Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature
by Anthony Heilbut
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Description
A groundbreaking biography of one of the century's most important writers. A portrait of Thomas Mann's Germany, his work, his life, his exile and arrival in America - a life of suffering and courage, of great achievement, a life beset by political hostility from the right and the left, and by the torments of sexual frustration. We see Mann, the wunderkind, transforming the history of his family into Germany's first classic novel, Buddenbrooks ... the competition between Thomas and his show more brother Heinrich, who became his greatest literary rival. We see Mann in turn-of-the-century Munich, always the hyperobservant outsider. And we come to understand his immense loneliness, a loneliness interrupted briefly by an affair with a young violinist, Paul Ehrenberg ("that central experience of my heart"), that was later dramatized in Doctor Faustus. We watch his unlikely courtship of the brilliant Katia Pringsheim, member of a wealthy assimilated Jewish family. We follow their life together during their fifty-year marriage and observe his complicated relations with his six children, particularly Klaus and Erika, who became the leading political and sexual radicals of their generation. Anthony Heilbut defines Mann's place in literary historyhis relation to his literary ancestors, particularly Goethe and Nietzsche, as well as his contemporaries Gide and Kafka, and to the American writers Whitman and Melville. He provides new social and psychological insights into the interplay of Mann's life with such works as Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers, and The Confessions of Felix Krull. We watch Mann contend with the major intellectual and political crises of Europe after World War I as he evolves politically from arch defender of Germany to leading antifascist. We discover a link between his humanist politics and his dreams of sexual emancipation. We see Mann alternately enthralled and horrified by popular culture. We follow his increasing identification with the Jewish community, which included his most fervent admirers and harshest critics. Anthony Heilbut considers Mann's experience of America, first as a devotee of Roosevelt, then as an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism who was widely condemned in the press and in Congress, and hounded by his enemies well into his late seventies. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
This literary biography, which explores the author's psychology in great detail, is one of the more fascinating ones I have ever read. The writer interconnects different episodes from Mann's extensive career, showing how his shyness and fixation undergirded his insightful observations on German society, reversing course from discussions of seminal late novels such as Doctor Faustus to accounts of Mann's early years. Heilbut points out that Mann's birth happened about the same time as Germany's political unification, German Jews' legal emancipation, and the term "homosexual" became widely used. Extensive critical analyses of Mann's written works, both public and private, delve into the author's mind and show how Mann's literary show more consciousness provided a platform for investigating the boundaries and license of German, Jewish, and homosexual self-expression. Heilbut explains how, for instance, the famous novella Death in Venice shows a national idol dying amidst debased tourism, yet it also celebrates homoerotic longing. This interpretation of Thomas Mann's life was intriguing in light of these and other examples. show less
A revelatory, if rather potboilerish, biography of the author, focusing on his sexuality, loves, and their reflection in his works.
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Author Information
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Anthony Heilbut is the author of Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from the 1930s to the Present, and The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times.
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1995
- People/Characters
- Thomas Mann
Classifications
- Genres
- Literature Studies and Criticism, Biography & Memoir, Fiction and Literature, LGBTQ+
- DDC/MDS
- 833.912 — Literature & rhetoric German & related literatures German fiction 1900- 1900-1990 1900-1945
- LCC
- PT2625 .A44 .Z54415 — Language and Literature German, Dutch and Scandinavian literatures German literature Individual authors or works 1860/70-1960
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 98
- Popularity
- 328,890
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
