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Loading... The Magician: A Novel (original 2021; edition 2021)by Colm Tóibín (Author)
Work InformationThe Magician by Colm Tóibín (2021)
  
No current Talk conversations about this book.  Elanna76 | May 2, 2024 |   (  ) Suem330 | Dec 28, 2023 |  ) CarolKub | Nov 14, 2023 | The book's title comes from a scene in which Mann's son Klaus became alarmed by what he thought to be a monster in his room. Mann claimed to be a magician and promised to expel the beast using magic. Since the plan worked, his six children referred to him as the magician. However, the word has a deeper meaning in Tóibin's book since Mann is a character who has the ability to work magic with words, whether in his books, letters, or speeches. This book is a work of magic by Tóibin, himself. He has given the reader an intimate look at a great writer who lived with contradictions by bringing Thomas Mann to life in stunning prose. His recognition as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century was at odds with his hesitant and secretive inner life. His happy marriage to Katia and their six children also was at odds with his repressed homosexuality, while his love of Germany and its culture was at odds with the Nazi ideology he loathed. Tóibin explores the themes of living abroad, the creative process, and the preservation of personal identity (and in particular, homosexual identity) throughout the majority of his works. These issues are explored in The Magician through Thomas Mann's difficulties with them. It was enjoyable to read as it painted an exceptional writer's life in moving prose. I hope it would encourage those who have not experienced Mann's magnificent oeuvre to explore some of his many now classic novels, stories, and essays. ( ) jwhenderson | Aug 28, 2023 | ) GordonPrescottWiener | Aug 24, 2023 |
 This dramatisation of Thomas Mann’s private and public life never quite convinces as biography or fiction AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"The Magician opens at the turn of the twentieth century in a provincial German city where the young boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative, conventional father and a Brazilian mother, exotic and unpredictable, who will never fit in. He hides both his artistic aspirations and his homosexual desires from this father, and his sexuality from everyone. He longs for the charismatic, beautiful, rich, cultured young Jewish man, but marries his twin sister. He longs for a boy he sees on a beach in Venice and writes a novel about him. He has six children. He is the most successful novelist of his time. He wins the Nobel Prize and is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler. His oldest daughter and son share lovers. They are leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement. This stunning combination of German propriety and Bohemian revolution goes hand in hand for decades. We see the rise of Hitler, the forced exile of a swath of German writers and artists, Mann's narrow escape to America, his sojourn at Princeton, along with fellow exile Einstein, and his final move to LA in the late 40s where he presided over an astonishing community of writers, artists and musicians, including Brecht and Shoenberg, even as his children court tragedy. To call this a portrait of an artist is both reductive and true-it is a novel about a character and a family, fiercely engaged by the world, profoundly flawed, and as flamboyant as it's possible to be"-- No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.91)
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I'll review it in the weekend, when my brain will hopefully work a bit better. (