jonbrammer's review against another edition
3.0
Exposition, exposition, exposition. Mann is the painterly sort of writer who seems to think that if you describe a setting with enough detail, then the conflict will naturally emerge. This seems like an impressionistic mode of writing - we learn a lot of odds and ends about each protagonist in each story before we understand what the story is actually about. The author in the title story spends time traveling in southern Europe and eventually ends up in Europe, has an encounter with a gondolier, ends up in a hotel where he becomes obsessed with a young Polish boy. The point? Well, the point seems to be create a mood of unresolved foreboding. Readers who need clear plot structure will probably be frustrated by Mann. This collection of stories makes me want to investigate his novels. Thanks for reading my review.
jzelman's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
emma_ireland's review against another edition
3.0
I only read Death in Venice, since after that I'd rather have put my eyes out with a rusty teaspoon than attempted any of the other stories. I found the whole thing an absolute yawn, and it took me twice as long to read as it should have, since I'd go a paragraph and then starting wondering what I'd have for lunch or if I should go to the supermarket today or tomorrow. I was bored, absolutely bored, and yes, I realise much has been written on the "wonderful prose" of Mann, but I detested every second of it, it felt like wading through quicksand in a soaking wet ankle-length wool coat. Three instead of two to give the other stories that I shall never read the benefit of the doubt.
salbulga's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
libkatem's review against another edition
3.0
Full disclosure: I only read "Death in Venice," not the other stories.
I know this was published before the so-called "Great War" (or WWI), but I couldn't help reading this as an allegory (or a warning) to the war in question.
Aschenbach, a famous author, decides to go on holiday to Venice. (Venice being a veritable playground wonderland for Victorian/Edwardian men). He's suffering from a crisis in his life, his wife is dead, and he's very unhappy. Venice is lovely and beautiful and blah blah blah, until a cholera epidemic strikes many dead.
hmmm... perhaps Mann was in the business of prophet-izing?
I know this was published before the so-called "Great War" (or WWI), but I couldn't help reading this as an allegory (or a warning) to the war in question.
Aschenbach, a famous author, decides to go on holiday to Venice. (Venice being a veritable playground wonderland for Victorian/Edwardian men). He's suffering from a crisis in his life, his wife is dead, and he's very unhappy. Venice is lovely and beautiful and blah blah blah, until a cholera epidemic strikes many dead.
hmmm... perhaps Mann was in the business of prophet-izing?
annaretamaria's review against another edition
1.0
Luin tästä vain nimikkokertomuksen, eli Kuolema Venetsisassa.
lectoribenevolo's review against another edition
5.0
A magnificent collection of Thomas Mann’s shorter fiction, many of which are also to be found in the longer collection Stories of Three Decades. Here, we see Mann exploring themes which recur often in his work: the artist suspended in the tension between bourgeois respectability and passionate abandon, between detached form and dissolution; the voluptuous attraction of the South (Italy) and of the East; the paradoxically humanizing and dehumanizing nature of illness; the Faustian bargain brought about by deliberate transgression of social norms.
I keep coming back to read Thomas Mann because I never quite feel like I understand what he means for me to take away from his fiction. The more I read, though, the more I feel like some of the gaps fill in for me. The closest parallel I can find for Mann as an author is Charles Dickens: his fiction always, even at its darkest, maintains a certain human sympathy with it characters, and it tries to chart out, in broad strokes, the spiritual geography of early 20th-century Europe. He’s too enamored of his characters and their lives to press them in service of a simplistic agenda, which makes him pretty fascinating to read at length.
This collection contains the following stories, for each of which I give a one-sentence comment:
“Death in Venice” (1911): The most deliberately artful and restrained work of Mann’s I know.
“Tonio Kroger” (1903): Could have been titled “A Portrait of Gustave von Aschenbach as a Young Man.”
“Mario and the Magician” (1929): If this wasn’t meant to be an unforgettable portrait of Italian Fascism and authoritarianism, I will eat my hat.
“Disorder and Early Sorrow” (1925): A tale of bourgeois tenderness amidst the economic collapse of the Weimar Republic.
“A Man and His Dog” (1918): On the surface a genial exploration of dog ownership; beneath the surface, an exploration of one of Mann’s favorite themes, that of living on the edge of nature and its powers of dissolution and death.
“The Blood of the Walsungs” (1905): An incredibly disturbing story of incest and (beneath the surface) the existence of assimilated Jews in early 20th-century Europe, largely suppressed from publication during the author’s lifetime (probably due to strong resemblances between the story and his wife’s family).
“Tristan” (1902): A short depiction of art and life colliding in a sanatorium, which has strong parallels with the subplot in The Magic Mountain involving Clavdia Chauchat and Mynheer Peeperkorn.
“Felix Krull” (1911): An initial sketch for what later became the novel Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, and it feels incomplete for that reason.
I keep coming back to read Thomas Mann because I never quite feel like I understand what he means for me to take away from his fiction. The more I read, though, the more I feel like some of the gaps fill in for me. The closest parallel I can find for Mann as an author is Charles Dickens: his fiction always, even at its darkest, maintains a certain human sympathy with it characters, and it tries to chart out, in broad strokes, the spiritual geography of early 20th-century Europe. He’s too enamored of his characters and their lives to press them in service of a simplistic agenda, which makes him pretty fascinating to read at length.
This collection contains the following stories, for each of which I give a one-sentence comment:
“Death in Venice” (1911): The most deliberately artful and restrained work of Mann’s I know.
“Tonio Kroger” (1903): Could have been titled “A Portrait of Gustave von Aschenbach as a Young Man.”
“Mario and the Magician” (1929): If this wasn’t meant to be an unforgettable portrait of Italian Fascism and authoritarianism, I will eat my hat.
“Disorder and Early Sorrow” (1925): A tale of bourgeois tenderness amidst the economic collapse of the Weimar Republic.
“A Man and His Dog” (1918): On the surface a genial exploration of dog ownership; beneath the surface, an exploration of one of Mann’s favorite themes, that of living on the edge of nature and its powers of dissolution and death.
“The Blood of the Walsungs” (1905): An incredibly disturbing story of incest and (beneath the surface) the existence of assimilated Jews in early 20th-century Europe, largely suppressed from publication during the author’s lifetime (probably due to strong resemblances between the story and his wife’s family).
“Tristan” (1902): A short depiction of art and life colliding in a sanatorium, which has strong parallels with the subplot in The Magic Mountain involving Clavdia Chauchat and Mynheer Peeperkorn.
“Felix Krull” (1911): An initial sketch for what later became the novel Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, and it feels incomplete for that reason.
siili's review against another edition
3.0
Kiinnostavimmat novellit olivat Kuolema Venetsiassa sekä Mario ja taikuri. Yleisesti ottaen lähestulkoon kaikki novellit olivat melkoisen kuvailevia ja sen vuoksi osittain jopa paikoillaan junnaavia. Ja mikä ihme ajatus kirjailijalla on ollut kuvata suurimmassa osassa novelleista (paitsi Petetyssä, siinä roolit olivat toisin) ties millaisia, erityisesti vanhempien miehien mieltymyksiä itseään huomattavasti nuorempiin (välillä suorastaan lapsiin) henkilöihin? 3 tähteä.
kskillz's review
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
3.5