be struggled with; his work to be attacked and repulsed - it is the embodiment of engaging, challenging fiction. It may be advisable to start out with Mario and the Magician, a splendid and accessible story of a hypnotist performing amazing acts on an incredulous audience that is itself hypnotic in alluring its character audience and the reader into a seeminly pedestrian story that turns out to have a whimsical, fantastic denouement. M&M also doubles as a grand metaphor for the fascism that was beginning to grip Germany - the awesome power of a tyrant and the dangerous nakedness of a raptured audience.Mann passes the test of great writing, in that even in translation, one can appreciate the literary dexterity of a master at work - a writer carried away, inhabiting each sentence of his story. Some of his lesser stories, towards the end of the anthology, are sprawling introspectives and thoroughgoing accounts of places and things. Death in Venice is a seminal work and sets the tone for Mann's subtle revelations of repressed passions and the tabboo. Mann elegantly lays bare human souls, yet keeping the lid safely fastened to the pressured jar. One of my favorites was Toni Kroger - a touching story of an artist's life, from young man to mature adult. Mann renders beautifully unrequited love and homosocial admiration by the introverted for the extroverts. In reading his stories, we may find that he expresses memories and feelings that were always there, but could not find the words for before. That, perhaps, is the highest achievement of a writer.
5.0 out of 5 stars
All great, but don't miss MARIO AND THE MAGICIAN!!!,
By
This review is from: Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories (Paperback)
The reviews here are all right on. This collection may be the best intro to the GREATEST 20th Century Author..(OK, you may not agree.) Much of Mann is difficult and dense,even for me, a longtime devotee. In this collection, start off with MARIO, a superior look at the sacred and profane. We find a German tourist and his young family in Italy going into a seemingly harmless carnival-type show. The author's portrait of the innocent young is itself worth the entire book,their enchantment at the acts,until an ugly mesmorist makes his appearance performing seemingly impossible tricks on members of the crowd. Slowly, the innocent crowd has been hooked, the children awed by the whole thing, until the final,inevitable end. Reading this,I thought,"Are there really people out there who can perform such acts?" Who knows, but this story is surely a classic,along with the six others, mainly described in other reviews.
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