It’s here. The book. The Book. That which I will be reading, and re-reading, and reading about, and studying, and marking with pencil and ink, and, eventually, if all goes well, writing my Master’s thesis about.
Yes, it arrived today from Amazon, all 1,492 pages, hardbound and new, in a brand new translation by John E. Woods.
I am So Excited. So excited that– yes, I’ll admit it: I kissed it.
(Now you are smirking at me. Go ahead. I Don’t Care.)
I have read (and everyone should) Mann’s short story “Death in Venice.” I have read Dr. Faustus. I have spent weeks in a sanitorium via the pages of The Magic Mountain. And this spring I looked on, dismayed and knowing, as the Buddenbrooks met their demise. And now. Now. Now I commence reading Thomas Mann’s last novel, his four-novels-in-one-novel, the work he considered his masterpiece: Joseph and His Brothers.
This is a departure for Mann, and so it will be a departure for me in my Mann-odyssey. Thomas Mann’s novels were all set current to the time in which he wrote. This novel tells a story that comes from ancient history, the biblical story from the book of Genesis, that tale of love and faith, betrayal, lust, and greed that held me enthralled through weekly installments in fourth-grade Sunday School. And Mann, from what I know of him, had, at best, an equivocal attitude toward his traditional Lutheran upbringing and traditional Lutheran faith. Moreoever, he married a woman from a prominent Jewish family. How, I wonder, will he handle this tale of dreams and slavery and faith? What will he make of it?
I need to finish reading this book before the summer’s end. That should be no problem. After all, I only have the ninth grade curriculum to write for the Humanities course at Trinity School. I only have at least three books worth of summer reading for the same. I only have two book clubs to read with, two book clubs who appear to be going full-steam ahead despite the fact that I have Other Reading to do. And I’m only just a little bit working on writing a novel.
So. Let’s see. 1,492 pages rounds up to 1,500. At 25 pages a night, it will only take me roughly two months. No problem.
Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?
Indeed we should, if– in fact, perhaps only if– the past subjected to our remarks and inquiries is solely that of humanity, of this enigmatic life-form that comprises our own naturally lusty and preternaturally wretched existence and whose mystery is quite understandably the alpha and omega of all our remarks and inquiries, lending urgency and fire to all our speech, insistence to all our questions. And yet what happens is: the deeper we delve and the farther we press and grope into the underworld of the past, the more totally unfathomable become those first foundations of humankind, of its history and civilization, for again and again they retreat farther into the bottomless depths, no matter to what extravagant lengths we may unreel our temporal plumb line.
-Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers, “Prelude: Descent Into Hell,” chapter 1
Anyone want to read it with me?
Oh, come on. It will be a quick read. Light. Good for the beach. No Problem.
I’m honest: I can’t wait.
