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New Selected Stories
Sparkling new translations highlight the humor and poignancy of Mann’s best stories―including his masterpiece, in its first English translation in nearly a century. A towering figure in the pantheon of twentieth-century literature, Thomas Mann has often been perceived as a dry and forbidding writer―“the starched collar,” as Bertolt Brecht once called him. But in fact, his fiction is lively, humane, sometimes hilarious. In these fresh renderings of his best short work, award-winning translator Damion Searls casts new light on this underappreciated aspect of Mann’s genius.
The headliner of this volume, “Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow” (in its first new translation since 1936)―a subtle masterpiece that reveals the profound emotional significance of everyday life―is Mann’s tender but sharp-eyed portrait of the “Bigs” and “Littles” of the bourgeois Cornelius family as they adjust to straitened circumstances in hyperinflationary Weimar Germany. Here, too, is a free-standing excerpt from Mann’s first novel, Buddenbrooks ―a sensation when it was first published. “Death in Venice” (also included in this volume) is Mann’s most famous story, but less well known is that he intended it to be a diptych with another, comic story―included here as “Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull.” “Louisey”―a tale of sexual humiliation that gives a first glimpse of Mann’s lifelong ambivalence about the power of art―rounds out this revelatory, transformative collection. black-and-white frontispiece
The headliner of this volume, “Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow” (in its first new translation since 1936)―a subtle masterpiece that reveals the profound emotional significance of everyday life―is Mann’s tender but sharp-eyed portrait of the “Bigs” and “Littles” of the bourgeois Cornelius family as they adjust to straitened circumstances in hyperinflationary Weimar Germany. Here, too, is a free-standing excerpt from Mann’s first novel, Buddenbrooks ―a sensation when it was first published. “Death in Venice” (also included in this volume) is Mann’s most famous story, but less well known is that he intended it to be a diptych with another, comic story―included here as “Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull.” “Louisey”―a tale of sexual humiliation that gives a first glimpse of Mann’s lifelong ambivalence about the power of art―rounds out this revelatory, transformative collection. black-and-white frontispiece
252 pages, Hardcover
First published February 28, 2023
About the author
Thomas Mann
1,612 books4,437 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
See also:
Serbian: Tomas Man
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate in 1929, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
See also:
Serbian: Tomas Man
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate in 1929, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 29, 2023
The stories aren’t new but the translations are. Except for a recent reread of The Magic Mountain, I haven’t read Mann in decades. Encountering him in what were two new-to-me short stories and in excerpts from three significant novels that I have read, I appreciated his talent anew.
The best of the bunch (and new to me) was the opening story, translated as Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow. With real mastery, Mann encapsulates deep emotions and vivid images of the human heart among household members and party guests in the home of the Cornelius family in the Weimar Republic during the period of high inflation. This is a five star story in itself and rates up there with Joyce’s The Dead in my canon of beloved shorts.
Revisiting Death in Venice here gave me a profound appreciation for Mann’s elegance and restraint. This edition might include the whole novella I’m not sure, but if not it was the longest excerpt. I truly loved the section where he uses Greek mythology to start Aschenbach’s day, infusing some of our cultural root metaphors magically into one morning of a man’s life. Four stars.
A day in the life of the son in Buddenbrooks, early confessions of the con man Felix Krull, and a nasty bit of work in a short story Louisey round out the collection. These left me indifferent.
The translator provided lots of notes on why he crafted his translation the way he did though I don’t know how much it impacted me. He says he sought to show Mann’s humor, but I came away with none of that. Maybe Mann didn’t have any or it’s very subtle and I just don’t get him that way. This is probably my last encounter with him in a long life of reading. And so farewell from me to one who is a classic “Dead White Male” author, and Nobel laureate.
Three and a half stars overall.
The best of the bunch (and new to me) was the opening story, translated as Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow. With real mastery, Mann encapsulates deep emotions and vivid images of the human heart among household members and party guests in the home of the Cornelius family in the Weimar Republic during the period of high inflation. This is a five star story in itself and rates up there with Joyce’s The Dead in my canon of beloved shorts.
Revisiting Death in Venice here gave me a profound appreciation for Mann’s elegance and restraint. This edition might include the whole novella I’m not sure, but if not it was the longest excerpt. I truly loved the section where he uses Greek mythology to start Aschenbach’s day, infusing some of our cultural root metaphors magically into one morning of a man’s life. Four stars.
A day in the life of the son in Buddenbrooks, early confessions of the con man Felix Krull, and a nasty bit of work in a short story Louisey round out the collection. These left me indifferent.
The translator provided lots of notes on why he crafted his translation the way he did though I don’t know how much it impacted me. He says he sought to show Mann’s humor, but I came away with none of that. Maybe Mann didn’t have any or it’s very subtle and I just don’t get him that way. This is probably my last encounter with him in a long life of reading. And so farewell from me to one who is a classic “Dead White Male” author, and Nobel laureate.
Three and a half stars overall.
September 11, 2022
Disclaimer: I received this book from Good Reads in return for a review.
This book is a collection of 5 short stories and a novella. I was familiar with the name Thomas Mann, but had never read anything of his before. The novella, "Death in Venice" was familiar to me, as it was the name of a movie that was released in the early 1970s, though I don't think I ever saw it. The last story, "Confessions of a Con Artist by Felix Krull" also sounds familiar. The writing is masterful, as is the translation. All five stories are compelling reading, and the writing brings each to life. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who likes to read literate fiction.
This book is a collection of 5 short stories and a novella. I was familiar with the name Thomas Mann, but had never read anything of his before. The novella, "Death in Venice" was familiar to me, as it was the name of a movie that was released in the early 1970s, though I don't think I ever saw it. The last story, "Confessions of a Con Artist by Felix Krull" also sounds familiar. The writing is masterful, as is the translation. All five stories are compelling reading, and the writing brings each to life. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who likes to read literate fiction.
October 10, 2023
Major disappointment. I’m up and down with Mann—I’ve read both Buddenbrooks and Magic Mountain and found them mostly rewarding. Likewise a collection of early stories. Death in Venice and Lotte in Weimar (aka Dearly Beloved) on the other hand are yawnfests—labored and tedious. I was really looking forward to this, but— “Chaotic World..” is unbelievably twee. The stand-alone Buddenbrooks cutting is boring without its larger context. “Death in Venice” I simply couldn’t make myself face again, and the “Krull” cutting is smarmy and class-worshiping (and I read more than half before stopping). Only “Louisey” has the chance to bring new readers to Mann—it’s weird, not hopelessly overworked, and surprising.
June 4, 2023
I enjoyed this edition and I want to heartily thank mr. Searls for his crafty work of translation. Now I'm introduced to Thomas Mann's creations and can say I love these grand books. Perfectly written, the translations are magnificent, rich and sharp. Special thanks for the Notes section.
April 14, 2023
New Selected Stories of Thomas Mann, edited and translated by Damion Searls
With a very nice introduction by the translator who explains several of the differences between German and English, and some of the antecedents to Mann’s writing in terms of his Brazilian mixed race mother and his very Hanseatic father.
The choice of stories casts a wide net through Mann’s oeuvre: Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow set in 1922-3, throws a spotlight also on the impact of the post-war hyper inflation on the upper middle class…the story itself, a (formerly) upper middle class family, history professor, his wife, butler, two teenage children, two young children, a nanny, a cook and a chambermaid are all sketched in with the dance party from 4:30-9 as the action … the childhood sorrow suffered by little Lorrie stands perhaps for the bigger sorrows caused by the changing circumstances of all who are described….
Then we have Hanno Buddenbrooks, perhaps he stands for a little Hans Castorp? Of course the age of little Hanno is again about 16 —- a teenager at a very Prussian kind of school; his companion is the wildly insubordinate writer, Kai, Count Moelln; and Hanno has his music in which to retreat….the names ..professor Hueckopp for the Ovid, and for the authoritarian principal, Dr. Wuliche, and a bunch of others. with other ridiculous characteristics so typical of the Prussian schools of the time (possibly pre WWI).
Louisey is a story of a couckolded attorney named Jacoby (sounds Jewish to me) who is humiliated at the big outdoor party that AMRA (the wife, Anna Margite Rosa Amelia plans with her boyfriend… Jacob recognizes that the composer is having an affair with his wife; he drops dead and is so pronounced by the short young Jewish doctor.
The final story, the only one of the set written in the United States, about Feliks Krull’s confessions, is a little too cute. .. but it turns out it too is a snippet of a longer work….
The collection of stories shows a bit of the times of Thomas Mann, and many of his themes.. I had recently read Death inVenice, which could be said to deal with both his fascination with death and rot and corruption… (Venetian authorities hiding the impact of plague from the guests) and what some would call his homoeroticism (his interest in Tadzio, the polish youth who is staying with his family at the same resort, and whose physiognomy fascinates, captivates, and paralyzes Ashenbach.
With a very nice introduction by the translator who explains several of the differences between German and English, and some of the antecedents to Mann’s writing in terms of his Brazilian mixed race mother and his very Hanseatic father.
The choice of stories casts a wide net through Mann’s oeuvre: Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow set in 1922-3, throws a spotlight also on the impact of the post-war hyper inflation on the upper middle class…the story itself, a (formerly) upper middle class family, history professor, his wife, butler, two teenage children, two young children, a nanny, a cook and a chambermaid are all sketched in with the dance party from 4:30-9 as the action … the childhood sorrow suffered by little Lorrie stands perhaps for the bigger sorrows caused by the changing circumstances of all who are described….
Then we have Hanno Buddenbrooks, perhaps he stands for a little Hans Castorp? Of course the age of little Hanno is again about 16 —- a teenager at a very Prussian kind of school; his companion is the wildly insubordinate writer, Kai, Count Moelln; and Hanno has his music in which to retreat….the names ..professor Hueckopp for the Ovid, and for the authoritarian principal, Dr. Wuliche, and a bunch of others. with other ridiculous characteristics so typical of the Prussian schools of the time (possibly pre WWI).
Louisey is a story of a couckolded attorney named Jacoby (sounds Jewish to me) who is humiliated at the big outdoor party that AMRA (the wife, Anna Margite Rosa Amelia plans with her boyfriend… Jacob recognizes that the composer is having an affair with his wife; he drops dead and is so pronounced by the short young Jewish doctor.
The final story, the only one of the set written in the United States, about Feliks Krull’s confessions, is a little too cute. .. but it turns out it too is a snippet of a longer work….
The collection of stories shows a bit of the times of Thomas Mann, and many of his themes.. I had recently read Death inVenice, which could be said to deal with both his fascination with death and rot and corruption… (Venetian authorities hiding the impact of plague from the guests) and what some would call his homoeroticism (his interest in Tadzio, the polish youth who is staying with his family at the same resort, and whose physiognomy fascinates, captivates, and paralyzes Ashenbach.
March 28, 2023
My take on the strengths and weaknesses of the collection: https://artsfuse.org/270416/book-revi...
June 1, 2023
The remarkable story that opens NEW COLLECTED STORIES by Thomas Mann, “Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow,”is in itself more than worth the price of the book, which turns out to include much other gold as well.
That opening story gives a finely etched portrait of a German family in the unstable later days of the Weimar Republic before the horrendous historical development that followed. The domestic narrative is frequently punctuated with telling details such as the mother’s need “to bike into town with her shopping bag … to transform a sum of money in hand into groceries, so as not to risk devaluation.” The story’s beginning observation is that “there were only vegetables for the main course,” and this is not because of vegetarianism.
Here’s part of Mann’s portrait of the father of the family, a history professor: “He knows that Professors of History do not love history as it happens, only as it has happened; that they hate the present radical change and upheaval because they feel it to be lawless, incoherent, and presumptuous — in a word ‘unhistorical’ — while their hearts belong to the coherent, pious, historical past. The past, this university scholar tells himself on his strolls by the river before dinner, is draped in the atmosphere of the timeless and eternal, which is an atmosphere far more congenial to the nerves of a history professor than the effronteries of the present.”
The highlight of the story is a traumatic encounter for the infant girl of the family. I won’t be a spoiler but only say that this is is one of the most sensitively realized renderings of early childhood complications I have ever encountered in literature.
After the child is soothed and safely asleep for the night, but with precariousness and uncertainty still strongly hanging over the entire narrative, the father of the family reassures himself that everything is resolved and his family’s routines can continue. The story concludes with his pathetic “Thank heavens.”
I’m not qualified to judge Damion Searls’ work as a translator, but I can assert that “Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow” reads perfectly as a story in English, and I would think that this might stand as a goal for a translator. When I came to a boy in the family having “a particularly berserkerish tantrum,” I at first thought the translator had lost his grip. But a little homework revealed that in pre-medieval and medieval Norse and German history and folklore, berserkers were members of an unruly warrior gang that worshipped Odin, the supreme Norse deity. After that, the translator had my trust and I was ready for anything.
That story is followed by “A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook,” a chapter from Mann’s great novel BUDDENBROOKS that he felt (surely correctly) could stand alone as a story. In this one, Mann is focused on the insecurities of a schoolboy. One gets pathe feeling that, like the Bard, this author can go through the “ages of man” and render each with precision and understanding.
Here’s a school principal as seen by the schoolboy and Mann: “As for Principal Wullicke’s personality, he had some of the enigmatic, ambiguous, stubborn, jealous awfulness of the Old Testament God. It was as terrible to see him laugh as to see him angry.”
Mann never futzes around getting started. His short story “Louisey,” written even before BUDDENBROOKS when he was just 22, opens with this: “There are marriages that come about for reasons even the most skillful literary imagination cannot describe.” Translator Searls characterizes this story as minor, and I might go so far as to call it unsuccessful. Even so, it has a mordancy that calls Gogol to mind, along with the vivid detail that would distinguish Mann’s work throughout his career. Describing a fat attorney: “ … the funny little green-gray jacket he liked to wear was so hard to fasten, with one single button, over the enormous roundness of his belly that it sprang back to his shoulders on both sides the instant it was unbuttoned.”
The collection also offers a new translation of “Death in Venice,” which is of course Mann at his complex and daring best, and concludes with “Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull,” which Mann returned to late in life and expanded into a novel. Nowhere are Mann’s lighter touch and comic gift more evident than in the voice of Krull, who takes his place among literature’s great narrators whom you can enjoy disliking.
Searls has provided a thoughtful introduction and some helpful notes at the back of the book.
That opening story gives a finely etched portrait of a German family in the unstable later days of the Weimar Republic before the horrendous historical development that followed. The domestic narrative is frequently punctuated with telling details such as the mother’s need “to bike into town with her shopping bag … to transform a sum of money in hand into groceries, so as not to risk devaluation.” The story’s beginning observation is that “there were only vegetables for the main course,” and this is not because of vegetarianism.
Here’s part of Mann’s portrait of the father of the family, a history professor: “He knows that Professors of History do not love history as it happens, only as it has happened; that they hate the present radical change and upheaval because they feel it to be lawless, incoherent, and presumptuous — in a word ‘unhistorical’ — while their hearts belong to the coherent, pious, historical past. The past, this university scholar tells himself on his strolls by the river before dinner, is draped in the atmosphere of the timeless and eternal, which is an atmosphere far more congenial to the nerves of a history professor than the effronteries of the present.”
The highlight of the story is a traumatic encounter for the infant girl of the family. I won’t be a spoiler but only say that this is is one of the most sensitively realized renderings of early childhood complications I have ever encountered in literature.
After the child is soothed and safely asleep for the night, but with precariousness and uncertainty still strongly hanging over the entire narrative, the father of the family reassures himself that everything is resolved and his family’s routines can continue. The story concludes with his pathetic “Thank heavens.”
I’m not qualified to judge Damion Searls’ work as a translator, but I can assert that “Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow” reads perfectly as a story in English, and I would think that this might stand as a goal for a translator. When I came to a boy in the family having “a particularly berserkerish tantrum,” I at first thought the translator had lost his grip. But a little homework revealed that in pre-medieval and medieval Norse and German history and folklore, berserkers were members of an unruly warrior gang that worshipped Odin, the supreme Norse deity. After that, the translator had my trust and I was ready for anything.
That story is followed by “A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook,” a chapter from Mann’s great novel BUDDENBROOKS that he felt (surely correctly) could stand alone as a story. In this one, Mann is focused on the insecurities of a schoolboy. One gets pathe feeling that, like the Bard, this author can go through the “ages of man” and render each with precision and understanding.
Here’s a school principal as seen by the schoolboy and Mann: “As for Principal Wullicke’s personality, he had some of the enigmatic, ambiguous, stubborn, jealous awfulness of the Old Testament God. It was as terrible to see him laugh as to see him angry.”
Mann never futzes around getting started. His short story “Louisey,” written even before BUDDENBROOKS when he was just 22, opens with this: “There are marriages that come about for reasons even the most skillful literary imagination cannot describe.” Translator Searls characterizes this story as minor, and I might go so far as to call it unsuccessful. Even so, it has a mordancy that calls Gogol to mind, along with the vivid detail that would distinguish Mann’s work throughout his career. Describing a fat attorney: “ … the funny little green-gray jacket he liked to wear was so hard to fasten, with one single button, over the enormous roundness of his belly that it sprang back to his shoulders on both sides the instant it was unbuttoned.”
The collection also offers a new translation of “Death in Venice,” which is of course Mann at his complex and daring best, and concludes with “Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull,” which Mann returned to late in life and expanded into a novel. Nowhere are Mann’s lighter touch and comic gift more evident than in the voice of Krull, who takes his place among literature’s great narrators whom you can enjoy disliking.
Searls has provided a thoughtful introduction and some helpful notes at the back of the book.
Read
April 17, 2023I haven't read anything by Thomas Mann in forty-odd years, so I was curious to read a story new to me which the translator titles "Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow." Not quite the German title but he explains why his translation varies. Anyway, he claims this story holds its own against the best short story of any writer, from Chekhov to Joyce to HH Munro. This claim has little to support it IMO. The story clearly derives from a description of the author's own family and is interesting in its psychological insights, but-- hardly captivating. For one thing, as in much of Mann, the gist of the story IS the psychology of the characters because in terms of action, not much happens. I really enjoyed reading Mann when younger, especially "Buddenbrooks" and "The Magic Mountain." But my tolerance for his roundabout way of getting at the intent of his story-telling must have waned in the interim. I intend to read one other story in the collection, also new to me, an early one, "Louisey," but I'm not going back to the others, which I've already read and have little interest in revisiting. I'm a little sceptical that this new translation is an improvement on Lowe-Porter's but I'm sure that is a matter of opinion. I suspect the other stories are included at the publisher's insistence to make the book more marketable.
March 21, 2024
Damion Searls’s new translation of the first story, ‘Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow’, is enough to make this collection worth getting on its own. It is the first new English translation of the story since 1936 (when it was published under the title ‘Disorder and Early Sorrow’) and it is absolutely wonderful. As I read it, I was reminded of James Joyce’s astonishingly great story ‘The Dead’, from Dubliners, so I was pleased and surprised when I later read Searls’s introduction to the volume, where he reveals that CWaCS is not only his favorite Mann story, but it reminds him of [insert drumroll here] ‘The Dead’. Searls says he had to wait twenty years to translate the story (due to copyright issues). I’m glad he was patient enough to wait: it is truly a gift to have this new translation.
The rest of the stories in this collection are all remarkable, but I wouldn’t be recommending it so enthusiastically if it weren’t for CWaCS. Nonetheless, ‘A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook’, a free-standing excerpt from Buddenbrooks, has spurred me on to read the full novel, and ‘Death in Venice’ remains the bold and deeply disturbing fever dream it always has been. As a nice bonus, Searls’s brilliant introductory essay is thoughtful, informative and revealing.
The rest of the stories in this collection are all remarkable, but I wouldn’t be recommending it so enthusiastically if it weren’t for CWaCS. Nonetheless, ‘A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook’, a free-standing excerpt from Buddenbrooks, has spurred me on to read the full novel, and ‘Death in Venice’ remains the bold and deeply disturbing fever dream it always has been. As a nice bonus, Searls’s brilliant introductory essay is thoughtful, informative and revealing.
April 16, 2024
Incredible writing and observations about the human condition and human idiosyncrasies: quirks that at times made me feel superior to the characters, at other times made me feel deeply for and with the characters, and at other times still, made me chuckle and reflect on my own habits of thought and perspective. I loved getting so intimately inside the heads of each of the main characters.
There were several sections that just seemed to go on and on: so many words, so many thought loops, so many tangents! At those times, my progress slowed. In particular, while I thoroughly appreciated Death in Venice, I ended up restarting it several times after getting stuck somewhere around the second chapter. Eventually, I broke through, and then could hardly put it down.
It's probably recency bias, but the last story, "Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull" was one of my favorites. It had me rolling on the floor and shaking my head constantly, but also feeling the whole range of emotions (same as all the other stories).
Kudos to the translator, Damion Searls, for a great compilation and for giving these selected stories such vibrant life in English and very illuminating contextual notes.
There were several sections that just seemed to go on and on: so many words, so many thought loops, so many tangents! At those times, my progress slowed. In particular, while I thoroughly appreciated Death in Venice, I ended up restarting it several times after getting stuck somewhere around the second chapter. Eventually, I broke through, and then could hardly put it down.
It's probably recency bias, but the last story, "Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull" was one of my favorites. It had me rolling on the floor and shaking my head constantly, but also feeling the whole range of emotions (same as all the other stories).
Kudos to the translator, Damion Searls, for a great compilation and for giving these selected stories such vibrant life in English and very illuminating contextual notes.
May 4, 2023
All I can say is “I tried.”
I keep coming back to Mann because I want to understand why he is considered so great, and I love the historical period he represents.
But it’s the most sedentary passive writing style I’ve ever experienced. So much turgid intellectualism. The big news is that the narrator moves to a different room, where he then sits down again and loses himself in more passive observations about other people, then—wait for it—he moves to another room and starts, well, just noticing again.
This was true—this interminable watching and thinking and sitting—in Death in Venice and Magic Mountain.
I might just give up.
I keep coming back to Mann because I want to understand why he is considered so great, and I love the historical period he represents.
But it’s the most sedentary passive writing style I’ve ever experienced. So much turgid intellectualism. The big news is that the narrator moves to a different room, where he then sits down again and loses himself in more passive observations about other people, then—wait for it—he moves to another room and starts, well, just noticing again.
This was true—this interminable watching and thinking and sitting—in Death in Venice and Magic Mountain.
I might just give up.
February 5, 2024
I am glad I am now acquainted with this German writer, whom I had known of a long time but had never read. Unfortunately, he is not one of my favorite writers. There is a certain warmth to the stories and the voice, yet at times there is also a dark strain, which I did not appreciate. I would have to say Felix Krull was my favorite story, but even that was laborious reading much of the time. Mann has a big name, he has Nobel prize to his name, and although I could see he him paint a pleasant picture with a sort of wellbeing and and a sense of satisfaction among his characters, the reading was simply not good all the time, or perhaps not good enough for enough of the time.
Read
May 6, 2023Uma coletânea de contos "desconhecidos ",que inclue também o famoso "Morte em Veneza ".Segundo o editor da obra, sua publicação mostraria um lado menos sisudo e frio que alguns leitores têm da obra e persona do Thomas Mann. Bem não acho que vá convencer, são contos corriqueiros da vida de um estudante em "A day in the life of Hanno Buddenbrook" ou de um casal burguês em"Louisey" que demonstram uma amoralidade,frieza e crueldade. São os mais interessantes deste.
June 12, 2023
A rewarding translation of famous work and the discovery of a great newly appreciated story "Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow" rightfully compared in its artistry to Joyce's The Dead. Revisiting Death in Venice also a memorable pleasure. "Louisey" - new to me - a story of an act of dark emotional cruelty written in 1897.
December 18, 2023
Oh, Tadzio! I only read this for Death in Venice, the first time reading it in literally 30 years. I didn’t like it as much as I thought I liked it back then, but I can’t imagine that 20-year-old me really understood much of this novella. I still liked the details of Venice and the classical references (like the Bacchae-dream), but I don’t think I need to read this a third time in 20 years.
July 21, 2023
This new translation by Damion Searls includes several signature short stories by Thomas Mann, including the iconic “Death in Venice” … a personal favorite is “A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook,” which narrates one of teen-aged Buddenbrook’s school-days … minor gems …
July 23, 2023
Two of the five stories are masterpieces: the early "Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow" and the novella Death in Venice. I found Louisey melodramatic and Confessions of a Con Artist boring. Shall I give Magic Mountain another try?
September 13, 2022
Wow, loved it
July 2, 2023
Depressing and pointless stories from a well written acclaimed author
December 3, 2023
Death in Venice hits a little differently now than when I first read it decades ago.
February 27, 2024
Always something fits when reading Mann. (Though I’m hesitant whether I’m up to “Joseph and His Brothers.” The prelude chapter seems terribly dense and intimidating…. A challenge!)
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews