Blue Monday, the third Monday in January is apparently the most depressing day of the year and I'm not sure whether this will help or not....
Last January it was jolly old Anna Karenina, this year, in my quest for an Everyman Classic to take me into a new year of reading, I settled on The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann published in 1924. It might not be much more jolly.
The idea to read The Magic Mountain was resurrected when Barbara (who blogs about her travels at Milady's Boudoir) and I met for our annual bookish-life-knitting catch up while she was down this way on holiday. Barbara recounted with great enthusiasm that she and a couple of friends were slow-reading Thomas Mann's 1920's novel and I quickly caught a massive dose of her infectious enthusiasm. It was the catalyst I needed. Barbara had been hoping that I would declare it a Year-Long-Read on here one day, much as we had done War & Peace, Ulysses, and Middlemarch. I nearly did, but chickened out at the last minute wondering whether there would be any interest and would my own interest be sustained through writing about a section of the book each month, or might it suck any pleasure out of the reading. It can happen.
In the past I had gone as far as sectioning up my paperback copy, but I already had two failed attempts at The Magic Mountain under my belt so my confidence wasn't high. It was only on reading around that I discovered a different translation, one that many were recommending as 'better'. For my own purposes I interpreted 'better' as 'easier' (I was struggling with print size for starters) and I had sent for the Everyman's Library of Contemporary Classics edition knowing that at least I would have the feel of a good book in my hands. The translation is by American John E.Woods and I am now best friends with it and him.
The book gathered dust up on the German shelf and the Year-Long-Read didn't materialise (sorry) and it still isn't exactly (sorry again) but I am now slow-reading The Magic Mountain (having also dragooned the Happy Campers in on the read...maybe) and several hundred pages in am beginning to feel that I might be acclimatised and beyond Base Camp for the first time. My hopeful plan is to post about the book occasionally, as I proceed upwards, but taking in all the diversions and reading trails that happen along the way (several already) which I suspect would be different for everyone. It will never be too late to join in if you want to, adding your thoughts in comments whenever I post about the book. In fact I would welcome you, solo climbing is no fun. Barbara sent me this postcard a few years ago which says it all...
For those wondering what on earth the book is about ...
'With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps-a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an "ordinary young man" who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years.'
And for those who might be wondering whether to start the climb or not there is an excellent piece in The Guardian here that may help you decide.
So far the secondary infections have led me to think about Disease Reading because I realise I have a healthy-looking shelf of it. There's nothing I like more than a good book about polio or the plague or cholera in the water pump or worse, so expect more about that.
Then I've wandered off into three photo albums that Bookhound rescued from a market stall here in Tavistock. Perhaps from a house clearance after a death but each a meticulous compilation of trips to Switzerland in the 1930s (we think) with monochrome images of Switzerland alongside commentary and location.
Do you remember how we used to do photo albums, with the white pen on the black paper and the sticky photo corners...
The albums are all so atmospheric of the time and place that to look at them is adding another dimension to my reading of the The Magic Mountain. Although the pictures are of the Bernese Oberland, a different part of Switzerland to the book, it is the part of the alps that we have visited and walked several times, and there is still snow and chalets and mountains and trains. Some things never change in Switzerland. We don't know full names or exact dates but there are clues in the pictures that we are exploring. Meanwhile here's the mysterious 'Gladys on the roof of Switzerland,' having taken the train up to the Jungfraujoch...
And here's Mr & Mrs Gladys (we assume, but who knows) 'An obliging stranger takes our photograph.'
There are forty-four wonderful images in the album, expect more from Mr & Mrs Gladys to help cheer us on our way up the mountain.
We have to talk about blankets too...there is a special way to wrap yourself up and we must practise.
You see I told you there would be diversions.
The next post, whenever it appears, will definitely be about the book itself, probably, meanwhile please do add your thoughts in comments.
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