The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen (2001)

Oeuvre rule: I have only previously read How to be Alone, which came out a year after this.  I enjoyed it very much, while I thought Franzen sometimes went on too long and sounded a bit pretentious and cranky.  Some of the material intimates Franzen's raison d'etre in The Corrections--i.e. "this is what I was trying to do" or "this is what I was going for..."  I would like to revisit it in light of those comments, because I'm going to agree with the rest of the world and slap huge compliments on this novel.  Oprah, I'm not going to read everything in your book club, but you got it right with this one.  (No comment on Franzen's disavowal of that institution--except my belief that he regrets that in retrospect.) I don't have a book club, but I do name those I consider the best books reviewed on Flying Houses, and this one makes the list.

Recently, this novel was named the #5 novel of the 21st century so far, and overall it is a very fine piece of literature indeed.  I have minor complaints: the unfortunate media-driven obsession with sex in American society is transplanted into these pages, and Franzen occasionally goes off on a super-long tangent.  The second complaint is also a compliment, however, and I realize it is hard to produce an item designed for entertaining the masses without appealing to baser instincts.

The most notable thing about this book are the extremely long chapters.  There are only a few: "St. Jude" (9 pages), "The Failure" (120 pages), "The More He Thought About It, the Angrier He Got" (99 pages), "At Sea" (97 pages), "The Generator" (117 pages), "One Last Christmas" (99 pages), and "The Corrections" (5 pages).  7 chapters in 570 pages seems unwieldy, but this is not a criticism.  It serves to break the book up into recognizable sections.  "St. Jude" and "The Corrections" are short introductions and conclusions to the novel.  "The Failure" is about Chip.  "The More He Thought About It..." is about Gary.  "At Sea" is about the cruise that Enid and Alfred take.  "The Generator" is about Denise.  And "One Last Christmas" is about the family together for that event.  I found much to enjoy about each of them.  The book is a consistently pleasurable read.

The plot?  The major device is Alfred's failing health--he has dementia and Parkinson's disease, sprinkled together with Alzheimer's.  He is in his late 70's or early 80's.  He worked as a railroad engineer his whole life and raised his family as pitch-perfect members of the middle class.  He is married to Enid, who is constantly trying to put on a happy face and make everyone around her believe that her family is perfect.  Their oldest son, Gary, is a successful bank executive in his early 40's, married to an attorney who has gone into public interest work because they don't need the money, with three kids.  The middle child, Chip, is an anti-establishment English PhD pushing 40 who has recently fallen on hard times after a good teaching job, and is trying to finish a screenplay.  Denise is a chef, but really "culinary master" seems more accurate, 32 and divorced, going through a transitional period.  Enid and Alfred come to visit Chip in New York City before embarking on a cruise along the Canadian coast.  Denise comes to visit from Philadelphia the same day, and Enid pushes the idea of bringing everyone back to the family house for "one last Christmas," because Alfred is losing his lucidity.

The first aforementioned "long tangent" occurs during these preliminary introductions.  Out of nowhere, seemingly, Franzen stops the narrative and tells the entire story of Chip's rise and fall as a college professor.  It was just as engaging, so I didn't mind, but it challenged my expectations.  One other thing I wanted to mention about Chip is that he is the most overused character in all of modern literature: the struggling male writer in his 30's.  I felt like I was reading about Nate or Guert (in his younger days) or even Nick (obviously to a lesser extent)--but while I am sure there are many more examples to be had of this "type," Franzen paints him as more of an unpredictable "bad boy" such that he feels more real, behaving impulsively and making bad decisions.

While Franzen's prose is remarkably pristine, I did come across one passage that made me believe he was not godlike, and could have put in a couple more minutes of research:

"The clerk laughed in a way that was the more insulting for being good-humored.  But then, Chip had reason to be sensitive.  Since D---- College had fired him, the market capitalization of publicly traded U.S. companies had increased by thirty-five percent.  In these same twenty-two months, Chip had liquidated a retirement fund, sold a good car, worked half-time at an eightieth-percentile wage, and still ended up on the brink of Chapter 11.  These were years in America when it was nearly impossible not to make money, years when receptionists wrote MasterCard checks to their brokers at 13.9% APR and still cleared a profit, years of Buy, years of Call, and Chip had missed the boat.  In his bones he knew that if he ever did sell 'The Academy Purple,' the markets would all have peaked the week before and any money he invested he would lose." (103)

Now it is technically allowed for an individual to file Chapter 11 (see Sheldon Toibb, proper citation way too fucking lazy to track down), but that is rare.  It would be most proper to write Chapter 7 here, as Chip would not be a good candidate for Chapter 13 at this moment.  Perhaps Franzen meant to characterize Chip as a business, but I highly doubt it and digress.

From there, the book shifts its focus to Gary.  Gary is somewhat mysterious throughout the beginning of the book, referenced by all the characters but silent, so his prominence in the chapter is noteworthy.  The idea of what the novel will be about is completed here, basically.  Gary is shown working in a darkroom, developing photographs of his family for an epic album that he will give everyone for Christmas, while his youngest son Jonah enthuses about The Chronicles of Narnia.  His two older boys play outside with his wife, Caroline, and seem to like her more.  Gary resents this, and calls her out for lying about a minor injury that she suffers while playing with them.  This happens when Enid calls him and asks if they will all come for Christmas.  Caroline refuses to visit his parents, and Alfred does not feel comfortable staying at their house for more than 48 hours.  She pretty much comes off as a huge bitch when she explains why:

"'The truth, Caroline said, 'is that forty-eight hours sounds just about right to me.  I don't want my children looking back on Christmas as the time when everybody screamed at each other.  Which basically seems to be unavoidable now.  Your mother walks in the door with three hundred sixty days' worth of Christmas mania, she's been obsessing since the previous January, and then, of course, Where's that Austrian reindeer figurine--don't you like it?  Don't you use it?  Where is it?  Where is it?  Where is the Austrian reindeer figurine?  She's got her food obsessions, her money obsessions, her clothes obsessions, she's got the whole ten-piece set of baggage which my husband used to agree is kind of a problem, but now suddenly, out of the blue, he's taking her side.  We're going to turn the house inside out looking for a piece of thirteen-dollar gift-store kitsch because it has sentimental value to your mother---'" (185)

I have to say that Caroline is probably the least sympathetic character in the book.  In one sense she may be rational.  Her husband's family is crazy, and she wants her family to be healthy and emotionally stable.  But the reader feels very bad for Gary, when she seems to think that this fight over Christmas is going to lead to their divorce.  Unfortunately, this is not a very charitable depiction of an attorney.

Much of this chapter is about Gary's fear of anhedonia--basically, depression.  Lack of interest in things.  But then, the end is this long shareholder's meeting of the Axon Corporation, which has offered Alfred $5,000 for his patent on a process for developing pharmaceutical anti-depressants, and which is coming out with a drug called Corecktall.  Later on, Denise and Enid try to get Alfred on a regimen, because it may be able to cure his condition.  While I would never suggest this chapter is "bad," I must admit that while I found certain parts of it highly enjoyable and stimulating, on the whole it was the least memorable section of the book.

"At Sea" details the cruise that Enid and Alfred take, and is fantastic from start to finish.  It reaches its pinnacle in the conversation between Enid and Sylvia, a woman she meets while sharing a dinner table on the cruise, whom she intuits will either be an arch-nemesis or a friend.  The two women spill out all their feelings as they continue to have "just one more."  I do not want to spoil it.

Later, Enid is offered a drug called Aslan by a rogue doctor (who shares his name with a Simpsons character, albeit with different spelling) on board, and I feared that the book was turning into a rip-off of White Noise, which is now turning thirty years old and remains an absolute classic of the late 20th century.  Thankfully, Franzen seems to recognize this (indeed Don DeLillo even offers a blurb in praise on the back cover), so this scene ends up being a mere homage to White Noise.  Maybe it's not and I'm crazy but if you've read that book, you must admit that Aslan and Dylar are essentially identical plot devices:

"'We think of a classic CNS depressant such as alcohol as suppressing "shame" or "inhibitions."  But the "shameful" admission that a person spills under the influence of three martinis doesn't lose its shamefulness in the spilling; witness the deep remorse that follows when the martinis have worn off.  What's happening on the molecular level, Edna, when you drink those martinis, is that the ethanol interferes with the reception of excess Factor 28A, i.e., the "deep" or "morbid" shame factor.  But the 28A is not metabolized or properly reabsorbed at the receptor site.  It's kept in temporary unstable storage at the transmitter site.  So when the ethanol wears off, the receptor is flooded with 28A.  Fear of humiliation and the craving for humiliation are closely linked: psychologists know it, Russian novelists know it.  And this turns out to be not only "true" but really true.  True at the molecular level.  Anyway, Aslan's effect on the chemistry of shame is entirely different from a martini's.  We're talking complete annihilation of the 28A molecules.  Aslan's a fierce predator."  (318)

"The Generator" comes next, and for me it was the strongest section of the book overall, from start to finish (thus, "At Sea" combined with "The Generator" is certainly the strongest stretch of the book).  It is Denise's chapter, and she is probably better developed than any other character.  She spends her last summer before college working at Alfred's railroad company, goes to Swarthmore, and drops out not long after, discovering a love for culinary art.  She marries a man much older than her while serving as his sous-chef.  They get divorced not long after, and the major plot of the section is set into motion.  Paid a generous salary by a benefactor, she travels through Europe to sample the cuisine, and returns to open her own restaurant in a massive building previously owned and utilized by the Philadelphia Electric Company.

Later this same benefactor (Brian) gets involved with a film project, and Stephen Malkmus is name-dropped as a person who would eat dinner with him at fancy New York restaurants, seemingly as a technical adviser.  This really came out of nowhere, and it's particularly ironic because the previous book I reviewed here thanked "Steven Malkamus" in the acknowledgements section.  I really wanted to point that out previously (was it just sloppy editing or some kind of weird SM Jenkins joke?).  There is also this reference, which was prescient in 2001:

"Their few real differences came down to style, and these differences were mostly invisible to Robin, because Brian was a good husband and a nice guy and because, in her cow innocence, Robin couldn't imagine that style had anything to do with happiness.  Her musical tastes ran to John Prine and Etta James, and so Brian played Prine and James at home and saved his Bartok and Defunkt and Flaming Lips and Mission of Burma for blasting on his boom box at High Temp." (349)

Prescient because, Mission of Burma was primed to come back about a year after this novel was published, and because the Flaming Lips were about to "peak."

The last large section of the book, "One Last Christmas," wraps up the story in relatively satisfying fashion.  There is one particular sentence that almost made me want to cry--when Enid says, "This is the best Christmas present I've ever had!" There are a few strange moments at the end, though, and Franzen definitely does not arrange a conventional denouement.  There is one seriously WTF moment (I will just say the word "enema" and anyone who has read it will know what I mean) that I don't understand, unless it's just supposed to be sort of icky and disturbing and nothing more.

The closing eponymous chapter reminded me of the ending to Buddenbrooks, which is also referenced on back cover in a blurb by Michael Cunningham (in the same breath as White Noise)--that is, it feels oddly unceremonious, but appropriate.  There is a short dialogue about whether being gay is a choice and a reference to Six Days, Seven Nights.  And then there is a type of "where are they now?" conclusion.

I've failed when it comes to highlighting the craft of Franzen's prose.  I've picked out really random passages that I found notable for idiosyncratic and insignificant reasons, and I've avoided certain passages to preserve the pleasure of their discovery.  Rest assured this entire novel is well-written.  There are probably 10-15 pages of sentences included throughout the book that annoyed me for some reason, but they do not detract enough to remove it from its rightful place as one of the best books reviewed on Flying Houses.  I just hope this review has done it justice.

The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years - Thomas Mann (Transl. Denver Lindley) (1954)

For the past few years I looked forward to the day when I could return to my work here and review the last novel by Thomas Mann that I was truly excited to experience.  Of course, Royal Highness, The Holy Sinner, and The Black Swan remain out there--to say nothing of Joseph and his Brothers--but I believed that The Confessions of Felix Krull was the last work I had yet to read that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the previous classics that had been reviewed on this blog.

Oeuvre Rule: the first-ever review on Flying Houses was Doctor Faustus; Buddenbrooks was reviewed twice (owing to a faulty internet connection and my mistaken belief that phrases from drafts would be intriguing to readers); The Magic Mountain contains no shortage of brilliance; and Death in Venice is every bit as troubling and beautiful as when it was published 101 years ago. Where then, to rank Felix Krull?

[The bottom?] (!)

Of course, Felix Krull is not a bad book.  But it is an unfinished one.  Unfortunately it suffers from the same problem as Fitzgerald's would-be late-era masterpiece The Love of the Last Tycoon--the untimely passing of its author.  Of course Mann lived a much longer life than Fitzgerald.  He died at age 80 rather than 44.  But it is a dangerous thing to begin a novel near the end of one's life when one bears the risk of disappointing the scores of readers that one has worked so hard to cultivate.  And while there are certainly flashes of genius that make the above-mentioned works such absolute pleasures, Felix Krull ultimately is not on their level.  I will submit, however, that had Mann finished this novel (if it were not only "The Early Years"), it would probably be closer to being in that exalted category of "classic."  As such we must mourn for what could have been--like Fitzgerald but in a different guise--and wonder whether some younger writer may "take up" Felix's story and attempt to finish it in a way that Mann would have found pleasing.  That would be no easy task.

Perhaps it is best to read Felix Krull after reading "Felix Krull," the short story from which it was derived.  I have not done that, however, and I can only say that if you happen upon a collection of Mann's stories that you check this one out before moving onto the book.  The book is 375 pages long.  It would probably be about 800 pages long in its proper finished form.

It opens up, as it must in a first-person narrative bearing such a title, with Felix's early childhood.  He grows up in an unnamed town along the Rhine Valley, near Mainz.  His father is a purveyor of champagne.  He has one sister (Olympia) and a godfather (Schimmelpreester) that opens up certain doors for him.  His parents like to have parties.  They often have people over, and apparently for this reason his family is held in low repute in their town.  Or not quite:

"It was mostly these social affairs that provoked the town gossip that called our household disreputable, but I learned early that it was the economic aspect of the situation that was principally in question.  For it was rumoured (and with only too much justification) that my poor father's business was in desperate straits, and that the expensive fireworks and dinners would inevitably furnish the coup de grâce." (15)

There are several fantastic scenes early on in this book that made me feel it was on its way to
greatness.  And truly, the first "book" in it (there are three: Book I is about 50 pages, Book II is about 130 pages, and Book III is about 200 pages) may be close to perfect.  Near the end of Book I, his father suffers an unfortunate end (and if I were Elizabeth Warren, I would include this passage in a casebook to complement a certain passage from A Man in Full):

"Our financial collapse was complete; it became clear why my poor father had put it off so long and involved himself so deeply in the toils of the usurers, for he was aware that when the crash came, it would reduce him to total beggary.  Everything went under the hammer: the warehouses (but who wanted to buy so notoriously bad a product as my father's wine?), the real estate--that is, the cellars and our villa, encumbered as they were with mortgages to two-thirds of their value, mortgages on which the interest had not been paid in years--the dwarfs, the toadstools and earthenware animals in the garden--yes, even the mirrored ball and the aeolian harp went the same sad way.  The inside of the house was stripped of every pleasant luxury: the spinning-wheel, the downy cushions, the glass boxes and smelling salts all went at public auction; not even the halberds over the windows or the portieres were spared; and if the little device over the entrance door that played the Strauss melody as the door closed still jingled unmindful of its desolation, it was only because it had not been noticed by its legal owners." (51)

Felix then moves with his mother to Frankfurt, where the charming second part of the novel takes place.  Schimmelpreester tells each member of the family what they are supposed to do, and they follow his orders.  Felix is supposed to go to Paris to meet with a hotelier, but he also must worry about his military service.  In the meantime, he enjoys his time in Frankfurt, though he is reduced to sleeping on a kitchen bench, and often tries to summon carriages for people leaving the theater, sometimes receiving a tip.

Now, Book One is very good, but it takes 80 pages to get to Chapter V of Book II, which is probably the first "great" scene in the novel: Felix's first attempt at "conning."  He hopes to avoid military service, and his manner of completing this task is unlikely.  He expresses great enthusiasm and tells all of the presiding officers that he considers himself in excellent shape for service.  They find this rather hard to believe, as he makes subtle movements that betray a weaker constitution.  They tell him that the barracks is not a health resort, and laugh at him when he asks if he could just try because he might improve.

After this, we come to Felix's encounter with a prostitute named Rozsa.  While there is a scene in Book One that briefly details an affair he carries on with a housemaid who is perhaps fifteen years older than him, the scene with Rozsa is more remarkable because she seems to love him regardless of the fact that he has no money.  At this point it may be prudent to mention a criticism that I have read of this book: the main character is unsympathetic.  He is extremely good looking and he charms everyone he meets within a few minutes and everything comes much too easy for him.  Well, I hope my review indicates otherwise.  I do not share this criticism with others.  I think there are plenty of signs that most of the other characters find Felix annoying, and it is only through these "love scenes" that certain readers may scoff in disbelief.  However, the scene with Rozsa is practically rated PG compared to what comes later.  Felix also gives a nice defense of his relationship with her, and why he should not be considered a pimp despite the fact that sometimes he shares in what she gets from her customers:

"For my own part I am in agreement with folk wisdom which holds that when two persons do the same thing it is no longer the same; yes, I go further and maintain that labels such as 'drunkard,' gambler,' or even 'wastrel' not only do not embrace and define the actual living case, but in some instances do not even touch it.  This is my point of view; others may judge differently about this confidence--in respect to which it should be remembered that I am making it of my own free will and could quite easily have passed over it in silence." (112)

Finally, then, in Chapter VII of Book II, about 115 pages in, the "action" of the novel seems to pick up, for Felix is taken out of his home element and put on a train destined for Paris.  He has a number of adventures on the train, but he is primarily entertained by acting extremely politely with the commissaire, even going so far as to wish his wife and children well after he takes his ticket.  The language of the book switches, in stretches that are nearly too long to subsist in untranslated form, to French.  I would not be surprised if newer editions of the book translated the French into English, or at least provided footnotes  I could understand most of what was being said, but I think I have a decent "foundation" in French.  Regardless, even if you do not know French, I do not think you will miss all that much if your edition does not translate it.  Also of note during this section is an unlikely event: a woman "dropping" certain valuable jewelry into Felix's bag during a customs check--his second act of "conning."

Felix finds his way to the hotel where he is supposed to work, and to the dormitory where he is to sleep, along with his bunkmate, Stanko.  Stanko finds the jewelry and tells him to go to a certain shopkeeper to trade it in for cash.  Felix does so the next day after speaking to Stürzli, the general director of the Hotel Saint James and Albany, after being told that he will take over for Armand, the elevator operator who is quitting that day.  The scene with the shopkeeper Pierre Jean-Pierre is as memorable as the military service coup, particularly in the way the negotiations are carried on rather disagreeably until the deal is struck, at which point Jean-Pierre turns into a much nicer person.

The last scene worth noting in Book Two is the experience Felix (now Armand--and it is strange the way everyone calls him Armand, not even thinking he has a different name) has with a certain middle-aged woman--the same one that dropped her jewelry into his bag on the train.  She is a novelist who is staying in the hotel, and she takes Felix into her room where she asks him to defile her.  Now this may very well be the most unrealistic scene in the book.  Perhaps it is pure fantasy, or perhaps it is Mann trying to write a "modern 1954 novel" complete with blunt intimations:

"'Perversion!  Love is perversion through and through, it can't be anything else.  Probe it where you will, you will find perversion...But it's admittedly sad and painful for a woman to be able to love a man only when he is quite, quite young, when he is a boy.  C'est un amour tragique, inadmissible, not practical, not for life, not for marriage.  I, I married Houpflé, a rich businessman, so that in the shelter of his riches I could write my books, qui sont énormément intelligents.  My husband can do nothing, as I told you, at least with me.  Il me trompe, as they say, with a theatrical demoiselle.  Perhaps he is some good with her--I should rather doubt it.  It's a matter of indifference to me--this whole world of men and women and marriage and betrayal is a matter of indifference.  I live in my so-called perversion, in the love of my life that lies at the bottom of everything I am, in the happiness and misery of this enthusiasm with its heavy curse that nothing, nothing in the whole visible world equals the enchantment of the youthful male.  I live in my love for all of you, you, you the image of desire, whose beauty I kiss in complete abnegation of spirit.  I kiss your presumptuous lips over the white teeth you show when you smile.  I kiss the tender stars of your breast, the little golden hairs on the dark skin of your armpits.  And how does that happen?  With your blue eyes and blond hair, where do you get this coloring, this tint of light bronze?'"  (172-173)

That final question is a reference to Felix's physical appearance--at once both "light" and "dark."  This scene with Madame Houpflé is somewhat difficult to square with the rest of the novel.  It is certainly unrealistic, but perhaps not so much given that Felix is extremely good-looking (one may wonder about what unlikely events befall those blessed with such looks).  At least it is entertaining and humorous when she asks Felix to beat her and when he confesses that he took her jewelry and that she finds it charming and asks him to steal more from her while she pretends she is asleep.  But there is also question mark #1 that I have about this book:

"She came.  We came.  I had given my best, had in my enjoyment made proper recompense.  But how could I fail to be annoyed that at the very climax she had been stammering about degradation and had called me a stupid little slave?" (170)

Does he mean what I think he means?  It is impossible to think otherwise.  Perhaps question mark #1 is not such a puzzle, but question mark #2, I must admit, is a doozy....

But before we get there there is almost 200 pages of action.  I will cover it shortly.  "Armand" is serviceable as a "lift-man" but soon he moves on to work as a waiter in the hotel.  In the meantime he sells more of the jewelry that he "stole" from his ladyfriend, and he and his colleague Stanko enjoy an evening at the circus.  As a waiter he meets a fair number of interesting characters, but three in particular: Eleanor Twentyman, Lord Strathbogie and the Marquis de Venosta.  

In keeping with a theme of the novel, Twentyman and Strathbogie become entranced by "Armand."  This happens at the same time, roughly.  I would go so far as to say that this little section, from pages 200-217, is the single best part of the entire book.  It is contained like a perfect short story.  Felix needs to tell both that, charmed as he is by their infatuation with him, he cannot do what is asked of him.

Eleanor is 17 or 18, staying at the hotel with her parents. It is humorous to see her fall in love with a waiter, who must be kind and gracious all the while.  She comes down to breakfast by herself when her parents are still asleep and tries to "woo" "Armand" until he is eventually made to deflate her advances:

"'It's abnormal, too, for you not to ignore me, as would be natural and as your Mummy quite properly demands, but instead to come down secretly to breakfast and talk to me about "love" while your parents are prevented by their peaceful slumbers from coming to the defence of the social order.  This "love" of yours is a forbidden love which I cannot approve, and I am forced to reject any pleasure of my own in the fact that you like to see me.  It's all right for me to like to see you, if I keep it to myself, that's quite true.  But for you, Mr. and Mrs. Twentyman's daughter, to like to see me, that's impossible, that's contrary to nature...What you call "love" is something that happens to people on trips and at the sight of tail-coats like mine.  When you have left, as you will very soon, you'll forget it before you get to the next station.'" (205)

This mention of love being something that happens to people on trips may perhaps remind the reader of Death in Venice, and I can only say that the description of what happens with Lord Strathbogie is the ultimate "reverse Death in Venice" and that Mann must have intended it as such.  "Armand's" conversations with the Lord seem to have greater weight, as the man, who is about 50, desires to take him away and make him his personal valet, and maybe even adopt him and make him his heir.  Felix, as a person who is destined to wear many masks throughout life, finds this idea somewhat appealing, but ultimately cannot accept:

"'Please--I don't want to wound you or minimize the honour you have paid me, but if someone precisely like me occurs only once--each of us, of course, occurs only once--there are nevertheless millions of young men of my age and general physique, and except for the tiny bit of uniqueness, one is made very much like the other.  I knew a woman who declared that she was interested in the whole genre without exception--it must be essentially that way with you, too.  The genre is present always and everywhere.'" (216) 

Finally, after the novel reaches its high point (in my opinion), Felix meets the Marquis de Venosta, who is about his age, and whom he finds to be a pleasant person to serve.  The Marquis is from Luxembourg, and he has been staying in Paris and seeing a woman named Zaza.  His parents do not approve of this relationship and they believe that a world tour will do him some good and take his mind off of Zaza.  

On his nights off from the hotel, "Armand" sometimes goes to the theater or has dinner at nice restaurants, and on one of these evenings he runs into the Marquis, who is very garrulous and drinks very much wine and causes "Armand" to miss the theatrical performance that night.  During this dinner scene, it begins to become obvious why the Marquis has become such a major character.  Of course, Felix is plotting his next "con," which will be impersonating the Marquis on this world tour while the real Marquis stays behind in Paris and rents out an apartment with Zaza.  His first stop will be in Lisbon, Portugal.  

And it is here that the novel ends.  This is the longest single portion of the book, and perhaps a bit tiresome.  However, on the train ride to Lisbon, Felix (now "Louis" or "Loulou") meets one Professor Kuckuck, a man with "starry eyes."  The Professor speaks of celestial subject matter and this proves enchanting for "Loulou":

"There was no question, he said, that life on earth was not only an ephemeral episode, but Being itself was also--an interlude between Nothingness and Nothingness.  Being had not always existed and would not always exist.  It had had a beginning and would have an end, and with it space and time; for they existed only through Being and through it were bound to each other.  Space, he said, was nothing but the order of material things and their relationship to one another.  Without things to occupy it, there would be no space and no time either, for time was only the ordering of events made possible by the presence of objects; it was the product of motion, of cause and effect, whose sequence gave time its direction and without which there would be no time.  Absence of time and space, however, was the definition of Nothingness.  This was extensionless in every sense, a changeless eternity, which had only been temporarily interrupted by spatio-temporal Being.  A greater duration, by aeons, had been vouchsafed to Being than to Life; but some time of a certainty it would end, and with equal certainty the end implied a beginning..." (266)

This conversation goes on for about ten pages and is probably the highlight of the "Lisbon" section of the novel.  This is a strange moment in the novel and I can only conjecture that Mann wrote this knowing that he would not complete the rest of the novel, and that he was not very far from meeting Being and Nothingness himself.  As such it is a powerful moment, and probably the most profound single piece of the novel.  

Once "Loulou" settles in town, he goes the Museum of Natural History, where Professor Kuckuck is a director.  Then he meets the Professor's family, which includes a wife and a daughter.  The daughter is named Zouzou, and the irony of "Loulou" meeting his very own Zaza is not lost on the character.  There is also a strange section where "Loulou" meets the King of Portugal and tells raucous stories about his parents' two dogs, and this is all conveyed in a long letter "Loulou" writes to the Marquis de Venosta's actual parents.  

His stay in Portugal is longer than intended by a month, and perhaps predictably, he falls in love with Zouzou, while playing tennis with her often.  Zouzou is a fairly interesting character--she is very "forthright" and believes that "silence is unhealthy" and that "things must be called by their real names."  She is very cynical, in a word, and she does not believe in "love"--she believes that love (in keeping with another theme of the novel) is but a pretext for sexual longing, and this makes it a perversion in a certain sense.  "Loulou" tries very hard to persuade her otherwise in a long speech near the very end.

However, before we get to question mark #2, I must add finally that at a certain point, I became upset that this novel was not going to provide closure.  I was distracted from this final set of events, and did not really care how things turned out.  In fact, if it has not been made clear above, I consider this the weakest section of the novel.  The "Paris" section is certainly the strongest, and this part might only have been better if we saw what became of "Loulou" in Argentina, or the United States--other stops that he was to make on his world tour.  Also we never see Felix go to jail, as he mentions in passing at earlier points in the novel. 

Nor do we find out how the matador that he sees during a bullfight in the penultimate scene of the novel comes back into the story.  All we see is that he gives Zouzou a stack of pictures that he had made--nude sketches of Zaza with Zouzou's curls--and how she is disgusted by them, but how she then kisses him passionately--and then we finally get to question mark #2.

Zouzou's mother sees what happens, and she reproaches "Loulou":

"'You can thus realize what stupidity you were guilty of when, in your need for love, you followed a childish course and formed the capricious notion of turning a child's head.  That was not choosing or acting like a man, but like an infant.  Mature reason had to intervene before it was too late.'" (377)

But then, finally, question mark #2--does she fall under his spell, too?

"'Once when we were conversing you spoke to me about the graciousness of maturity and the graciousness with which it speaks of youth.  To encounter it successfully requires, of course, a man's courage.  If an agreeable youth only showed a man's courage instead of seeking satisfaction in childishness, he would not have to run off like a drenched poodle, uncomforted, into the wide world....'
'Maria!' I cried.

And: Holé! Heho! Ahé' she exclaimed in majestic jubilation.  A whirlwind of primordial forces seized and bore me into the realm of ecstasy.  And high and stormy, under my ardent caresses, stormier than at the Iberian game of blood, I saw the surging of that queenly bosom." (377-378)

Perhaps that is not quite a puzzle either, but it is a very strange way to end this novel.  I have said all I can about The Confessions of Felix Krull.  I recommend it for Mann-obsessives, but there are finer "closure-producing" compositions in his oeuvre if one has not exhausted it.  

    

   

Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann

While I learned last night that typing a blog post up while on my own dodgy internet connection can truly end up being a waste of an hour of your life, I am doing it again. I tried to cut and paste all the text into my "Flying Houses Off-line Work" document, but it was too late. The internet page had moved forward and informed me that the connection had gone down. I let out a little rant about the disadvantages that computers have brought on us. They've leveled the playing field. They've increased efficiency. They've given us access to all the knowledge and information that we could possibly desire. And everyone's become obsessed with it and now all of our personal information is controlled from variegated online databases, and yes, it would be nice to avoid all those tree-destroying bank statements, it would be nice to not have to worry about whether to throw them away or not, but in general there is too heavy a reliance on this mechanism, and I do truly believe that it has changed the arts ineffably. Novels like Buddenbrooks don't get written anymore because of its ubiquity.

Thomas Mann, born 1875, died 1955, wrote this novel at the turn of the century, not far from the age I am now, but younger most definitely, and it's just a different literary industry now--few 25 year-olds will ever have the patience, the deep well of knowledge, or the opportunity to attempt as ambitious a work. That said, there are just as many crazy writers as there ever were, people who consider 700 page novels a drop in the bucket, people who are ambitious in every sense of the word. Few, however, will reach the heights of Thomas.

Oeuvre rule: Thomas Mann has one of the strongest (if numerically stream-lined) careers of any fiction writer, having authored Buddenbrooks to make him an "overnight success," in 1901, having boldly offered up "Tonio Kroger" and "Death in Venice" in the next ten years, having spent another near-decade to complete the Magic Mountain, finally nearing the end on the reimagining of the Doctor Faustus legend, and finishing up at the end of his life with the short-story expansion into the novel The Confessions of Felix Krull. Not to mention anything about Royal Highness, the Holy Sinner, or, perhaps more impressive than anything, the Joseph tetralogy. You could get a plot summary of any of his works and get a sense of his subject matter, but more than any other writer I have been exposed to, it is the quality of the language that sets him apart and makes him more real and seemingly connected to our present-state-of-being which makes him special for me. There are few better masters to mimic.

Buddenbrooks opens up in the year 1835. Part I is a 37 page description of a dinner with the Buddenbrook family--old Johann, grandfather, Madame Antoinette, grandmother, Jean, son, Frau Consul Elizabeth Kroger, daughter-in-law, and Antonie (a.k.a. Tony), Thomas, and Christian, the three grandchildren who will grow up and make the majority of the drama in the novel.

Part II begins describing Tony, the only daughter in the Buddenbrook family, and how much she enjoys the niceties of her position in life. The family is rather well-to-do, a line of merchants that Thomas will continue. Antonie is immediately mistreated by her peers as a little girl, who think they're better than her while she continues to think very highly of herself and her family, and eventually when she turns 18, she is offered a marriage proposal. She goes away to the shore to mull it over, and there meets someone who could be considered the love of her life (indeed she will use his expression about "sitting on the rocks"--waiting for someone to come back after they had gone off to have their own fun--many years after the fact, to very moving effect, if the reader is able to remember such pinpointed details) and then has to return home and enter into a marriage of social convenience. Many reviews of this novel have absolutely no problem ruining every surprise the novel contains by paraphrasing the events in a few sentences. Yes, it would be easy to say quickly what happens to Antonie, but it would be more accurate and mysterious to say that she just has terrible luck, for whatever reason.

Thomas is the most industrious and responsible of the children and justifiably takes over the firm at a surprisingly young age when his father passes. He marries Gerda, who is something of an exotic woman from Amsterdam, who plays the violin and is musically-inclined, and many of the townspeople look down on her. Everything lands on Thomas. There are an indescribable number of stresses that affect his constitution, and this is one of the few times I've read a novel that appropriately captures the feeling of anxiety that comes with all of the overwhelming responsibilities life asks of one. Thomas is a pitch-perfect personification of that side of life, and his metaphysical awakening near the end of the novel is one of the best philosophical revelations I have read, though perhaps only because of its result. I don't want to reveal what happens to Thomas, because it is also, sort of perfect in a way, if terribly depressing. That is, it is funny in its own way.

Christian is the least-developed of the three principal Buddenbrook children, but he is the most familiar literary character. He does not consider himself fit for work, as he is constantly beseiged by pains in his left sides, has nerves that are "too short" and would rather travel and do occasional work in random businesses abroad and go to the theater then actually devote himself to the family trade. As far as the other characters go, Christian is the greatest "failure" --at dinners he likes to talk about the depravity of a woman he once knew named Maria, an English bar-buddy named Johnny Thunderstorm, and to do impressions of other friends and authority figures in town that the family knows. Eventually, his weaknesses begin to get the better of him, and his conversations turn darker, more absurd, and some of the most highly dramatic scenes in the novel come out of Thomas's dismissal of Christian. He begins to mention some kind of bottle he was filling with a gas, and how he nearly exploded himself along with all of his neighbors, and how whenever he sees an open window he has the sudden urge to jump out of it, and how sometimes he will awake in the middle of the night in bed and see a man on his couch, nodding at him. Everyone writes Christian off, but he is one of the great characters in Buddenbrooks.

Finally, besides the other dozen or so minor characters, Hanno, Thomas's only child, is the last great character. He is an artistic soul, given to music, with only one somewhat unusually close friend Kai, Count Molln, who loves Edgar Allen Poe and wants to be a writer. His mother supports his love for music by getting him a harmonium, and Thomas worries that the boy will never want to take over the family firm, as he is the last possible person to be able to do it. The climax of Buddenbrooks occurs in the almost totally obvious and mundane but in a way unthinkable recitation of a day of studies in Hanno's life, and how greatly he had come to despise them. During recess, he offers his complaints on social anxiety:

"Sometimes in class we look at each other, the way we did when Petersen got marked because he read out of a crib, when all of the rest of us did the same. The same thought is in both our minds--but you know how to make a face and let it pass. I can't. I get so tired of things. I'd like to sleep and never wake up. I'd like to die, Kai! No, I am no good. I can't want anything. I don't even want to be famous. I'm afraid of it, just as much as if it were a wrong thing to do. Nothing can come of me, that is perfectly sure."

Finally, that night Hanno plays at his harmonium, and the endlessly-ongoing paragraph that charts the improvisation of his piece, the development of a simple motif which recurs to heartbreaking effect, supposedly meant to mirror the aesthetic principles of the novel, is truly one of the most memorable passages I have seen in recent memory, not unlike the meta-reflections of music in Doctor Faustus relating to literature. The chapter that follows is similarly memorable, but is also hollow and cold in a way. The novel ends on a rather sad note and a quirky, positive image.

It's very difficult to adequately sum up this novel, but it is a great work from a forgotten era, and though these circumstances don't still exist in such the exact same form, these characters are eternal and their qualities are just as real as anyone currently living today.

Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann (original review)

While I have already posted a review of Buddenbrooks, I mentioned in that post that I had wasted an hour of my life writing this earlier review. Well, I found that a draft had been saved on the online server, so I am providing it as an example of what happens when you have to write the same thing twice, and how different it can come out, and why this is my serious issue with revision.

When I started off Flying Houses with a review of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, I stated that I hadn't yet read Buddenbrooks or The Magic Mountain, but I was going to read them as soon as I could. Now, this afternoon I have finished Buddenbrooks, and it is equally as affecting as Doctor Faustus, though without the slow build-up that I complained of in that novel. As I mentioned in that first review, the first two hundred pages of Dr. Faustus were rather dense and difficult to get through, but once they had sunk in, the rest of the novel was a total pleasure.



In my opinion there are no weak spots in Buddenbrooks. Though Mann is a literary master for succeeding on every level categorically, perhaps his ability to create characters truly drawn from real life stands out as his greatest artistic gift. The plot of this novel can be explained very vaguely--it's about the decline of a family over four generations. They are a German family with a patriarch named Johann, born around 1770, a son named Jean, and grandchildren Antonie, Thomas, and Christian. While the novel moves slowly at first, taking time to establish old Johann and his wife, their own marriage slightly complicated, with one other son named Gotthold who has been shut out of the family for not working for the family firm and marrying appropriately to his class. It's in the characters that the plot of the novel is contained.



Antonie, also called Tony, is first the most deeply developed character. She really enjoys all of the niceties that come with being a Buddenbrook. It's easy to spoil a lot of the plot elements by writing a review. A lot of people, when they write reviews of this book, just completely go off and talk about stuff that happens all the way through the book, without any sense of not spoiling the fun for the reader. If you can call reading this book "fun" that is--though that is a joke. It is an excellent novel on every level, but it is of very depressing subject matter. However, if you yourself are not the most successful person on the planet, if you want to see someone else struggle, if you think you can gain something from reading about their troubles, well you may have found quite the book. I am always amazed by the fact that of all the different facets and hobbies in my life, it is always the book I am reading which seems to reflect my present state of being. Well, I will just say about Antonie that she falls in love, and for whatever reason she can't marry him, and so she embarks upon a life of quite bad luck, so that it seems if her first initial question of love had been better answered, so many unfortunate fates may have been spared her.



But she is not the only one. Thomas, generally known as the most respectable character in the novel, obsessed with his appearance, a town official, a Senator, the head of the family firm at its most delicate period yet, maintains a rigid, empirical approach to life. However, it is not long before he begins to suffer from depression, and the way Mann describes his personality and his exterior--the "mask" he adorns for business affairs--is truly heart-rending. Thomas is a tragic character mostly because he is the one for whom all the pressure of the firm rests upon--everyone relies on him, and the strain is brought to such a degree that it would nauseate anyone, though in truth it appears that those are the sort of feelings one inevitably does have in life. It is overwhelming in what it asks of you, and Thomas is the best character I have ever read to personify that concept. The only character really concerned about the numbers, true accountability.



Christian is a more typical literary character, and of course one I enjoy immensely and find great comfort in. He is a dabbler in the arts, who likes to go to the theater, and likes to do impressions of people that everyone in his family knows. And he has travels all over and he spends holiday gatherings telling stories about the depravity of a woman he met named Maria (with the family always not knowing how to respond), some English guy he knew named Johnny Thunderstorm, and other stories from the club where he always hangs out. In the very first scene, as a boy Christian has a digestive issue after dinner, and throughout the novel he has little medical issues that keep cropping up that he continues to exagerrate. The pain in his left side, for example, and the trouble with his nerves. Eventually he uses it as an excuse to not be able to work, and finally he starts talking about how he had been doing some experiment with a bottle and some kind of gas which nearly exploded and exploded all of his neighbors with him, or how whenever he saw an open window he had the great sudden urge to jump out of it, or how lately he had been sleeping in bed to look up and see man sitting on his couch, nodding at him. Of course, Christian is the greatest "failure" in the novel. He earns practically nothing and gets by on his inheritance parititioned out to him by his brother. I won't say what happens to him at the end though that is also commonly pointed out as if its no big deal. But I will say that he and Tony are the characters with the greatest longevity in the novel--they're there from beginning to end.



The book reaches its climax in the character of little Johann, or Hanno as he is called, the only child of Thomas Buddenbrook, whose wife Gerda is an accomplished violinist from Amsterdam, and who instills a deep love of music in the boy. She gets him a harmonium, and he increasingly spends time improvising on it, which is upsetting to Thomas, who expects him to take over the family firm and keep their name alive. He has one close friend named Kai who wants to be a writer and is really the only to lend him emotional support, besides his mother. The way the novel ends was rather crazy, in my opinion, and I have to call it a movement of genius, (like Leverkuhn's final symphony ending to Doctor Faustus), which has a chapter with a surprisingly detailed day of studies at school, which then spells out all of Hanno's fears about the impending struggle before him, and especially, most beautifully, more beautifully than any other passage in the book, I noticed the next two pages were of one massive paragraph, describing in detail how Hanno played on the harmonium that night, the "simple motif" he had developed longer, and longer to heartbreaking effect at its end. The passage is one of the most lyrical I have ever laid eyes on, and if what I have read is true, it is supposedly a summary of the aesthetic principles that went into the work of the writing of the novel itself. It is not so different from Faustus in the way it uses music as a meta-reflection of literature, at least in the character of the artistic soul of Hanno.



Buddenbrooks is a novel that I had never heard anyone talk about, or remembered hearing anyone talk about, in my entire life. Thus it is probably "out of fashion" and for some specific reason--maybe it is just too long? Regardless it is a work of great emotional depth that....

Unemployment

May 2, 2008 was my mother's birthday and my final day at Jefferies & Co. I called her to wish her a happy one, and my co-workers held a potluck lunch for me as a send-off. The circumstances that led up to this event all seemed the logical, reasonable sort. I was being paid $13/hour to do rather menial work. I wanted something more significant. My boss and I agreed it was in both of our best interests if I sought work elsewhere. Let me make one thing clear: I would have worked at Jefferies & Co. on a permanent basis if they had been able to hire me. Unfortunately, they prefer to manage their payroll through temporary staffing agencies, which actually makes them pay twice as much for my time, but which may give them some sort of tax-break, or may be an indication of their corporate climate (I only saw four or five co-workers leave/be fired in the six months I was there--but accounts payable can be dull if you do not have interesting people to talk to). While it was dull, I enjoyed the company of my co-workers, and my life seemed to be going in some direction, even if it was as small as writing poems and songs in my little orange journal during my cigarette breaks, I felt like I was living a life not wholly unhappy.

I stopped sharing a two-bedroom apartment at the end of April and moved into my own place in Silverlake. This was also a decision of the logical, reasonable sort. I wanted to live on my own. I wanted to be able to play music at a volume appropriate for singing along. I wanted to get all my books and my stereo and my LCD TV and get my own place with digital cable and get all the channels and get an XBOX 360 for HD capabilities and I wanted to live where it was slightly cheaper, in Hollywood. So I found an apartment that was the same rent as my share--$750--of course this is before they raised it to $795 a month, and before my extra $150-200/month in cell phone, cable, electric, and gas bills. I figured, it was okay, I could still make ends meet with those numbers. I would be living in Silverlake! Where Morrissey lives! Maybe I could meet him and befriend him and write his authorized biography! Or maybe I could be a bohemian poet, reading prose works at one of the cafes along Sunset Blvd, collecting $10 from a tip jar every night and building connections to get my work published. Or I could work Downtown, or in Hollywood, or even in the Valley, in Pasadena or Glendale--even Burbank is not such an unreasonable commute. Sure, I wasn't two miles from the beach anymore (my bi-weekly runs to Venice Beach were no longer possible) but I was a lot closer to Hollywood, and the industry I moved here to try to gain a foothold in.

Now, one tip for anyone considering moving to L.A. If you are concerned about finding work here (and you should be)--it is probably the best option to live on the west-side. Now, the west-side is expensive--Westwood, Santa Monica, Venice Beach--none are cheap. Palms/Culver City is the best bet for cheap, convenient, safe housing. Now, living in Silverlake, I find many, many jobs are located on the west-side, and not so many downtown. Century City is perhaps the most popular employment center in Los Angeles. Any of the areas between Westwood and Santa Monica are also popular for employers. There are practically no businesses in Silverlake beyond boutiques and restaurants. Hollywood does offer employer locations, but they tend to veer closer to Beverly Hills, which is about midway from where I live to Santa Monica. Santa Monica is like twenty miles from where I live, just so you know. 20 miles is a really hard commute to do in L.A. Most of the time I don't apply to jobs in Santa Monica. Most of the time, I am spending my time with staffing agencies again. They at least offer me some sort of hope. They are someone to talk to. They do not ignore the resumes you send them. Or rather, they do ignore, but once they know you, they will at least make you feel better about yourself by talking to you and giving you realistic impressions of who will hire you.

I've applied to be practically everything here--a legal assistant (on a phone interview last night that was so exciting and nerveracking and ultimately disappointing and bittersweet), a music sales representative (for a company that is basically a glorified myspace for "industry attention"), an accounting clerk and administrative assistant at God-knows how many places, generally only interviewing at staffing agencies for those roles, a traffic data collector (on an hour long interview last Friday that I thought went really well...), an assistant to a talent agent (on a very short interview this Monday that I thought went really well--but the guy said he was meeting "a million" people that day)--which was only going to pay $500 a week--sadly a wage I may have to deal with in other industries as well, an SAT English teacher in Arcadia, CA, another 20-mile commute, but one that would pay $15/hour and would have been good for getting me back into English, but I wasn't experienced enough, an administrative ("sales," but not so much) assistant for Biolock, a company introducing key-free, fingerprint-technology security, where the French lady who would be my boss wondered whether or not I would really like doing it for $13/hour. I wish I had tried to speak French with her, but I am afraid of looking like a fool who can't keep up his end of the conversation.

This post is to demonstrate the nature of despair in times of unemployment. And also, to give others an idea of the specific experience I have had over the last two months. Warning to all college graduates: a B.A. in liberal arts is not necessarily going to make you that much more qualified than an applicant with a HS Diploma, because they generally have four more years of experience on their resume. It's a trade off, and I wish I hadn't studied "Writing and Politics" at NYU because I don't think anybody respects the fact that I designed my own curriculum--they'd rather believe it is a BS major (no pun intended). So I sent out my revised rationale for my colloquium as an attachment to that Legal Assistant position and that was enough for that man to call and say he was impressed with my writing skills.

Nice, but there are no literature-based businesses that pay you to interpret old texts. There is only new, present-day text that must be analyzed. And it is not very difficult to analyze business copy. The aims of business are far more ordinary than the aims of literature. It is easy to predict a successful model for business, but few people realize how difficult it is to find a successful model for a novel. Yes, I would copy the structure of This Side of Paradise or Buddenbrooks (my current reading), but that would be a cop-out. One has to understand how Fitzgerald and Mann came to cultivate their own prose habits, and one must behave appropriately to complete the task. That is, writing every day. Other writers will often sneer at amateurs, asking, "Do you write every day?" in order to classify their seriousness. Yes, writing every day is pretty much a necessity, but unfortunately, it's very hard to make yourself do that when you're working 40 hours a week or more. When you are unemployed, it is much easier to write every day, but it also comes with the guilt and fear that you are not (nor will be) a useful presence in anyone else's business model.

The state of the artist in 2008 is quite frustrating. It appears that music, (punk rock, more specifically) is the only medium which continues to profess the same values, though that may be because money is never really the primary aim--it is building an audience. Film may have always been an "insiders" medium, but it appears now that the studios are interested in more and more copycat projects guaranteed to make profits rather than weird, experimental art films. In order to be taken seriously by literary agents, I have to be published in a prestigious journal. In order to be published in a prestigous journal, I have to pass a screening process that is probably as intense as admission into any MFA program. It would be prudent for me to work on an economical short story in the 3,000-4,000 word range, but I am too anxious to finish my second novel. And I am too anxious to find a job.

It appears that connections are the greatest asset any single person can have when entering any job market. As much as I used to scoff at the idea of networking (and while most networking events find me networking with people just as, or more desperate than myself) having as many friends as you can is usually the most intelligent path towards success in business. That, and completing a major with real business applicability, but that's something I wouldn't know about.

Doctor Faustus - Thomas Mann

As far as reviews go, I feel it is appropriate to mention that a critic's knowledge of an artist's entire oeuvre is certainly indispensable when situating a work in a greater context. In the case of Thomas Mann, I have yet to read (and I greatly look forward to) The Buddenbrooks, or The Magic Mountain, or The Confessions of Felix Krull, or "Mario and the Magician," but I have read a collection of his early short stories and I did read Doctor Faustus, which is more than you can say for the vast majority of this current American populace. Little does it matter that Mann composed Faustus in California in the mid 1940's after escaping Nazi Germany. What Americans read German authors, even if they are amongst the all-time greatest, and only removed little more than a hundred years from Generation Y2K? Ambitious, literary Americans will embrace a Fitzgerald, a Hemingway, a Salinger, and they may even be brave enough to embrace a Kafka, but Mann is in different territory. To be sure, Kafka is far more famous, but to be sure, Mann is far more decorated. The Magic Mountain earned him the Nobel Prize when he was 54 years old. Faustus was published shortly after his 70th birthday. After reading only 750 pages or so of Mann's prose, I feel compelled to review his final book, so excited (and intimidated) I am to move forward into the rest of his oeuvre. I plan to read The Buddenbrooks next, immediately upon completion of my second novel, and to finish it before I begin my third. If you do not already realize that Mann has seriously changed the way I thought about writing, then you probably do not understand why I am writing anything at all in the first place.

I have read that Dr. Faustus was originally conceived as a short story, and then expanded into the 530 page epic it became. I have also read that in the first sentence of the novel, Thomas Mann meant to be providing a parody of his general syntax. Regardless of its parodic elements, I read the first chapter in a bookstore in Nantucket and decided that I must at once own this paperback novel. I would not finish reading it for another six or seven months, but once I made it through the 200th page, nothing else seemed to matter except finishing the book to see how it would end. And what an ending!

The novel concerns one Dr. Serenus Zeitblom, who has been moved in his elderly age to write a biography of his lifelong (and long deceased) friend, Adrian Leverkuhn, the famous German composer. The first 200 pages describe their early years together, and goes to great lengths to emphasize the importance of one of their instructors, Kretzschmar, apparently very influential to the young Leverkuhn. The beginning is extremely difficult because it often dissolves into lengthy discussions by the youthful characters on philosophy and Nationalism. Whether this sort of dialogue is believable or not, I cannot tell, but one thing for sure that I know is that people today are about one hundred times stupider than any single one of the many intimately-felt characters in this novel. I mean that they are incapable of communicating on the level of these characters. To look back on Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise and consider the philosophical discussions in that text is to witness a century of reduction happening by a mere 20 years difference in age, and a different country in the midst of prosperity, as opposed to another country building towards a terrible climax.

As soon as Leverkuhn finishes his studies and begins living in boarding houses and going around with his new friend Rudolf Schildknapp, the novel begins to pick up and the scenes seem more carefully chosen. By the last 150 pages, barely anything is contained that is not absolutely essential and revelatory. In the first chapter, Zeitblom briefly mentions genius, and attempts to come up with a tidy definition of it. As the novel evolves, genius becomes its principle theme, and to get to the heart of why I find this book so essential, so classic, so deserving of canonization, to read Thomas Mann's reflections on genius is to sit before someone you can actually believe rather than thinking them boring and pointless. Genius may go unnoticed by peers and genius may be good for little in this age of great technological equalization (not!), but it still requires genius to be a successful artist, and Mann's portrait of Leverkuhn, as special a circumstance as it may be, gives one hope that greatness is not unreachable so long as all the elements are in their appropriate place.

Notable is Zeitblom's self-consciousness as a narrator. I do enjoy his digressions about how hard the book is to write, and about how he has been unfair to the reader by making some chapters too long, and his musings on the present condition of his home-state, which are obviously, chaotic and dismissive. The way he sets up the reader for what they are about to see is not only hilarious, but also very accomodating for all future readers of his, because these are really the only parts that don't require a degree to begin to understand. That said, most of the general plot of the novel is also rather simple--it is in the intricacies of Mann's language that most readers will be left in the dust.

Consider Chapter XXV, which Zeitblom opens up bombastically, stating that now, in this important 25th chapter, he will reveal Adrian's secret manuscript which he has kept concealed from the reader until the appropriate time. (It may be important for me to note that I have not read Goethe's or Marlowe's version of the same fable, and those familiar with it will intuit what the 25th chapter contains). Zeitblom exits as narrator, and Leverkuhn takes the reader on a 30 page fevered-dream/vision/hallucination which will directly lead to his artistic dominance over the following twenty-four years of his life. What Adrian must give up is not only his soul, but also the ability to love anyone else.

The final requirement of his agreement becomes responsible for arguably the most beautiful sections of the book. He begins courting one Inez Rodde, through the violinist friend of his Rudi Schwerdtfeger, and becomes part of a circle of artists, intellectuals, and bourgeois dilletantes interested in the pose of appreciating art. My personal favorite character is Frau Knoterich, who, besides sharing the same suffix as my surname, is a morphine addict who eventually converts her entire circle of friends to that same illicit practice. Mann's brief description of her practices in the throes of addiction alone show the kind of sensitive detail that all too many modern novelists would shelve in favor of shock value. But to return from the digression, the ending is arguably one of the saddest and most beautiful in all of literature.

It begins with the entrance of Neppo (or "Echo" as he calls himself), Adrian's four-year-old nephew who stays with him and becomes a cherished object to him and everyone that meets him. A tragedy slowly develops, and Adrian's exclamation to Zeitblom after everything has happened remains the only time I can recall that he shows any sort of emotion whatsoever. The effect is undeniable to any reader adventerous enough to stick with Mann through all the seemingly boring episodes of Adrian's sheltered emotional life. I wanted to cry, and I still want to cry when I think about that exclamation.

But the book would have no ending without the presentation of Leverkuhn's final symphony, the eponymously-referential "Lamentation of Dr. Faustus," which Zeitblom believes is his greatest work to date. Adrian invites all of his friends, nearly every major character in the novel to appear, to his home for the presentation of this magnum opus, and he "makes a scene," to put it simply. I tried to tell a friend of mine what happened in the scene but he stopped me, saying he didn't want me to ruin it for him. Yes, I do not want to ruin it for anyone, but it is such a good ending! It is hilarious, it is horrible, and it is totally perfectly the way the novel should end.

But it goes on even another chapter, to describe the circumstances of Adrian's later life. This too, must not be ruined, but I must admit I was suprised to see it continue on the way it did. Regardless, the final page of the novel was excellent, and Mann doesn't finish before he gets in his final word about Germany, which, considering the timing of the novel, seems rather accurate, but in hindsight, appears rather extreme, though not without its obvious point. On the back of the novel, the publisher states that Adrian's rise mirrors that of the Third Reich in Germany, but honestly I could not see the parallels, except for Zeitblom's personal musings on the status quo.

There are few times one has to read for absolute pleasure anymore, and while an ordinary reader may not derive much pleasure from the beginning of Dr. Faustus, if they are able to stick with it, to see the value in it, they will be vastly rewarded upon completing it (and perhaps may be forfeiting more than they realize).