Reading Wednesday
Jan. 7th, 2026 07:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby Just finished: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Did you know that the edition I have ends with an afterword from the author asking people to read his 1200-page book twice? Anyway I am very proud of myself as I managed to finish it around 30 minutes before the hold was due back at the library.
So, is it good? Yes. Do I totally get it? Not totally, though yes, more than I would have if I'd read it when I was 16. Definitely the time stuff, the illness stuff, the characters who are thinly veiled stand-ins for pre-WWI European political debates, yes. But of course, it's a very different world now—there is no longer the temptation to embrace illness as freedom, the idea that you can just convalesce for years in what amounts to a different reality, the fairy-tale world of the sanatorium. Which is why the ending hits so brutally hard. Structurally, the first half of the book is Hans Castorp's first three weeks on the mountain, and then it goes blurry, and the next seven years pass in a dreamlike state, with the changing of the seasons and the coming and going (through death and otherwise) of the patients being the only sense that time exists at all. And then there's essentially a massacre of half the cast in various ways, culminating in the arrival of WWI, and Hans disappearing into a viscerally described battlefield; time and history do exist after all, and it collides with the dream.
Reading it in 2026, of course, I am struck by the debates between Settembrini, representing humanism, and Naphta, representing totalitarianism (Catholicism/communism/fascism, but look, Mann was very much working out his political ideas in this book), but something I didn't talk about last week is Mynheer Pieter Peeperkorn (yes this is a character name) who pops up late in the book as Clavdia Chauchat's sugar daddy. He's a larger-than-life figure who gets described as kingly and charismatic despite being far too old for her, distracting Hans from the aforementioned philosophical debate with revels, partying, and a hella Freudian love triangle. I'm particularly struck by his speech patterns. Look, the guy is basically Trump; he is charismatic because the other characters (except Settembrini, who winds up being the only character who comes off well by the end) read meaning into his rambling words that isn't there. This book feels so incredibly apropos for our present day despite being over a century old.
Anyway, I finished The Magic Mountain, ask me anything lol.
Currently reading: Invisible Line by Su J. Sokol. You know, something light and fun after reading all that. Ahahaha. This is hopepunk but I'm assuming that the hope part comes in more towards the end. It was first published in 2012 and the first 50 pages were such that I had to text the author and ask if xe had like, rewritten it for the current edition to update it or something? Xe had not. I suppose the direction was obvious in 2012 where the political climate was moving but it's nonetheless one of those unsettling dystopian books, set in a crumbling fascist US rife with surveillance and police brutality.
Laek, a history teacher, Janie, his activist lawyer partner, and their two kids, Siri and Simon, are doing their best to live a normal life in New York, but Laek was a bit more of a spicy activist when he was a teenager, and his fake ID is no longer cutting it. So they make the decision to flee by bike to Montreal, which has declared itself a sanctuary city in tension with the Canadian government. It's basically too relatable, with a bunch of moments where the characters wonder if it's too much, if they should stay and fight the small battles they can or GTFO while it's still a possibility. There's a scene early on of a teachers' union meeting where a new policy means that the teachers must report their children to immigration, and it's the most accurate depiction of this kind of scenario I've run across in fiction, and yeah. If your feelings about living under fascism, or next door to fascism, are escapism, this book is going to be too real; if however, like me, you need to just read more about living under fascism, you'll be into it.
So, is it good? Yes. Do I totally get it? Not totally, though yes, more than I would have if I'd read it when I was 16. Definitely the time stuff, the illness stuff, the characters who are thinly veiled stand-ins for pre-WWI European political debates, yes. But of course, it's a very different world now—there is no longer the temptation to embrace illness as freedom, the idea that you can just convalesce for years in what amounts to a different reality, the fairy-tale world of the sanatorium. Which is why the ending hits so brutally hard. Structurally, the first half of the book is Hans Castorp's first three weeks on the mountain, and then it goes blurry, and the next seven years pass in a dreamlike state, with the changing of the seasons and the coming and going (through death and otherwise) of the patients being the only sense that time exists at all. And then there's essentially a massacre of half the cast in various ways, culminating in the arrival of WWI, and Hans disappearing into a viscerally described battlefield; time and history do exist after all, and it collides with the dream.
Reading it in 2026, of course, I am struck by the debates between Settembrini, representing humanism, and Naphta, representing totalitarianism (Catholicism/communism/fascism, but look, Mann was very much working out his political ideas in this book), but something I didn't talk about last week is Mynheer Pieter Peeperkorn (yes this is a character name) who pops up late in the book as Clavdia Chauchat's sugar daddy. He's a larger-than-life figure who gets described as kingly and charismatic despite being far too old for her, distracting Hans from the aforementioned philosophical debate with revels, partying, and a hella Freudian love triangle. I'm particularly struck by his speech patterns. Look, the guy is basically Trump; he is charismatic because the other characters (except Settembrini, who winds up being the only character who comes off well by the end) read meaning into his rambling words that isn't there. This book feels so incredibly apropos for our present day despite being over a century old.
Anyway, I finished The Magic Mountain, ask me anything lol.
Currently reading: Invisible Line by Su J. Sokol. You know, something light and fun after reading all that. Ahahaha. This is hopepunk but I'm assuming that the hope part comes in more towards the end. It was first published in 2012 and the first 50 pages were such that I had to text the author and ask if xe had like, rewritten it for the current edition to update it or something? Xe had not. I suppose the direction was obvious in 2012 where the political climate was moving but it's nonetheless one of those unsettling dystopian books, set in a crumbling fascist US rife with surveillance and police brutality.
Laek, a history teacher, Janie, his activist lawyer partner, and their two kids, Siri and Simon, are doing their best to live a normal life in New York, but Laek was a bit more of a spicy activist when he was a teenager, and his fake ID is no longer cutting it. So they make the decision to flee by bike to Montreal, which has declared itself a sanctuary city in tension with the Canadian government. It's basically too relatable, with a bunch of moments where the characters wonder if it's too much, if they should stay and fight the small battles they can or GTFO while it's still a possibility. There's a scene early on of a teachers' union meeting where a new policy means that the teachers must report their children to immigration, and it's the most accurate depiction of this kind of scenario I've run across in fiction, and yeah. If your feelings about living under fascism, or next door to fascism, are escapism, this book is going to be too real; if however, like me, you need to just read more about living under fascism, you'll be into it.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-07 02:52 pm (UTC)My edition, published by Vintage and translated by John E. Woods, is only 706 pages. It's not a condensed version and not ridiculously small print, although there's not a lot of white space either (fairly narrow margins, no blank pages between chapters or page breaks between sections of a chapter).
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Date: 2026-01-07 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-07 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-07 10:09 pm (UTC)HAH
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Date: 2026-01-07 04:20 pm (UTC)Typical LEFTIST LIES!
Currently reading: Invisible Line by Su J. Sokol. You know, something light and fun after reading all that. Ahahaha. This is hopepunk but I'm assuming that the hope part comes in more towards the end. It was first published in 2012 and the first 50 pages were such that I had to text the author and ask if xe had like
I am angry about everything....
I hate Xe as nym, but I appreciate Xie didn't rewrite. We might disagree... I guess.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-07 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-08 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-08 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-07 11:46 pm (UTC)That's amazing for several reasons, one being the conspicuous absence of The Magic Mountain from discussions of war literature of which I have read not a small amount, another that I have seen that use of history as event horizon much more often in fiction about WWII (Angela Carter being a notable exception), the last that it just sounds incredibly well done.
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Date: 2026-01-08 12:23 am (UTC)It's such a good ending, even having known that it ended like that.
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Date: 2026-01-08 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-08 11:51 am (UTC)(Yes I know it's Herr Mann, Mr. Mann is funnier.)