Colm Tóibín + Thomas Mann

[MsAmerica]

How Colm Tóibín Burrowed Inside Thomas Mann’s Head
In writing his new novel, the Irish author spent years tracing the secret yearnings of Mann—who, he says, played a lifelong “game between what was revealed and what was concealed.”
By D. T. Max

The Irish writer Colm Tóibín is a busy man. Since he published his first novel, “The South,” at thirty-five, in 1990, he has written eleven more books of fiction. He has also published three reported books, three collections of essays, dozens of introductions to other writers’ work, prefaces to art catalogues, an opera libretto, plays, poems, and so many reviews that it’s surprising when a week goes by and he hasn’t been in at least one of the New York, London, or Dublin papers.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/how-colm-toibin-burrowed-inside-thomas-manns-head

So, have you read it OP? What do you you think of it?
I struggled with it and eventually gave up. Not because it wasn't beautifully written and evocative, but I felt I didn't care about Thomas Mann enough to continue.
However, I did come to it through seeing it on the library shelf without even knowing what it was about.
So I was looking forward to hearing what someone else had to say about it and it's a bit disappointing (and odd IMO) for you just to have put up the publishers info.

Thanks for this. Interesting article. Just finished listening to the Magician and really enjoyed it. I was expecting the book to be much heavier than it was. I read the Master when it came out and remember it being much more of a slog than this.

Would really recommend it as another interesting family saga of a family in through the first half of the 20th century. I have never read any Thomas Mann books but that's no bar to enjoying this at all. I will try something of his though having finished this. Thomas Mann is in interesting character - definitely someone sitting on the sidelines more than the other characters in the book living through WWII in particular.

Would really recommend it as another interesting family saga of a family in through the first half of the 20th century Agree. I don’t think I was/am that interested in Thomas Mann per se, but as a picture of his family and the times I enjoyed it.

I’m a huge Colm Toibin fan, and read this as soon as it came out, having loved his Henry James novel, but I didn’t think this worked at all — too big, sprawling and unfocused. Too long a life, too many characters. The James one worked because it focused on a specific period in his life, with flashbacks — I’d thought this one was going to focus on the inspiration for and/or writing of ‘Death in Venice’, and I think that would have suited CT’s talents for the unspoken and unsaid far better.

I just finished this and LOVED it, but I'm a huge Colm Toibin fan.
I didn't know anything about Thomas Mann and found the story of him and his family fascinating, although none of them seemed particularly likeable! I'm always interested in people who seem to seamlessly move around between countries and continents and establish themselves. It was interesting to see how he managed (mostly) to avoid being drawn into the politics of Nazi Germany for a long time.