Rating: 
Summary: Is Western civilization sick?
Review: Like many in America today, I find myself a product of an unfinished education, with a sense of being flung into a history I don't quite grasp. I do my best to remedy my inadequacies, and a novel like this is an excellent tonic for them.A classic 20th century novel of ideas, there's so much to mull over here: the nature of time, notions of progress and regress in history, the body and illness, psychoanalysis and spiritualism. Unlike his contemporaries Joyce and Faulkner, Mann doesn't give us radical experiments in narrative form. This is fairly straightforward and readable. The only bit of cleverness is Mann's telescoping of narrative and chronological time: 1 week can take a hundred pages, while a few years can be covered in twenty. However, as Mann writes at the outset, only the exhaustive is truly interesting, and Mann seeks to be fascinating throughout the 700 pages. Mann has a sense of humor and a sense of tragedy, and both shine here, with adults wrapped up like babies, medical X-ray photos as sensual mementos, multiple breakfasts, and grief as fetish. Despite the ironic and frequent declarations of the hero Hans Castorp's "mediocrity," by the end, Mann elicits from us genuine and deep sympathy for him.
Rating: 
Summary: Sorry, Tom -- I don't know what it is about you ...
Review: Sometimes I regret my resolve to finish every book that I begin reading. This one was a mistake, because my previous tussles with Thomas Mann (Death in Venice, Confessions of Felix Krull, Doctor Faustus) had all ended badly too. I've enjoyed none of his books that I've read and found them all a slog after the opening 100 pages, so this -- one of his longest and perhaps most difficult novel of all -- should have stayed on the shelf. I dare say that it's all my fault, that the teutonic manner simply doesn't agree with me, but ... It started off well enough, with Hans' trip up into the sanatorium and his clash with the insular and insitutionalised world of the patients. There were highpoints, such as the seances, the love affair from afar with the girl who slammed doors, the time Hans got lost while out skiing in a blizzard. But the endless philosophical debates for 20 pages at a time just ground me down. It's sad to say, but I failed to appreciate this book and even to see why it is regarded as such a 'great' book (and I've read and actually thoroughly enjoyed Ulysses, Tristram Shandy, Moby Dick and Don Quixote). However, I will once again, no doubt, succumb and forget my lack of Mann-appeal and take down Lotte in Weimar or The Holy Sinner and plough, po-faced, through these too. Mann, like Iris Murdoch, seems to be someone I'm destined to keep returning to reluctantly.
Rating:
Summary: An Education
Review: Probably more than any other author since Goethe, Thomas Mann wrote the quintessential "Bildungsroman" with The Magic Mountain. Like all of Mann's works, it is a sprawling monster of a novel, getting into just about everything under the sun from the first impression of hearing a phonograph (back when they really were new) all the way to the intellectual underpinnings of the counterreformation. Like most great writers, Mann can get into your interior life, and he will do so here in a way that will put you into the sanitarium with our hero Kastorp, and share his life and discoveries. It never ceases to amaze me how the thinnest of plots - none at all, in fact - can spin such a pure gold of a novel. I must confess that I prefer "Faustus", but after that this is my favorite Mann novel. However, I will stick with H.T. Lowe-Porter's version over Mr. Woods'. Ms. Lowe-Porter had the advantage of a personal and professional relationship with Mann, and if Mann were writing in English (which he spoke passably, I believe) I think it would probably parallel her version more than Mr. Woods'.
Rating: 
Summary: oh puleeez!
Review: thomas mann was a GREAT writer, don't get me wrong. however, it is my feeling that Magic Mountain is one of the most overrated books in history. it is dull! it is boring! it inspires somnolence! and that is being polite. thomas mann wrote so many other truly wonderful books, i find it very sad when people pick up magic mountain, throw it down in disgust and never read another book by this great author. let me name a few ... Royal Highness, Buddenbrooks, Transposed Heads, the Black Swan. i have not read the joseph books because my local library has never had the first volume in the set and i can't read them out of order. good reading to you all.
Rating:
Summary: Mann's Mountain-Simply the greatest novel ever written
Review: During the past 30 years,I've read MM at least 6 times,probably about every 4 years,in both the Lowe Porter,and new translation by John Woods,which I prefer mainly since he translates the love scenes between Hans and his elusive femme fatale,which is originally in French.Yes, the book takes a major effort,but it is totally worth it! (And I could not get through Faustus or the Joseph Tales, also by Mann.) Take it to your ski retreat,or desert island.It is like the very best wine,meant to be savored,not guzzled down like light beer!! As others here say,if you want to learn of the western world circa 1907-1915,(and in 2001),this novel just about covers it all.Descriptions of the weather,mountains,courting games, time,biology,and yes the meaning of it all, plus just about anything else,including some real eccentrics.Also,don't miss the greatest picaresque yarn of them all,the full length version of "Confessions of Felix Krull-Confidence Man",finished when the great writer was 75,40 years after it was originally written as short story.This is a hilarious farce written by the 20th century's greatest author.(In my humble opinion,this is simply indisputable)Also, if you like Saul Bellow,you'll also greatly appreciate Mann!!Their word wizardry,intellectual prowess,and wry humor are very similar.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful Preoccupation with TIME
Review: J.B. Priestley (1894-1984), the British novelist, playwright, and critic, declared >>The Magic Mountain<< "a novel of marvellous solidity, richness, complexity." Yes...this is one of the most profound and cerebrally provocative literary works of the modern era. Ostensibly a protracted experience at a Swiss alpine sanitarium, the novel as a whole is an enduring symbol of humanity in a pathological universe. Like other great novelists (such as Proust and Joyce) of the 20th cent., Mann was fairly obsessed with Time. Indeed, <<Magic Mtn.>> brings into striking juxtaposition the clockless time of the convalescent institution (where life is a seemingly endless succession of days) and the time-sense of the goal-directed world. The centralized point of view which prevails throughout the book is that of Hans Castorp and his expanding consciousness. By the end of the story, when Castorp has returned to "flatland," he has become a far wiser and more internally developed man than he could ever likely have become if he had lived a merely "horizontal" existence amongst general society. He achieved maturity through suffering, awareness, and confrontation of the Real. <<The Magic Mtn.>> is a great "developmental" novel but also a classical Germanic novel of education in the most beneficial sense of the term. Indisputably one of the seminal literary creations of the past century. I strongly recommend that you purchase/read the H.T. Lowe-Porter translation -- not the John E. Woods version.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, some deep points, but much unclear
Review: I liked this book without understanding much why. I always wanted to read more and more. For one, I wanted to know when Mme. Chauchat would come back and what would happen :-) I also enjoyed the conversations between Settembrini, Hans and Joachim and later Nafta. The climax of Hans' revelation in the mountain is also nice. But so much is left unexplained... (spoilers ahead!) Why did Nafta kill himself? Or Peeperkorn too? Why did Clavdia leave so suddenly to be never mentioned again (when she was quite central during a long part of the book)? And what's the central point of the book? I see many disconnected facts. Maybe there is no such a central point, but then why are all those facts in the same book? :-) I see people saying this is one of the very best books ever, and I wonder. Yes, it is good, but to be acclaimed like that it would have to have shown some essentially new insight, and I didn't see that. The discussion about Time is interesting, but that's far from a great original insight. ... .
Rating:
Summary: A one-of-a-kind (re)treat.
Review: I owe Harold Bloom (from his book How to Read and Why) many thanks for turning me onto The Magic Mountain. I am finding that I love the elegaic prose of Mann's work even more than Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago (and that is saying a lot!). I relish Zhivago's seclusion and haven in the Urals but I am actually envious of Hans Castorp's retreat into the Swiss Alps. If only there could be such a place--a secluded haven for quiet learning, comtemplation and Eros. I know this is a place where people go to die, but it is the quiet life of The Magic Mountain that stirs my emotions. I can hardly wait to finish this, and continue on with other Mann works especially Death in Venice. I can hardly believe the works of Mann have eluded me for so long. But recently discovering The Magic Mountain has been like finding not only a precious gem, but a retreat unto itself; i am able to forget about all the cares and stress of work and have Mann's words massage my mind and spirit word by slow word...
Rating:
Summary: wonderfully frustrating!
Review: I loved/hated this book! Maybe because I don't consider myself an "intellectual" - simply a lover of good stories. It was a wonderful premise for a story and a fascinating glimpse into life in a TB sanitorium - but I found myself wanting to quit reading several times whenever I'd be confronted by one of the intellectual ramblings (which could last for pages and pages) which I struggled to understand. The basic story was a good one - and finally towards the end of the book I relaxed a little and allowed myself to skip over these pages and enjoyed the book more without the frustration of plowing through incomprehensible text.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Most Important Books of Western Civilization!
Review: This is a beautiful, rich novel that presents the major philosophical ideas of our civilization in the form of vivid and fascinating characters. It is very important not only for the comprehensive quality of the philosophical content but also for the immediacy this content is given by the very passionate interactions and exchanges that occur among the characters. Stunning, moving, exciting, and intellectually stimulating in the extreme. Certainly one of the most important works of the 20th Century and perhaps of modern civilizaiton.
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