I struggled with this short story and might have given up on it if it had been longer, but I enjoyed the images of Venice. I read only "Death in Venice" (not the other stories). ( )

A literary achievement with the psychology of Tolstoy and a Greek commitment to the story itself; and that is not the only thing about this book that is 'Greek'. A treatise on Death, Life, Sex, Desire, and Fear which is both enticing and terrifying, and for the self-same reason.

Here is the face of wretched animal man, teeth bared and cloudy desperation mocking the vision. Mann's most succinct and powerful images and meanings are always reversed, for the sense that the raw and brutal emotion herein is become feral is mitigated by the fact that it is twisted back upon the self as only such a morally indistinct, labyrinthine mass may so twist.

Eminently pleasing and disturbing, this battle between the barely-restrained Epicurean and the resignedly Absurdist meets the latter's comic fruition in the former's faux-tragic inaccessibility. ( )

For me (and how often is that the caveat when we feel we have read something important that did not resonate), this is a group of remarkably uninspired stories. There is lush detail, no doubt. The descriptions of the places and the people are brought to life. But there is nothing to tell about them. And, when something is told, I found little to resonate so that I cared what was happening. The best of this group is “Mario and the Magician” about a magician with apparent mind control abilities who embarrasses the wrong person during his show. In this case, the descriptions of the character and the locale all built to support the story (which supported the characters and the locale.) The absolute worst – “A Man and His Dog”. I like dogs just as well as the next person, but this is more than I ever wanted to know. It feels like the author was trying to complete a required word count for submission to a collection of original stories about dogs (and I’ll bet this shows up in many of such collections.)

For me to understand the power of Thomas Mann will take the reading of some other materials. And reading these has meant that it will be a while before I try again. ( )

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

This novella, at only 73 pages in my Triangle Classic version, should have taken me a few hours to read. Instead it took a week, partially on account of 'real life' intruding on preferred occupations. However, I can't fully blame real life for my slow pace, as I found the first 14 pages or so quite dense, convoluted and near impenetrable. Finally after the sixth or seventh time rereading, I sighed and went on, hoping to be able to ken the rest without a full and thorough knowledge of those precious pages. I hoped I'd picked up enough of the ambiance.

An aging, somewhat reclusive author, stifled by his narrow existence, quite out of character, wishes to get away from his life, to vacation, escape, call it what he will, it stems from a general malaise, and dissatisfaction with his lot in life. He finally travels to Venice, a place where he has unsuccessfully attempted previous vacations, hoping this time will be the charm. Ironically, it is, or is it?

Gustave Aschenbach has lead a solitary life, essentially a loveless life. There was a wife, a child in his past, but these are swept over quickly, he has devoted his life to his Art, his Writing. He feels all emotion, all sensory input more intensely than most, and suffers for it, but sacrifices that pain to his gods.

This is not the Venice of romance novels, this Venice is rank, humid, and unhealthy, presented in a way I have not seen before. Mann's prose captures the miasma that surrounds the city, the reader can smell the rankness and unhealthy vapors that rise from the canals, we can smell the disease, the fear of the citizenry, and shrink from it. When Aschenbach eats a handful of over ripe strawberries, we feel and smell the softness and decaying sweetness.

In a sultry Venice, lightening strikes, and Aschenbach falls deeply and hopelessly in love, with a young Polish boy, a boy whose whole physical demeanor speaks of the Greek poets and ancient sculpture. Aschenbach, in spite of his strong, almost over-powering feelings, shows humble nobility of character and never directly approaches the boy, he worships from afar, they barely speak in fact. Exquisitely aware of each other, their eyes speak the volumes they cannot. Mann seems to create a lover's triangle consisting of the boy, Tadzio, Aschenbach and Venice itself, with Aschenbach shadowing his object of desire through the rapidly emptying City, helpless to stop himself and leave the place before the quarantine is imposed and he is trapped. But in a real sense he is already trapped by his quiet but deadly obsession.
An obsession that could claim his life, or Tadzio's. To whom does the death in the title refer? One? Both? Venice's death?
I wasn't sure till the very end.
Read, and enjoy.

I highly recommend this novella. 4.5/5

This Recorded Books collection included The Will for Happiness, Tristam, Little Her Friedermann, Tobias Mindernickel, Little Lizzy, Gladius, Dei, The Starvelings - A Study, The Wunderkind, Harsh Hour, Tonio Kruger, The Blood of the Waslungs, and of course, Death in Venice. This audio performance by Paul Hecht made the long, complex, drawn-out sentences easy to understand. I'm sure that the audio worked better for me.

So, these stories included, artist angst, passion, melancholy, loneliness, righteousness, homosexual urges, heterosexual urges, incestual urges, anti semitism, neurosis in sanitoriums, and all the usual happy, upbeat Thomas Mann fare. ( )