The intellectually offensive union of sickness and stupidity

No, I'm not the least bit offended by Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. But it's so easy to mock the patients who people this novel. And Mann does, and I immensely enjoy his doing so.

Part of the magic of the Mountain: I picked it up again the other week after a hiatus of several months, and it's as fresh and engaging as if I'd left off only the day before. (Why did I leave off at all if it's so good, you ask? I don't rightly know. It demands attention, and once the momentum is interrupted and the spell is broken, it's easy to forget how rewarding time with it is.)

No doubt this magic is connected to Mann's treatment of time as one of the major themes.

What is time? A secret — insubstantial and omnipotent. A prerequisite of the external world, a motion intermingled and fused with bodies existing and moving in space. But would there be no time, if there were no motion? No motion, if there were no time? What a question! Is time a function of space? Or vice versa? Or are the two identical? An even bigger question! Time is active, by nature it is much like a verb, it both "ripens" and "brings forth." And what does it bring forth? Change! Now is not then, here is not there — for in both cases motion lies in between. But since we measure time by a circular motion closed in on itself, we could just as easily say that its motion and change are rest and stagnation — for the then is constantly repeated in the now, the there in the here. Moreover, since, despite our best desperate attempts, we cannot imagine an end to time or a finite border around space, we have decided to "think" of them as eternal and infinite — in the apparent belief that even if we are not totally successful, this marks some improvement. But does not the very positing of eternity and infinity imply the logical, mathematical negation of things limited and finite, their relative reduction to zero? Is a sequence of events possible in eternity, a juxtaposition of objects in infinity? How does our makeshift assumption of eternity and infinity square with concepts like distance, motion, change, or even the very existence of a finite body in space? Now there's a real question for you!

Hans Castorp turned these sorts of questions over and over in his own mind — a mind that, since his arrival up here, had tended to quibble and think indiscreet thoughts of this sort and had perhaps been especially honed and emboldened for grumbling by a naughty, but overwhelming desire, for which he had now paid dearly.

Chapter 6 gets very philosophical. We meet Leo Naphta, Jewish-born Jesuit. His conversations with Herr Settembrini, and others, are intense and also confusing (to Hans as well as myself). Various kinds of dualism, religious and philosophical. Free will, politics (in philosophical sense, never actually discussing the real matters of the day), pragmatism. Art and science. There's a section promoting cremation as a more logical alternative to burial.

Hans is finally arriving at some truths.

At this point Hans Castorp spoke up, breaking into their conversation with the courage of simple souls. He stared into space and declared, "Contemplation, retreat — there's something to it, sounds quite plausible. One could say that we live at a rather high level of retreat from the world up here. At five thousand feet, we recline in our lounge chairs — and remarkably comfortable they are — and look down on the world and its creatures and think things over. To tell the truth, now that I stop and think about it, my bed — and by that I mean my lounge chair, you understand — has proved very beneficial over the last ten months, made me think more about things than I ever did in all my years down in the flatlands, I can't deny that."

And still, it's funny.

The mood of pallid Frau Magnus in particular seemed without a glimmer of hope; she exuded bleakness of spirit the way a cellar exudes damp. And perhaps even more explicitly than Frau Stöhr, she represented the union of sickness and stupidity that Hans Castorp had declared intellectually offensive.

Hans, originally at the sanatorium to see his cousin for a 3-week visit, has been there now for over a year. It's almost 2 years since I started reading The Magic Mountain, and suspected I'd be letting the story unfold in near real time. It still captivates me, and I love it for slowing my mind down.

And yet, I'm setting it aside again to indulge in Murakami's 1Q84. Sometimes it all a bit too much for Hans — he needs to stop and consider his friends' philosophizing in his own time and space, somewhere away from them, as do I. And Hans has another order of thinking to do now that his cousin has left to rejoin the world below.

I return to "the bourgeoisiosity of life."

Two shocking scenes

It seems I am capable of being the kind of person who reads more than one book at a time (not including the couple books it's taking me years to get through and which I will not consider abandoned).

Even while I promised myself I'd make a concerted effort to move through The Magic Mountain this winter, it turns out that the book I consider myself to be reading (ie, the one I'd name if someone asked, so whatcha readin' these days?) is too cumbersome to carry on my commute as it doesn't slide nicely into either my purse or my lunch bag, and even though I carried it with me a couple times anyway in my hand, basically I've had enough of that shit, I don't like carrying stuff, I can't handle the extra baggage, it doesn't sit well in my psyche, so it's become my at-home book to read, usurping Thomas Mann at bedtime, and I've had to start reading yet another novel but this one chosen specifically for its virtue of travelling well (so it be one of several I've amassed lately in digital format).

So I read for a few minutes this morning, my at-home book, with my coffee while the child breakfasts and I await my turn to shower. I don't remember what I fell asleep to, but the caffeine jolts me into realizing oh my gawd he's dead and decapitated and he's watching his body be torn apart by wolves. And with this thought in my head I start my day — walk the kid to school, head down into the metro, and open my other book.

There's something very zen about my metro book — the long probable-ascent of the silent elevator, the blank office, the idyll of the animals outside the gate, the labyrinth of caves. Time to go to work.

I read again on my way home. "He spreads wide my right eye with his fingers and pushes the knife into my eyeball." Ew. "The knife sinks into my eyeball soft and silent, as if dipping into jelly." This time I say it out loud. Eww. On the metro. People look at me. It's my stop.

I don't know how people can stand the intensity of more than one book at a time, when you don't know what happens next and you can't balance your choices for mood, or attitude, it's too much of a good thing, or at least, too much of a thing, I don't think I can go on like this.

New year, new books

Working my way through Simenon's romans durs, one by tragic one. Ordering them one by one, on an as-needed basis; otherwise, I fear I would glut on them, not sleep at all, perhaps drink myself to death, or just leave. Greatly relieved to discover that NYRB is issuing another one this year, so I don't yet have to fear running out.

Treated myself to Aurorarama, by Jean-Christophe Valtat, because it sounds breathtakingly lovely and weird, and I'm particularly enamored of the possibility to confront for myself the copyeditor's dilemmas therein. Seems I'm not yet in the mood for it, though.

After talking up the brilliance of China Miéville and of The City & the City in particular to various coworkers, I'm all in a lather over when there might be something more for me to read, and lo! Embassytown! Sounds like a sequel! But no! it's something entirely new!

Resolving also to finish The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann) before the winter is through.

That is all.

Bergkristall

Rock Crystal, by Adalbert Stifter, reads like a fairy tale. Once upon a time, two children set out across the mountain to visit their grandmother. On their way home, it snows, and they get lost.

Simple, right? Well, it's Christmas Eve, and combined with the whiteness of the snow and the blueness of the ice and the innocence of the children, the story takes a near mystical turn.

The fairy tale setup had me in a state of high suspense for the appearance of some great lurking evil. But I won't tell you what happens.

Eventually, the sun comes up:

A gigantic blood-red disc climbed the heavens above the sky-line and at the same instant the snow all around flushed as though bestrewn with thousands of roses.

There's so much more to Rock Crystal than beautiful landscapes. There's more to the quaint histories of the picturesque villages — so near each other yet worlds apart — that nestle there. Nature is both enemy and saviour. The children are victims and also agents.

I look forward to that part of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (an ongoing read) — Hans lost in a snowstorm — which pays homage to this work.

Review: New York Sun.

This book has secured a place on my (very short) list of fine Christmas stories without sentimental treacle.

I almost wish I'd saved this slim novella for one of those snow-blanketed evenings I'm sure aren't too far off. I suspect I'll be reading it again when those still days are upon us.

NYRB Reading Week continues at Coffeespoons and The Literary Stew.

La Vie est belle

Non frustra vixi.

Life A User's Manual (Georges Perec) is so, so much the book I wish I would write.

I love how difficult it was to find the space to read the final 30 pages this weekend, between kicking the ball around the schoolyard, buying fresh-cut tulips, getting caught in the rain, waiting for news of the hospitalized 90-year-old grandfather-in-law, walking some more for the hell of it with nowhere to go, laundering, cooking some surprisingly delicious lemon-dill chicken, playing a videogame, planting up some pots on the balcony, going for ice cream, and drinking chardonnay; reading fills some odd spaces.

I love how summer is so quickly upon us and how our courtyard is brimming with fresh but familiar noises: the couple with the new, strangely quiet baby; the couple who have been using their air conditioner all week long, even the day it snowed; the girl hoisting her bicycle up the fire escape to the third floor; the pigeons roosting; the man smoking on his balcony describing what it's like to watch the hockey game with his father, who's visiting from France and has never seen a game in his life, and the Habs won; the woman shaking out a tablecloth; the couple having a romantic candlelight dinner on their balcony; the drunkards spilling out from the bar on the corner; the trio for flute, violin, and cello; the couple who never speak to each other except to give each other orders, which they duly follow.

And for me, this book is now very much connected with this sense of interconnectedness, this melding of all our lives, and there's joy in it.

I love how it makes me miss my cat, the one I named Calvino. I see his younger self on Perec's shoulder, and his namesake is frequently mentioned alongside Perec in various commentaries.

I love the sense of eternal return. Everything is undone: the puzzles, but also indexing systems, construction plans, careers, families, kitchens, and good deeds (for example, the tale of the green beans). Apartments filled and emptied. All the stuff that comes and goes. Really, a beautiful, life-affirming thing. Out of chaos, order, and back again.

(Was Valène's painting undone? Or was it stalled in a state of potential?)

I love the allusions to the game of go. On the third-floor landing are seven marble lozenges laid out in the ko position (page 530), a kind of infinite deadlock. It's a game of territory, defined by what surrounds it. Positions are best shown in relief. Kind of like jigsaw puzzle pieces.

(The Gold Bug Variations: she watches the two men puzzle together at the cabin, one of them searching the board to find a fit for the piece in his hand, the other searching the table to find the piece that fits a chosen spot. Which puzzler are you?)

My favourite story within this novel is the tale of the woman who made the devil appear eighty-two times (chapter 65). Because it features the devil, but also because of the sleight of hand involved, within the story itself as well as for its place within the novel. These characters are conspicuously absent from the map of the building (previous residents of Madame Moreau's apartment). This is also the chapter ending with the tin with the picture of the girl eating the petit-beurre (as she eats a "missing" chapter for the skipped chess move, disappearing one of the building's cellars ).

Frankly, the whole book puts me in mind of the vanishing leprauchaun problem: where's the missing chapter? the missing puzzle piece? how did the puzzle piece change shape?

Annotation
I'm itching to annotate this book, but it's a daunting task. (I'll be considering this in the coming weeks; let's see how the book sits with me over more time. I'm toying with the idea of picking up a copy in French; my French is pretty crap, but maybe I'll learn something along the way.)

If you look hard enough, you'll find other people have done some of the legwork. . .

Compare Life A User's Manual (p 423):

. . . and Moriane with its alabaster gates transparent in the sunlight, its coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine, its villas all of glass, like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales swim beneath medusa-shaped chandeliers.

with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities:

When you have forded the river, when you have crossed the mountain pass, you suddenly find before you the city of Moriana, its alabaster gates transparent in the sunlight, its coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine, its villas all of glass like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales swim beneath the medusa-shaped chandeliers.

(Which passage actually jumped out at me in all its exquisite beautifulness.)

As for the amazing couple Cyrille Altamont meets in a pub (page 504), the "thirty-year-old woman with a look that was both Slav and Asiatic at the same time — broad cheekbones, narrow eyes, reddish fair hair plaited and wound around her head" — this is clearly Clawdia Chauchat, and the gentleman is Mynheer Peeperkorn (although I've not yet met him for myself), known to me from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (which book I left off at page 425, so I cannot tell if any passage in particular is being more closely referenced).

Recommendation
If you enjoyed reading Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual, I vehemently urge you to check out The Dodecahedron: Or A Frame for Frames, by Paul Glennon. I recently listed it as a book I feel deserves a wider audience, and previously excerpted a bit here.

Danse macabre

Der Zauberberg! I'm halfway up the mountain! I give you here some of my thoughts on the remainder of chapter 5 of The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann, after Hans bought a thermometer and saw his x-ray (a copy of which he carries in his wallet).

Let us note that I have yet to discover what is magic about it — the book's magic is undeniable, but that of the mountain itself is still not clear to me. Certainly it does not restore to vigour the bodies that come for repose there, though its effect on Hans's spirit may be seen to be restorative. He seems to have awoken from a slumber — he has achieved a kind of freedom from the life below; others may call his general demeanour slightly fevered.

The magic most in evidence is the distortion of time. It's kind of appropriate that I left off from this book just after Christmas at around the sanatorium's Christmas celebrations and now after a few days of intense reading at Easter I'm all caught up to Easter (beginning of chapter 6).

Time passes, time passes, and Hans is completely enamored of Madame Clawdia Chauchat, much as her door-slamming continues to rile him. It excites him now beyond reason.

Hans sits on the veranda, chatting with other women, hoping to catch her attention. It's all very ridiculous because we know he wants to make Clawdia jealous, make some impression on her, and we know it's a feeble plan and we know it's the sort of thing that Clawdia would never fall for.

Hans follows up on the rumours he's heard that Doctor Behrens has painted a portrait of Clawdia, and he contrives to be invited to see it. The doctor is modest: "Well, I know her more internally, subcutaneously, if you get my drift. From her blood pressure, tissue firmness, and lymph circulation." Hans ensure the portrait stays close as they have their coffee. They (with cousin Joachim, of course) discuss beauty and physiology. The coffee mill is of an erotic design. The doctor explains the physiological processes behind blushing and goosebumps.

Hans takes to studying anatomy, biology, etc. He meditates on the miracle of life, and of the nervous system.

Christmas comes and there is a death among them, and Hans, in defiance of the usual practice, wants to know everything about it. With complicated motives, he resolves to bring about a moral revolution; he will bring flowers and birthday greetings and conversation and diversion to those who are seriously ill, the ghosts of the sanatorium. It's a kind of spiritual cleansing he claims, but it's also perverse and gruesome, the details of disease he embraces, the intensity with which he now dances with death.

Herr Settembrini marvels at Hans; this charity wasn't to be expected from "one of life's problem children," who himself needs looking after. And then it is Mardi Gras, or Walpurgis Night (as this section of the chapter is titled), or both, and carnival is upon them. Settembrini describes Madame Chauchat as Lilith (that is, he calls her Lilith and explains the Hebrew reference to the boys, but it's not clear whether she herself defines herself this night as Lilith). I sense there must be some witchly treachery about her.

There are games, and Hans needs a pencil, so he asks her, and this is only the third (or maybe second?) occasion on which they've actually spoken. The elaborate dance of their flirtation escalates. She tells him she'll soon be leaving the sanatorium. I suppose he feels he has nothing to lose.

The bulk of their conversation is in French; Russian would be out of the question for Hans, and she's simply not comfortable in German, nor are the evening's festivities conducive to it. So Hans accommodates her in the language of love. Everything is translated into English in my version, but their French is rendered in italic type, and I think even the look of it, its slant and flow, contribute to a certain crazy frenzy, the feeling of being carried away.

Their exchange, or at least Hans's part in it, is weird, extremely intimate, and, dare I say, erotic, in a macabre, fleshly, sort of way.

What an immense festival of caresses lies in those delicious zones of the human body! A festival of death with no weeping afterward! Yes, good God, let me smell the odor of the skin on your knee, beneath which the ingeniously segmented capsule secretes its slippery oil! Let me touch in devotion your pulsing femoral artery where it emerges at the top of your thigh and then divides farther down into the two arteries of the tibia! Let me take in the exhalation of your pores and brush the down — oh, my human image made of water and protein, destined for the contours of the grave, let me perish, my lips against yours!

When finally they parted, I wanted a cigarette.

This, that, the other thing

I was all excited about returning to the arms of Thomas Mann after having set aside The Magic Mountain back in January, and I had a wonderful few days with him, and I made it past the midway point. But now I'm distracted again.

Boy! was I glad to be working from home today as Life A User's Manual, by Georges Perec, was delivered to my door. I hadn't intended to commit to any kind of readalong so soon (after last year's glut — Infinite Jest and 2666), but finally I couldn't resist the prospect of sharing in this book with a number of fine people (Claire, Emily, Frances, Richard, and Sarah), and in particular these impressions made an impression on me. I'm a little daunted, though, now that I see how big it is.

Also arrived in today's post: Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner, which I'd never heard of before its inclusion on the WSJ's list of novels of ideas. I love medieval incestuous monks! So much to look forward to!

I recently zipped through Robert J Sawyer's Wake, the second in his WWW series. I really can't stand this guy. I love his books though (and love to hate parts of them too). But then there are bits of the Author that seep into the text — the geek who tries too hard to impress girls, to prove he's an enlightened, sensitive male; the guy who blows his own horn just a little too loudly or in the wrong places. One of his characters was noted to have been watching Flashforward the other night fer chrissake (Robert J Sawyer wrote the novel (which I thoroughly enjoyed) on which the TV show is based, and is a consultant to the program). And there's something about him writing about a 16-year-old girl's sexual awakening which is downright creepy. I can't put my finger on it.

Yet, for all their flaws, I can't put down his books (usually — I never made it through Hominids, let alone the rest of the trilogy). I mean, sure I insult them, but I gobble them up. The man has great ideas. But the writing... Oh, it could just be so much better. Dialogue is stilted, though Sawyer's made tremendous improvement over the last decade. There are some weird, misplaced (in my view) cultural references: Do kids today even listen to Robert Palmer? Sure it's in the context of the 16-year-old's dad, but it seems awfully indulgent to give this minor character a whole parody. As for the intended audience, while this ref would work for geeky oldtimers, for most of the rest of the book they would probably feel very much talked down to. It's preachy about things barely relevant (mmm, no, not at all relevant) to the story (for example, gay marriage). And some relatively simple concepts (whether in AI, game theory, or ethics) felt over-explained.

I have to say: it's one of the nicest ARCs I've ever received (won in a contest) — the glossy cover, the binding, the paper quality. And, I can't wait to read the next book in the series. Be advised, they don't really work as standalone novels. I highly recommend this series as "starter sci-fi" for teenagers. Grown-ups would do better with The Terminal Experiment — the first Sawyer I ever read, as a direct result of hearing him (he can't have been that annoying) in interview with Peter Gzowski, and one of my favourites. If you really want to know more about Sawyer, you can check the entry in Wikipedia, which I'm sure he's edited extensively.

Phew. I feel better now.

I'm off to read Perec, tout de suite. It's a self-help book, right?

Corruption anticipated

Hans gets an x-ray!

And Hans Castorp saw exactly what he should have expected to see, but which no man was ever intended to see and which he himself had never presumed he would be able to see: he saw his own grave. Under that light, he saw the process of corruption anticipated, saw the flesh in which he moved decomposed, expunged, dissolved into airy nothingness — and inside was the delicately turned skeleton of his right hand and around the last joint of the ring finger, dangling black and loose, the signet ring his grandfather had bequeathed him: a hard thing, this ore with which man adorns a body predestined to melt away beneath it, so that it can be free again and move on to yet other flesh that may bear it for a while. With the eyes of his Tienappel forebear — penetrating, clairvoyant eyes — he beheld a familiar part of his body, and for the first time in his life he understood that he would die. And he made the same face he usually made when listening to music — a rather dull, sleepy, and devout face, his head tilted toward one shoulder, his mouth half-open.

The director said, "Spooky, isn't it? Yes, there's no mistaking that whiff of spookiness."

— from page 260 of The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann.

Is it just me, or is "spooky" a funny word? It's just a bit unexpected, with a lightness of touch, just when it's getting all morbid; it stops you from taking it too seriously. This is the sort of thing that contributes to my sense that the Mountain is a funny book. Not exactly laugh-out-loud funny, but somehow joyous, gently mocking — of its characters, their conventions, and society as a whole.

I mean, "Spooky"! Not "eerie" or "frightening," not "ghostly" or phantasmal," not "weird" or "creepy." Spooooky.

I do not read German, nor do I intend to read a different translation of the Mountain for comparison's sake. I'm reading the translation by John E Woods, from Everyman's Library. Perhaps it's the jacket blurbs — "Woods captures perfectly the irony and humor" — that prejudiced me to read this book in this mood, to invest it with levity, defy the gravity of it. I very clearly hear Mann's tongue in his cheek.

I'm at page 315 this morning. Highlights of the narrative to this point include Herr Settembrini's humanist views, that as much as he most admires the mind, the body is a force to be reckoned with, with the aside that "absurdity is an intellectually honorable position"; and the encounter with Director Behrens and the review of the paintings he daubs in his spare time, with a discussion of how a physician's view of the body informs his art.

A most enjoyable read.

Temperature

Oh no! Hans bought a thermometer! Pretty much just a page after where I'd last left off. Not much secret what the rest of the book will be about then.

Hans felt like he was come down with a touch of a cold. It's like he wants to dismiss it, but he wants sympathy too, from all these people who are by far more severely ill than he. Maybe if he had a fever, he could justifiably say he was sick. But he buys a thermometer! The fool! The last ritual, which he'd resisted. He'd mocked the residents for taking their temperature 5 times a day. This resistance was his last thread to the normal life of the flatlanders below.

He has a body temperature of 99.7. And an eventual examination tells us... he's sick!

He is sentenced to 3 weeks of bed rest.

I must say, it's a neat trick of Mann's treating time within the narrative in a manner that reinforces the discourses on the nature of time, stretching and compressing...

An abnormal compression of time

Ultimately, there is something odd about settling in somewhere new — about the perhaps laborious process of getting used to new surroundings and fitting in, a task we undertake almost for its own sake and with the definite intention of abandoning the place again as soon as is it is accomplished, or shortly thereafter, and returning to our previous state. We insert that sort of thing into the mainstream of our lives as a kind of interruption or interlude, for the purpose of "recreation," which is to say: a refreshing, revitalizing exercise of the organism, because it was in immediate danger of overindulging itself in the uninterrupted monotony of daily life, of languishing and growing indifferent. [...] What people call boredom is actually an abnormal compression of time caused by monotony — uninterrupted uniformity can shrink large spaces of time until the heart falters, terrified to death. When one day is like every other, then all days are like one, and perfect homogeneity would make the longest life seem very short, as if it had flown by in a twinkling. Habit arises when our sense of time falls asleep, or at least, grows dull; and if the years of youth are experienced slowly, while the later years of life hurtle past at an ever-increasing speed, it must be habit that causes it. We know full well that the insertion of new habits or the changing of old ones is the only way to preserve life, to renew our sense of time, to rejuvenate, intensify, and retard our experience of time — and thereby renew our sense of life itself. That is the reason for every change of scenery and air, for a trip to the shore: the experience of a variety of refreshing episodes.

— from The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann.

One must remember that our hero is merely vacationing at the sanatorium. In all superficial respects he is fully integrated into the routine of the place — the meals, the rest cures (Hans is now expert at blanket tucking), the concerts, the lectures (and, by the way, he's still reading a paperbound book entitled Ocean Steamships), but some portion of his brain niggles at him, reminding him that he is to leave soon, which reminder comes mostly as a relief but seems also to be felt occasionally as a regret.

Hans seizes his last week to enjoy a flirtation with the door-slamming, sweater-wearing Madame Chauchat (who reminds him of a boy he knew at school). Presumably he feels the pressure of time running out and he would regret not taking some action, but the limits on his scheduled time here give him the excuse of indulging without responsibility, without long-term consequence, and with little embarrassment or guilt. What the hell, he's on vacation!

I'm nearing the end of chapter 4, at around page 200 of 854. Hans is anticipating leaving the mountain. What, then, could the rest of the book be about?

Clarity of mind

Chapter 3 of The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann) is pretty long.

Hans is greatly embarrassed and offended by the bestial behaviour of the Russian couple in the room next door. But while at first he directs his moral outrage at them, he very quickly shifts the blame from the individuals to the world they inhabit, the thin walls, the shoddy construction.

Hans seems disrupted. As much as he tries to maintain the regularities of his everyday life — the clothes, the mannerisms — something's out of whack. "In fact, he felt as if he had only just now reestablished a connection with yesterday, as if he were taking in the whole picture again, as it were, which had not really been the case since he awoke."

A lot of characters are being introduced at breakfast. I hope I can keep track of them all.

What year is this, by the way? 1913? Is it possible the influence of Coco Chanel is being felt?:

Almost all the women wore close-fitting jackets of wool or silk, called "sweaters," in white or bright colors, with shawl collars and side pockets; it looked very pretty when they just stood there chatting, both hands buried in their sweater pockets.

Hans meets the doctor, who seems to be bursting with good intentions such that he has no control over where they stick. Hans and Joachim go for a walk and encounter the Half-Lung Club (having undergone pneumothorax operation), some sweaters among them.

[A headline in The New York Times in 1913 reads: SURGICAL CURE FOR ADVANCED CASES OF CONSUMPTION; The Induction of Artificial Pneumothorax, or Compression of Affected Lungs with Nitrogen, as Tested in 1,000 Cases, Gives Remarkable Results in Pulmonary Tuberculosis. (This practice was ultimately found to be of little benefit and was discontinued.)]

All these patients, so full of life, so it seems to Hans. Joachim explains that they are free of time.

Hans's cigar doesn't taste good. All that fresh air in the mountains, of course! I believe this to be a sign of Hans's habits not sitting quite right in this environment.

On page 62 I encounter the 3rd instance of an auditory... jolt — it's like a grimace directed at the reader. The first was the cough, which came of illness; the second a whistle from a half-lung, an operational byproduct, a grotesquerie; now a wail in death. These are startling noises in sharp relief to the overall tone; like someone jumping up and shouting boo! while you're enjoying a calm mountain view.

Hans laughs quite a bit, by the way — uncontrollably. Perhaps it's a bit extreme, or inappropriate, or nervous, to be liberating and healthy. I don't know.

Herr Settembrini, strange little man they encounter on their walk. Charm and style. Wisdom and knowledge. Enthusiasm, lust. "One must apply truth and energy in naming things. It elevates and intensifies life." "Form opinions! That's why nature gave you eyes and reason." He's provocative!

Hans takes to philosophizing about time:

"There is nothing 'actual' about time. If it seems long to you, then it is long, and if it seems to pass quickly, then it's short. But how long or how short it is in actuality, no one knows."

And "what is the organ for our sense of time?" Hans is quite agitated about the subject. It seems to be pissing off Joachim a bit, but with some level of amusement too, as he later teases Hans about the outburst.

It's less than a day since his arrival and Hans is acclimatizing to the sanatorium routine. Wake, breakfast, walk, nap, second breakfast (with beer, since he is loathe to break his old habits, but he finds its effect completely stupefying), another little walk, another nap (rather, "rest cure"). It seems a bit ridiculous, really — I think we're meant to see it this way, as through Hans's eyes, to be taken aback by the eating and resting and lazing, the general apparent healthfulness among the ill, the disconnect from the world at the foot of the mountain, the difference in how time moves and the activities that fill it.

Hans's heart is pounding. Not out of fear, or anticipation, so to him it signifies a mind–body disconnect, that the body is acting independently of the soul and without reason.

So after dinner, there's another rest cure before tea. Hans is loving the rest cures and particularly his splendid lounge chair. He doesn't take much notice of the traces of blood in his handkerchief (duh-duh-DUH).

On waking, Hans announces to Joachim that he may not be able to stay. (He couldn't possibly leave!? We're only on page 96!) He prides himself on being healthy, but he's craving the doctor's attention. He pokes fun at the lifestyle in evidence, but he's clearly drawn to it all the same. It seems he fears succumbing to the spell of the place. The man's a walking paradox. His time here (not a full 24 hours to this point) has been as if in a haze, yet he's demonstrated, and himself felt, some remarkable clarity of insight and judgement. In going away, has he stepped out of himself? Or having stepped out of his daily life, has he become more himself? Hans really does seem afraid, and befuddled, even while he can philosophize on abstract points; he's losing his bearings. But no sooner does he express the possibility of leaving than it is forgotten. It's time for tea! Then another walk, and a rest cure, and supper.

Hans is to bed early and dreaming fitfully, twice about Madame Chauchat, the white-sweater-wearing door-slamming Russian woman.

The mountain

Another exercise in reading slowly and carefully. The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. I'm not sure what led me to this book — Mann keeps coming up over the last little while — a few choice soul-jarring quotations and a title that evokes days past, my own secret mountain. It's calling out to me. Here I am. It's time.

I'll save AS Byatt's introduction and the chronology for later.

From the author's foreword: "[I]n Hans Castorp's favor it should be noted that it is his story, and that not every story happens to everybody." This is a historical novel, not because the story is old but because it took place at a very particular point in time, that is, before the Great War, which changed life as we know it forever. We are warned also that the story will be told in precise and thorough detail. Indeed, Mann spent something like 12 years writing this novel.

Hans Castorp is journeying from Hamburg to Davos-Platz. (My mother's been there! I must find pictures!) I'm instantly reminded of another Hans, in Swabia, I read about not too long ago.

So Hans is headed to the sanatorium for a little vacation. He's 23 years old, he's written exams, he's set to start a kind of engineering apprenticeship. I'm not sure why he's taking this 3-week sojourn, but very suddenly, helped by distance and heady heights, he finds that he's been lifted out of himself. His cousin Joachim meets him at the station. A military man? He's been here for 6 months aleady. Their relationship is familiar yet awkward; they are conscious of not appearing (to themselves? to observers?) to be too warm with each other.

The air at 5300 feet?: "It lacked odor, content, moisture, it went easily into the lungs and said nothing to the soul. (p 9)"

Joachim seems to identify with the community of the sanatorium: us, we, our. We learn that bodies, presumably dead ones, leave the sanatorium. Also that patients undergo psychic dissection. Hans finds this all pretty hilarious (and so do I). A woman died day before yesterday in the room to be Hans's.

They had reached the second floor, when Hans Castorp suddenly stopped in his tracks, mesmerized by a perfectly ghastly noise he heard coming from beyond a dogleg in the hall — not a loud noise, but so decidedly repulsive that Hans Castorp grimaced and stared wide-eyed at this cousin. It was a cough, apparently — a man's cough, but a cough unlike any that Hans Castorp had ever heard; indeed, compared to it, all other coughs with which he was familiar had been splendid, healthy expressions of life — a cough devoid of any zest for life or love, which didn't come in spasms, but sounded as if someone were stirring feebly in a terrible mush of decomposing organic material.

Why is Joachim here? During dinner he lets on to the monotony of the forever here. He's here under orders.

To this point, the book really is quite funny thanks to some ridiculous images and the pacing of them.

Chapter 2 is a flashback through Hans's childhood and youth, remembering his father and his grandfather and the baptismal bowl:

His father's name was there, as was in fact his grandfather's, and his great-grandfather's; and now that syllable came doubled, tripled, and quadrupled from the storyteller's mouth; and the boy would lay his head to one side, his eyes fixed and full of thought, yet somehow dreamily thoughtless, his lips parted in drowsy devotion, and he would listen to the great-great-great-great — that somber sound of the crypt and buried time, which nevertheless both expressed a reverently preserved connection of his own life in the present to things now sunk deep beneath the earth and simultaneously had a curious effect on him: the same effect visible in the look on his face. The sound made him feel as if he were breathing the moldy, cool air of Saint Catherine's Church or the crypt in Saint Michael's, as if he could sense the gentle draft of places where as you walked, hat in hand, you fell into a certain reverential, forward rocking motion, your heels never touching the ground; and he also thought he could hear the remote, cloistered silence of those reverberating spaces. At the sound of those somber syllables, religious feelings got mixed up with a sense of death and history, and all of it together somehow left the boy with a pleasant sensation — indeed, it may well have been that it was solely for the sake of that sound, just to hear it and join in reciting it, that he had once again asked to be allowed to see the baptismal bowl. (p 24)

Hans and his grandfather have a mutual sympathy and physical affinity. "Children and grandchildren observe in order to admire, and they admire in order to learn and develop what heredity has stored within them. (p 27)"

Hans relishes the ritual of his life. He also loves living well.

The narrator refrains from calling Hans mediocre, qualifying the suggestion. Hans doesn't rise to meet the occasion not because he's not capable but because he doesn't see why he should (sounds like my generation). And this is on page 37 very poetically laid out to be not the fault of the individual but of the times (oh, it's not my fault after all?). He respects work, but does not love it; it stands in the way of, while being the means to, his enjoyment of a fine cigar. He works to live.

As for the rest, Hans is an unwritten page. He does not know himself what kind of person will grow out of his past. At this point, his doctor prescribes for him a change of air. (Joachim, it turns out, is seriously ill — sounds like tuberculosis.)

Here ends chapter 2.

I get the feeling Hans's life will take a turn he had never imagined, his stay at the sanatorium to be life-changing, life-defining.

José Saramago is also currently rereading The Magic Mountain. Perhaps he will post his thoughts here.