The Magic Mountain

Noble Laureate Thomas Mann is known for his densely intellectual work. I enjoyed The Magic Mountain in a simpler way, though.

It’s pre-World War I, and I went along with German engineering student Hans Castorp to a tuberculosis sanitarium in the Swiss Alps. He’s there to visit his cousin but stays for seven years. There are crude medical treatments—with no magic bullets (antibiotics) to treat this contagious disease. In forced isolation, institutional order reduces chaos, and normal life goes on for most.

It’s ingenious how Mann creates a microcosm of the outside world through characters of different nationalities who engage… show more.

Because medical quackery, healing, and illness are themes in my new novel, a professor friend recommended that I read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

I loved this leisurely, episodic novel, set shortly before the First World War. I was especially interested in how Mann explores the line between medical experimentation and quackery, especially in diseases with no known cure. At the time the novel was written, there was no cure for tuberculosis.

The novel is set in Davos, Switzerland, in a sanitorium high on a mountain. In his twenties, Hans Castorp visits his cousin, Joachim, who has been diagnosed with… show more.

This 20th Century masterpiece by the great Thomas Mann is not for the faint of heart, as it requires great powers of concentration, the antithesis of the Digital Age's distracted attention. But it is well worth the effort, for those with stamina, because all of humanity's foibles are found in The Magic Mountain, a book that remains incredibly relevant to our times. Mann's novel is about 20-something Hans Castorp, who visits his tubercular cousin residing in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps; intending to stay two weeks, Castorp winds up staying seven years, waylaid and fascinated by the colorful… show more.

This 700-page epic flies by as quickly as the twisting, turning train ride taken by our young protagonist, Hans Castorp, up into the Swiss Alps for his (assumed) brief visit to an exclusive sanatorium to recover his health, take the air and soak in the baths, stroll through well-laid gardens, breathe deeply, dine in leisurely fashion -- until, before he knows it, seven long years have ambled by, and his world-view, within and outside his mind, has blown up beyond all imagination. This is Thomas Mann, the profound paragon of narrative, at his most ironic, erudite, impassioned, insidious, and erotic.