07-25-2013, 05:19 PM | #61 | |
Home for the moment
Posts: 5,127
Karma: 27718936
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: travelling
Device: various
|
Quote:
Danke fürs Photo.... |
|
07-26-2013, 11:37 AM | #62 |
Wizard
Posts: 1,368
Karma: 26886344
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Ireland
Device: Kindle Oasis 3, 4G, iPad Air 2, iPhone IE
|
I finally got hold of a copy. I'll have to concentrate on reading it, and to that end, I'll follow the discussion as it will provide areas of interest. I'll post as soon as I get a handle on the novel . So far, judging by the comments, it seems more interesting than I originally suspected.
|
Advert | |
|
07-26-2013, 12:05 PM | #63 | |
Banned
Posts: 6
Karma: 10
Join Date: Jun 2013
Device: Kindle PW
|
Did you know that Thomas Mann was actually American? I was surprised to find that out in NYTimes Obituary http://www.nytimes.com/learning/gene...bday/0606.html
Quote:
|
|
07-26-2013, 01:02 PM | #64 | |
o saeclum infacetum
Posts: 20,226
Karma: 222235366
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: New England
Device: H2O, Aura One, PW5
|
Quote:
|
|
07-27-2013, 12:42 AM | #65 |
Indie Advocate
Posts: 2,863
Karma: 18794463
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Device: Kindle
|
OK - just passed the halfway point. It's been quite interesting so far, but I'm not sure where I sit in relation to this family.
I liked the father and his quiet dignity, his equanimity and his faithful pursuit of industry. I didn't find him adventurous or bold and his conservative nature didn't push the Buddenbrook name far ahead like the rival family that was prepared to take a few risks. The son, Thomas, reminds me a little of a future president. Where his father spoke to the common man in a way that made me feel he was totally comfortable in where everyone sat without necessarily being supercilious, I feel Thomas is playing a role. Everything is a means to an end - he's going somewhere better and he knows it. As I'm only halfway through I'm not sure if Mann is going to indicate that this was a major contribution to the family's downfall or not. Tony is quite interesting. In a way she is right when she says that she is a victim, although second time around in the marriage game I think less so. Everything is a bit of a disaster, but I'm not sure I can hold it that much against her. She understood what her duty was and that her marriage was her means to bring honour to the family name/firm. If I look at her story from a modern standpoint, it becomes a cautionary tale about the importance of looking beyond the periphery aspects of a match and actually understand the "who". In her first marriage all her instincts were correct and she succumbed to the pressure of her family's expectations. I agree with her father that he was largely to blame for this error. But for the second marriage, there's not much discussion of what she actually thought about the suitor from Munich. This left me feeling that she perhaps didn't have as much to say about him as a person and was eager only to right a wrong for her family's honour. Christian, I just see as a buffoon. I was actually hoping he would contract some horrible illness that would end him and get him out of everyone's hair. I'm still not sure how he's going to play in the downfall, but it looks like his complete lack of discipline while craving an independence he doesn't deserve is going to be a strong factor. I wonder how much being the second son impacted his development. Limited expectation, forever in Tom's shadow. Could it have helped in this rather passive rebellion? I guess I'll find out more as I progress. I'm enjoying the translation and the attempt to also translate the dialect and slang into appropriate English lingo, but at the same time it does seem a bit weird. I start to feel that I'm reading an English rather than a German novel. Is anyone else feeling this? |
Advert | |
|
07-27-2013, 08:08 AM | #66 |
Snoozing in the sun
Posts: 10,137
Karma: 115423645
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Device: iPad Mini, Kobo Touch
|
A quick hello from Sydney where I'm in the midst of a family reunion, so not getting much reading done. I'm a bit under a quarter of the way through at this stage.
First main impression is that Tom, Christian and Tony all seem to be spoiled brats when we see them as children. Now I'm with Tony just as her holiday by the sea has finished. Was anyone else reminded of The American Senator with the pressure on the young woman to marry someone she didn't want to marry? Obviously a common occurrence among certain classes in that time in more than one country, and a pretty grim prospect to contemplate. Thank goodness for being able to be my own person! Great to hear that you can join in too, fantasyfan. |
07-27-2013, 12:17 PM | #67 | |||
Nameless Being
|
So about half way through Part Eight now . . . (warning for potential spoilers for those not at that point yet)
Quote:
Quote:
It seems to me that, while it was unfortunate that Tony was pushed by her father into marriage with Grünlich, she was never going to be happy in any marriage for how high her nose was always in the air. Even her first love Doctor Morten would never have been able to provide her a lifestyle that was “elegant” enough to meet her expectations. Quote:
I find the occasional mentions of “poor Klothilde” (she seems always to be mentioned with that modifier, that or hungry) odd, as if the character is there for comic relief. Her one role seems to be to consume mass quantities of nourishment. Last edited by Hamlet53; 07-27-2013 at 12:40 PM. |
|||
07-28-2013, 09:09 AM | #68 | |
o saeclum infacetum
Posts: 20,226
Karma: 222235366
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: New England
Device: H2O, Aura One, PW5
|
Quote:
This to me is the real flaw of the book. Great and powerful scenes such as the "revolution" and Johann's confrontation with Grünlich, but interspersed with far too many instances of overwriting and overkill. Klothilde at least wasn't meant to be anything but a one note character, though. I have real problems with both Christian and Gerda. Christian as he evolved into a dissolute, dissipated and depressed drag on the family was entirely credible. However, in his early years, when he was supposed to be so charming and entertaining, it was a case of "show me, don't tell me." Mann was fine when depicting how Christian would gross out his fellow diners, say, but not in showing his amusing side. At least with Tony we got some laughs, with her deeply felt groans of "Grünlich!" As for Gerda, she's an enigma. Whyever did she marry Thomas? There's no good explanation for that. She had no need to marry, Thomas didn't share her interests, and she spent the book sitting in a corner watching the family and not participating. It's a little surprising that Mann didn't use her thoughts as a mouthpiece for his own commentary, although I'm relieved he didn't. Too much of that going on already! |
|
07-28-2013, 12:11 PM | #69 |
Wizard
Posts: 3,388
Karma: 14190103
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Berlin
Device: Cybook, iRex, PB, Onyx
|
I may be totally wrong but maybe these problems you mention result from the "hybrid nature" of this book as a fiction and a family biography. Mann seems to have taken every freedom with all persons that do not belong to his family but perhaps he was quite honest about the family members and didn't invent too much into them. But I really don't know, this was just an idea.
|
07-28-2013, 03:58 PM | #70 |
Home for the moment
Posts: 5,127
Karma: 27718936
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: travelling
Device: various
|
I am at page 500 now and only lately I remembered having read this book a long time ago. I do feel myself plodding along now.
All is going to waste in this family; morals and economics. Perhaps comparable to the situation in Germany in the 20ies and 30ies; although the book was written before that time. Thomas Buddenbrooks speaks rather nasty about the Jewish people in p.466/470 of the Gutenberg version. There had been for centuries a more or less accepted anti-Semitism in East and Central Europe. Last edited by desertblues; 07-28-2013 at 04:02 PM. |
07-29-2013, 03:14 AM | #71 |
Indie Advocate
Posts: 2,863
Karma: 18794463
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Device: Kindle
|
I'm also just past the 500 page mark myself. It's interesting to watch how Thomas Buddenbrook is slowly defeating himself.
Do you think that it's deliberate that the consul is always called Johann except for Thomas? I noticed it when the 100 year anniversary plaque was presented. Last edited by caleb72; 07-29-2013 at 05:09 AM. |
07-29-2013, 07:25 AM | #72 |
Wizard
Posts: 1,368
Karma: 26886344
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Ireland
Device: Kindle Oasis 3, 4G, iPad Air 2, iPhone IE
|
I'm not nearly as far along as most of you. But just yesterday I ran across “Province, Nation, and Empire in Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks” published in German Studies Review, Oct. 2006 by Todd Kontje, University of California. The abstract gives a good summary of the main lines of thought in the piece:
“Buddenbrooks depicts the decline of the Hanseatic city-state . . . and the rise of the German National-state . . . . Buddenbrooks also reflects the development of global trade and overseas colonies, particularly in the trans-Atlantic realm. Mann’s novel . . . thus engages the panoply of fears that accompanied the process of German nationalization in an age of empire, including anxiety about the collapse of traditional social hierarchies, the inversion of gender roles, and the danger of racial contamination.” Kontje states that Mann was not an Empire writer in the style of Kipling, Conrad or Forster, but that he still was influenced by “the events and ideas of the Age of Empire to a greater extent than is generally acknowledged . . . .” As I stated at the beginning, I still am not very far into the novel, but my usual approach (and naturally everyone has his or her own preferred method} is to try to isolate thematic movements in the work. So perhaps the three basic themes in the abstract give some over-arching directions of analysis to examine {whether or not they are as relevant as Kontje thinks}. Sometimes, in fact, disagreement can be a quite rewarding process. Last edited by fantasyfan; 07-29-2013 at 07:07 PM. |
07-29-2013, 01:33 PM | #73 |
E-reader Enthusiast
Posts: 4,871
Karma: 36507503
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Southwest, USA
Device: Kindle Oasis 3; Kobo Aura One; iPad Mini 5
|
Thanks for the background information, fantasyfan! I am almost 70% complete now. I feel as if I don't know enough about the historical context to fully appreciate the book.
|
07-29-2013, 06:24 PM | #74 |
Nameless Being
|
[QUOTE=fantasyfan;2581122]I'm not nearly as far along as most of you. But just yesterday I ran across “Province, Nation, and Empire in Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks” published in German Studies Review, Oct. 2006 by Todd Kontje, University of California. The abstract gives a good summary of the main lines of thought in the piece:
“Buddenbrooks depicts the decline of the Hanseatic city-state . . . and the rise of the German National-state . . . . Buddenbrooks also reflects the development of global trade and overseas colonies, particularly in the trans-Atlantic realm. Mann’s novel . . . thus engages the panoply of fears that accompanied the process of German nationalization in an age of empire, including anxiety about the collapse of traditional social hierarchies, the inversion of gender roles, and the danger of racial contamination.” Thanks a lot for that background Fantasyfan. I did in fact see a lot of that in Buddenbrooks. |
07-30-2013, 03:31 AM | #75 |
Zealot
Posts: 136
Karma: 614774
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: China, Yunnan, Kunming
Device: Sony PRS-505, Kobo Aura HD, Cybook Odyssey HD
|
@Hamlet53
Dialects in Germany are still very strong and may not be mutually intelligible. It's easy to be fooled when meeting students because all education is given in "High German" (Hoch Deutsch) and they have to speak it at school. Same as in China: education is in Mandarin so everyone who is still studying can speak it, doesn't mean they don't speak something else at home. Come back 5 years later, they don't remember it... I met Germans from the Constace Lake (Bodensee) who spoke Schwebish. I never understood what they say to another. Only kids could speak "High German", which I understood... Same with my host family: the father was from Thuringia (Thüringen). It took me months to understand him properly. I guess it must have been even worse in the early 1900s because schooling probably wasn't done in "High German". I'm still at the beginning of the book, going very slowly because the German version available at the Gutenberg project doesn't contain any note (not even for dialects) and the German dictionary on the Kobo is a beginner dictionary: if I don't know a word, the dictionary doesn't either ^^. |
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Other Fiction Mann, Thomas: Der Tod in Venedig (German) | zerospinboson | ePub Books (offline) | 1 | 12-18-2010 08:32 AM |
Other Fiction Mann, Thomas: Der Tod in Venedig (German) | zerospinboson | Kindle Books (offline) | 0 | 09-26-2009 01:18 PM |
Short Fiction Mann, Thomas: Loulou, v.1, 5 October 2008. | Patricia | Kindle Books (offline) | 0 | 10-05-2008 06:14 PM |
Short Fiction Mann, Thomas: Loulou, v.1, 5 October 2008. | Patricia | IMP Books (offline) | 0 | 10-05-2008 06:10 PM |
Short Fiction Mann, Thomas: Loulou, v.1, 5 October 2008. | Patricia | BBeB/LRF Books (offline) | 0 | 10-05-2008 06:07 PM |