A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain ed. by Stephen D. Dowden (review)

The last section, "A Life in Portraits" holds true to the book's promise to present Hemingway "in his time," as there are fewer pictures depicting the author himself and more showing his friends, collaborators, book covers of first editions, etc. (There are 21 pictures in which Hemingway appears against 29 where he is not present.) Yet, one notices the relative absence ofpictures depicting Hemingway's own family life, which again underscores its relative insignificance vis-à-vis the public persona that the author and his hagiographers wished to create. Unfortunately , it is impossible to determine whether this lacuna in portraying the more private Hemingway is due to a conscious choice on the part of the editor or was inherent in the exhibition's layout, because the volume lacks a complete list ofthe exhibits' original contents. This book is obviously not meant to provide a comprehensive appraisal of Hemingway as a person or literary figure. Instead, its eminently visual nature makes it a good companion volume for those who already know much about Hemingway's life and work, or a good introduction for the general reader who has heard about the Hemingway myth and wishes to know more. %z Stephen D. Dowden, ed. A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain . Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999. 250p. Susan V. Scaff San Jose State University The new Camden House anthology of essays on The Magic Mountain is full of valuable insights on Mann's novel, carefully compiled with Stephen D. Dowden's cognizance diat the critical attitude toward Mann has reached a turning point. As Dowden points out, Mann was revered in the Western world from the 1920s through the Cold War as the champion ofliberal democracy, but since the fall of the Berlin wall the urgency ofthis cause has waned and with it the veneration for Mann. In addition, revelations about his homosexual leanings and residual antiSemitism , gleaned from his diaries, have dimmed public regard for him. Nor did Mann ever achieve the reputation ofstylistic innovator of other modernists like Joyce or Proust. What, then, continues to propel our interest in this author? Given our now deeper and more complex understanding ofhim as a human being, what critical approaches might enhance our appreciation ofhis work today? The purpose ofthe volume is to find fresh ways to address the rich and varied themes in TheMagicMountain, and the overall success ofthe collection pays tribute not just to the perceptiveness ofthe contributors, but also to the inexhaustible depth ofthe novel. Several ofthe subjects are familiar and the observations about FALL 2000 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 127 them not entirely new, although the essays contain sparkling insights along the way. We read in Ülker Gökberk's essay about the interweaving ofMann's attitude toward war and Germany in his Reflections ofa NonpoliticalMan and The Magic Mountain, a topic Gökberk develops in a new way by comparing Mann's with Adornos dialectical perspective. David Blumberg insightfully reiterates the omnipresence of music in the novel, and Stephen C. Meredith analyzes the theme ofillness with a perceptive eye toward Mann's well known association ofdisease with both criminality and creativity. In his reading of Mann's irony, Eugene Goodheart reminds us that TheMagicMountain, despite its grave themes, retains a comic distance from its subject matter that marks Mann as "the ironic master of extreme situations" (51). While it is quite comprehensive in its coverage, the collection mercifully omits an essay on the overworked and somewhat faddish topic of Mann's homosexuality, but curiously leaves out a discussion of the ever fascinating issue of Mann's women, notably Clavdia Chauchat. A number ofthe essays break new ground. In keeping with the current critical interest in race and anti-Semitism, Michael Brenner offers an unusually insightful analysis of Mann's complex attitudes toward various kinds ofJews. Like his contemporaries, the author distinguished German Jews, whom he described disparagingly , particularly those unassimilated into German culture, from the genuine Oriental Hebrew ofthe Bible and his ownJoseph andHis Brothers, a hierarchy that allowed Mann to ignore the serious threat ofGerman anti-Semitism "to Jewish existence" (147). Karla Schultz's essay on the role of the X-ray in The Magic Mountain offers...