Ralph Aye

Im writing this mostly to vent but maybe someone will find it useful. Since retirement I’ve been working my way through the “great books”, including War and Peace, Dante’s Divine Comedy etc and just finished the Magic Mountain. I’ve loved most of them but pretty much hated this one. To be clear, Mann possessed a spectacular intellect and applied a staggeringly broad fund of knowledge to his exceptional writing skills, but it a) wasn’t a fun read and b) wasn’t enriching. It’s extraordinarily boring as a story until the last 100 pages; there’s an exploration of the passage of time that one could get just as easily from watching paint dry; his detailed descriptions are superb but rarely add to content or artistry (except his description of the war at the end which is some of the best writing ever!) and the endless exposition of sociologic, philosophic and political issues through the 2 protagonists, while interesting historically, is painfully irrelevant today. In short it’s a masterpiece and I’m glad to have finished it but if you’re looking for a good book there are at least 100 others to consider before this one.

great book, well written and quite helpful