Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks

[beer good]

I just finished Thomas Mann's debut novel "Buddenbrooks" from 1901, which chronicles several generations of the merchant family Buddenbrook during the 19th century.

The only thing of Mann's I've read before is "Magic Mountain", and I have to say that one impressed me more. On the one hand, "Buddenbrooks" is a very impressive novel - especially considering it's Mann's first - with great characterizations, an incredible eye for detail and an almost flawless narration (a few beginner's mistakes notwithstanding, such as being way too fond of his favourite jokes and so on). Sure, most of the plot lines are pure soap opera - divorces, love transcending class borders, step-siblings fighting over inheritances etc - but hell, so is Tolstoy. One obvious difference though: where Tolstoy is a romantic and his characters fall in love and are destroyed by following their hearts, Mann's characters always choose to do What's Right. They always choose to forsake true love or art and instead focus on marrying sensibly, earning money for the family company etc... and they always end up unhappy. The wage of virtue is a miserable life and a hole in the ground.

And while this is a good point to make, in combination with the extremely detailed prose (almost 700 pages of it) it also means that the novel becomes pretty... I wouldn't say boring, Mann is much too good a writer to write something boring, but repetitive. Generation after generation grow up, forsake everything for duty, and fail to find happiness. No surprises, no variations, no mysteries, no chances: all roads lead to unhappiness.

One thing that struck me is how self-contained the book is; it covers roughly 1830-1875, a very active period in European history, yet almost nothing of what happens outside the family finds its way into the novel except peripherally. Mann makes a point of hammering home how one of the characters - Antonie - learns a few things about politics as a young girl, and then repeats these over and over again for 30-odd years as if they were still the most relevant questions.

"Buddenbrooks", at least for me, ends up a quite well-constructed and well-written but not very exciting novel that, much like the huge meal of the opening scene, leaves you more than full and a little dizzy from all the beer. Some of the dishes are delicious (the second-to-last chapter, describing a day in the life of the youngest Buddenbrook, is almost magic), but as with all German food: to get to them you end up chewing a little too much pork.

3/5.

Anyone else read this?

 

[DATo]

Having just read and posted a thread on Mann's The Magic Mountain I thought it perhaps appropriate to weigh in on this one as well. Buddenbrooks was indeed everything mentioned in the above, very well-written description. The book opens by plunging us into the lives of the very wealthy, and politically / socially connected Buddenbrook family. I think one of the themes Mann is trying to put forth is how even the most successful empires, be they countries or families can deteriorate over time due to mismanagement, the vicissitudes of fate or by striving to attain what is practically unattainable while being senseless to more important responsibilities. Much like the Roman Empire or the exploits of Alexander The Great, the over-extended grasp for gain can result in the ultimate undoing of he who reaches.

I found this to be a very engaging epic, as it does indeed cover the history of four generations of the family. And I totally agree that the family was always more concerned with status, social prominence and business success than the pursuit of the type happiness most of us would settle with. I could not help but be reminded of the Kennedy family of the U.S.A. whose tragedies could almost entirely be traced to the patriarch's desire for family prominence and power. In fact, the "Kennedy curse", as it has sometimes been called, as it relates to the family patriarch has always reminded me of a Faustian arrangement with the devil, and I would not be surprised to learn that in the future this theme will be applied to the story of the Kennedys in some artistic form - written or enacted on stage.

As I have found to be typical with Mann, there are many metaphorical allusions in this book and like The Magic Mountain there are to be found some clever ironic twists which spice the book in a tantalizing manner. Both of these books are extremely well written but I personally differ in that I thought The Magic Mountain at times became insufferably boring (particularly the arguments between Naptha and Settembrini) but thought Buddenbrooks, by comparison, moved right along. To me it had a bit of the ring of a Dickens novel, and much like Dickens Mann is a master of character creation.

I would recommend it to anyone who likes classic literature in the style of the great writers of the mid-to-late 19th century and early 20th.

 

[Meadow337]

At one time I was semi-fond of a good family epic (Thornbirds, Kane and Abel, Roots, North and South, The Forsyte Saga to name a few) but in recent years I have found myself leaning to the more philosophical. This one doesn't grab me.