Mephisto - Klaus Mann

 Superb - unbelievably good, without doubt the best book I have read all year.   Mephisto is a psychological study of how so many of us come to terms with the evil around us.   Mann doubles down on the theme of self-delusion because his protagonist is an actor.  Very cleverly, the actor makes his name with his portrayal of Mephistophiles, the Devil's agent in Goethe's Faust (which cunningly also references the author's father's take on the classic theme) but has to face ultimate failure with his inability to cope with the complexity of Hamlet.

What really drives the narrative, though, is the fact that the real Mephisto was Mann's former brother-in-law, the second rate actor and Nazi favourite Gustaf Grundgens.   Albeit published in exile in Amsterdam in 1936 and banned in Germany until the 1980s, there can have been little doubt at the time who the original was.   'Hendrik Hofgen' isn't much of a disguise, especially given the pretentious alteration of the first name - the 'd' added to Henrik, the 'f' for the common 'v' of Gustav.   Mann is much kinder with the fictional version of his adored sister Erika.   Both of Erika's marriages were farcical - she was lesbian, and after Grundgens she married the extremely gay W H Auden.   Klaus Mann, of course, was gay, and when Erika and Gustaf got engaged, he went through a similar farce with Erika's lover Pamela Wedekind.   This was the avant garde life in Weimar Germany.   Similarly, in the novel, this is the sort of life Hendrik Hofgen enjoys in the Twenties - a Communist who wants to start a revolutionary theatre whilst tap-dancing for his whip-weilding black paramour.

A clever touch is that the key Nazis are not given names.   Hofgen's protector (Goering) is simply the Prime Minister or the fat giant, Goebels the limping dwarf, Hotler the Fuhrer or the Dictator.   The physical description of the latter, in his one and only encounter with Hofgen, would be sufficient to get Mephisto banned in most rightwing countries in 1936.   Did Mann perhaps feel that these monsters would have been forgotten by, say, the end of the century, or did he realise that they were monsters for all time?

A Twentieth Century classic which should be much better known than it is.   Even from major online booksellers I had to have two goes at getting a decent copy.   Finally a word for the translator, Robin Smyth.   That word, again, is superb.   I cannot recall reading a translation, particularly from the German, when nothing ever seems to have been lost.

The Magician - Colm Toibin

 The only Toibin books I had previously read were Brooklyn and The Testament of Mary.  Both were interesting and definitely well written, but they were very short.  The Magician is substantial, almost 450 pages.   It is a novelisation of the life of Thomas Mann, which also includes his children, especially the two eldest, Erika and Klaus.   I am very interested in Thomas Mann, having found my way to him over the last twelve months or so.   I discovered Klaus as recently as last month.

I am therefore the ideal reader for The Magician.   Toibin is also clearly a huge fan and he has read a lot more Mann than I have.  Even so, it is clear that Toibin has chosen to write the novel in the cool, detached style of his hero.  It works brilliantly.  He has also been careful to avoid the trap into which so many novelists fall when writing novels about other novelists.  Mann used autobiographical elements in some but by no means all of his novels.   What he says about such elements in the books is not necessarily his opinion.   Toibin knows this.

Toibin structures the book by place, emphasising his concept of Mann as a lifelong exile.  This is especially effective at the end, when Mann visits Germany from America and ends up living in Switzerland.   The women in Mann's life, from his wife Katia to his three problematic daughters, his Brazilian mother and his two sisters who both commit suicide, are brilliantly evoked, all very different.   He is, I felt, oddly less successful with brother Heinrich and son Klaus, who I would have thought were grist to the mill of any novelist.  Perhaps he thought that because Thomas clearly didn't understand them, neither should the reader of a book about Thomas.   Nevertheless their deaths are touchingly handled.

One of the blurbs on the cover calls The Magician a masterpiece.   I'm not sure it is possible to write a masterpiece novel about another novelist.   Two of Mann's masterpieces, after all, feature composers rather than writers.  That said, Toibin and The Magician come very close.   It is a wonderful achievement, humane, empathetic, deeply considered.

Alexander - Klaus Mann

 Alexander (1929) was Mann's sixth novel which, given he was born in 1906, is a measure of whar a prodigy he was.   On the one hand he didn't exactly have to fight for publishers' attention, being the son of Thomas and the nephew of Heinrich.   On the other, he didn't get on with his father, being gay, a heavy user of drugs, and somewhat on the socialisr side politically.

Only Mephisto (1936) really remains in the literary consciousness, mainly on account of the film.   If Alexander is typical of his other work then this neglect is downright scandalous.   Had I not already looked up his dates I would have thought Alexander the work of much older writer.   Hesse's Siddhartha sprang to mind; Hesse was forty-five when he wrote it.   Alexander has something of the same episodic nature.   The battles are background matters as Mann focuses on the Macedonian prodigy's sexual problems and his inability to establish and keep friendships as his empite grows.   Essentially Mann's Alexander is a superhero in search of a secret identity.   He browses the cultures of the vanquished but only to see if he can fit himself in there.   He takes on the exotic, the freakish.   In every sense he is trying to determine how far he can go.

I was captivated.   This is a beautiful book that should be much better known.   I really like the presentation of this Hesperus edition.   The translation by David Carter seems stylish and fine, but the punctuation is too often disastrous.   Proof-reading required.   On the plus side, the management of notes is spot-on.