If you’re going to get into modernist literature it’s important to understand that it was a time when writers were trying to get away from the formal structures which had traditionally defined literature in favour of an expression of aesthetics and a mélange of emotional experience.
To try and assess a book like Der Zauerberg within a framework of traditional literary structure is like assessing a painting by Paul Klee on the basis of how physically accurate he renders his subjects, or to say that a cake is badly cooked because it doesn’t taste like a rack of lamb.
It’s not really about the plot, it’s about the atmosphere and surreal feeling of that somewhat otherworldly and sequestered place which Castorp finds himself, in the dying days of old Europe.
Vir_illustris t1_j18sv7i wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" is a great book but it feels somewhat lazy by [deleted]
If you’re going to get into modernist literature it’s important to understand that it was a time when writers were trying to get away from the formal structures which had traditionally defined literature in favour of an expression of aesthetics and a mélange of emotional experience.
To try and assess a book like Der Zauerberg within a framework of traditional literary structure is like assessing a painting by Paul Klee on the basis of how physically accurate he renders his subjects, or to say that a cake is badly cooked because it doesn’t taste like a rack of lamb.