Buddenbrooks

Since my last post, I've begun reading Buddenbrooks. It's strange, considering how scattered my reading has been over the past month or so, but I'm moving through it very quickly. I'm about 2/3 of the way done. (Some of my other work is languishing, I'll admit.)

Buddenbrooks is strikingly different from The Magic Mountain, and even from Death in Venice. This is his first novel (published at twenty-five!), and, as Bloglily commented below, it is much more in the tradition of the 19th-century novel. It does not have that same exquisite slowness as The Magic Mountain. It is made up sketches (sort of) of the Buddenbrook family at certain crucial moments in their history (understandable, given that this novel spans most of the 1800s), and this approach makes it a much faster read.

I've also checked out Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition (T.J. Reed) from the library; Reed has a whole chapter on Buddenbrooks and "The Making of a Novelist," which I plan to start over Thanksgiving. I think this will help compensate for my lack of knowledge of German literature. (Especially as I've read that some of Mann's later works draw very heavily on Goethe).

I'll have more to write about Buddenbrooks later. Right now I should get back to studying. "Should" being the operative word there.....