The Magic Mountain

Still trawling the archives. I used to have a Buttondown newsletter. The following—a themed issue rather than the usual “what I read this week” format—is the only thing I’ve found worth saving from that era. Reading The Magic Mountain every morning over that winter of 2018-2019 remains as a happy memory. Welcome, friends. You can only come across so many references to a novel before you decide you need to read it for yourself. That’s why I started reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. It’s the story of Hans Castorp, “an ordinary young man” who visits his cousin Joachim at the Berghof sanatorium in the Swiss Alps where residents are treated for tuberculosis. Although he plans to visit for only three weeks, Hans is eventually diagnosed with a “moist spot” - a sign of tuberculosis - and stays for seven years. The novel follows Hans' development as he falls in love with a mysterious Russian and befriends, in turn, a humanistic disciple of the Enlightenment, a reactionary Jesuit, and…