Is The Magic Mountain a difficult book?
We often see these discussions on social media about difficult books. Ulysses is mentioned. Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Some of Henry James’ later novels. And Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. These novels have one thing in common – they are very long. Depending on the font size, the page count of The Magic Mountain varies between 750 and over 1000 pages. If you’re a slow reader, this alone could make it difficult, but that’s usually not what people are referring to.
I personally didn’t find it difficult, but I could imagine a few things might actually be challenging for some readers. Thomas Mann is a highly intellectual writer. A master of language. I don’t know anyone who writes like him, uses language like he does. I always loved it because I find it expressive and funny but he’s not a writer who lets you identify much with his characters. You’re always at arm’s length. At times, the author will intrude. He will make fun of the story, his own writing, his characters. There’s a whole lot of telling instead of showing. For this, he’s often been called a cold writer. We don’t really know how his characters feel and if we do it’s through the lenses of satire and mockery. That’s not to everyone’s taste. The sentences are rather long, and his style is very unique. I’m sure translators didn’t have an easy time. I don’t know how many English translations there are by now, but apparently there was a new one in the 80s that was extremely different from the first translation. I read an article that I found on JSTOR and the author said that the old translation seemed to have stayed close to the original while the new one made it sound more English. In other words, the translator tried to make it more readable. I’m never sure how to feel about these attempts.
What made The Magic Mountain challenging for me is that it slows down considerably from page 500 on. The pace changes completely and only picks up again towards the very last pages. The book has 7 chapters with sub chapters and the first five are about 50% of the book. From book 6 on, the sub chapters get longer and longer. That wouldn’t exactly be a problem but the nature of the chapters change. While there’s a lot going on in the first half, in the second half philosophical and/or theoretical parts become more frequent and far longer. To be honest, those weren’t always that gripping to read. Of course, this change of pace and content has deeper meaning. After all, this is a book about time, the nature of time, the experience of time and about a specific period, the years before World War I.
Beauty is a Sleeping Cat 
I don’t think I read The Magic Mountain in English ever, so I can’t possibly comment on the translation(s), but I did read at least part of a Romanian translation at some point and quite enjoyed it. Read it in German of course and I agree with you that Thomas Mann likes to be quite the omniscient narrator in this.
You really feel like he wants to stay in charge and enjoys having the power to do with his characters whatever he likes to do.
Translating from the German is particularly challenging because of the sentence structure. The first translator seems to have followed that structure which must have been a bit odd in English. But if you shorten and smooth them out too much you’re so far from the original. It’s a dilemma. One you probably know well although newer authors often simplify their sentence structure.
I don’t recall finding the book (which I read in English) difficult at all – long, yes, but not as dense as Proust!!
I wouldn’t call Proust dense but the sentences might be much longer. I find Mann has a energy that swipes me along while Proust has far more scenes I want to linger on.
I agree — he does hold his characters at a certain distance. I still haven’t finished the book myself; I think I have a quarter left. I’m not even sure why I stopped (a year ago, maybe two?). I remember feeling the narrative was becoming a bit repetitive, and my interest drifted. But it keeps resurfacing in my mind for some reason, so I know I’ll return to it soon…
The pace really changes considerably after the first half and from the moment he introduces Naphta it’s more theoretical and philosophical. The end gets really crazy with new characters. It’s worth it. I hope you’ll get into it again.
I had a similar experience – I didn’t find it a difficult book, although it was very long. But I did find those long theoretical discussions with Settembrini and Naphta tough going sometimes, and they did slow the pace of the second half of the novel. It was interesting because time moved much more slowly at the start, when Mann took whole chapters just to cover a few days, whereas later on he starts to cover months and years in a short space. But the earlier sections were more readable, and I think they got me hooked and kept me going through the long conversations.
It’s funny how he plays with time. Also with the reader’s experience of it. I can’t say I’m too fond of Settembrini and Naphta but they serve a purpose. The first half is very entertaining though. I’ll read your review as soon as I finished my blog series.
This is so helpful, especially in preparing me for the slower pace in the second half – thank you Caroline!
I’m glad you say so. I was actually thinking of you. It’s still worth it.
Yes, there’s definitely a point where the going suddenly gets tough, almost becoming a different book…
Right? And then towards the end he throws absolutely everything at it.