Thomas Mann is an excellent author, but if you've never read anything by him before, begin with "Magic Mountain" and "Death in Venice," followed by "Buddenbrooks" and "Felix Krull" before tackling this book. This is Mann's second novel and a bit of a letdown from "Buddenbrooks." Mann uses the literary technique he would later exploit in such marvelous fashion with "Magic Mountain" -- that is, examining a small, isolated part of society as a microcosm of the larger whole, namely Europe.

Without giving away any of the surprises, this book is about a rather idealistic female's impact on a small village. Mann poses thoughtful questions about the usefulness of artistic values in a bourgeois society while revealing the inner nuances of his characters as he does so artfully, as in "Buddenbrooks" and "Felix Krull."

To top it all off, this Mann novel is probably his most humorous. For those not knowledgable on Mann, he is not readily identifyable for the humour in his works, making this one rather noteworthy.

Mann's gorgeous, rich prose cannot save this dull, plodding tale from being an ordeal to read. The same density of language which charms the reader in the beginning becomes an irritant as hundreds of pages pass and almost literally nothing happens. Characters are well drawn, but in gloomy colors which evoke no sympathy. Not a single character stands as a hero; few are even likable. The narrator is a long-winded bore. In many respects, Adrian, the subject of this fictitious biography, remains inscrutable to the very end. Having loved THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, I persevered to the end in the hope of finding something to make the time invested seem worthwhile. I was disappointed.

Study the mind of a genius and the soul of a mad man. Witness the depths of depression and heights of inhuman creation with a demonic infection. In Thomas Manns epic rewrite of Goethes Faust we meet a musical genius through the academic eyes of his best friend. A fascinating and disturbing biografy telling the story of Adrian Leverkuhn whose lifespan was shortened by intellectual exhaustion and led towards distanced insanity. The novel is written during world war II, and the storyteller condemnes the German aggression and nationalsosialism, while he slowly paints a picture of the growth our genius experiences during his development from innocent childhood towards phsycological corruption and breakdown.

A definite read for the "depths of mind" - oriented.

Dr Faustus was the most difficult read ive ever had but it was extrememly enjoyable.If youd like a real intellectual challenge then Dr Faustus provides such.Presented on many levels with a multi-layered plot focusing on musical genius Adrian Leverkuhn who enters into a diabolical pact to further his musical talents,his insight his genius this story is really the analagous tale of post war Germany and how the nation reshaped itself,its own perception and the worlds and how it deals with the horrendous moments of its history.Told by Adrians best friend,the story has many complex musical descriptions and uses this musical imagery to set a tone,to define a mood that pervades the book.To try to relate it to something understood the atmosphere of the book reminded me a little of the movie 'Amadeus'-but of course with so much more depth and scope.The book may seem abstruse at times but it is a beautiful work of fiction,a true masterpiece which any serious adult reader looking for real depth would appreciate.

Donald Prater has produced a highly detailed account of Thomas Mann's life. He remains an objective observer and paints a picture of the development of an often cold literary statesman who finds it difficult to form personal relationships. Prater does not dwell on the genesis of Mann's literary production despite his insistence that Mann was not principally a political writer but an artist. Instead he gives a long-winded account of Mann's travels throughout Europe and America, his departure from Nazi Germany and naturalisation in the USA. The latter section of the text is larded with references to meetings with his children and other literary figures in the USA which do little to aid the reading of Mann's major works of fiction. The author is at pains to justify Mann's behaviour after the Second World War and emphasise his disgust for Nazism and anti-Semitic thought. Despite being a detailed and carefully researched manuscript, he text is not an inspiring exploration of Mann's life and work and often verges on the tedious. It will be an invaluable companion to the research student who wishes to verify precise details in the history of Thomas Mann, but as a companion to the study of Mann's oeuvre it is not successful. A superior guide must always be TJ Reed's 'The Uses of Tradition' which, after 25 years, continues to be the best English Language companion to the life and works of Thomas Mann, providing intelligent interpretation and valuable insight into the biography of the writer.

For decades, fans of Thomas Mann have been waiting for a definitive biography, frustrated by the fact that Mann's will sealed all his private papers after his death. Unfortunately, we must continue our wait.

Herman Kurzke's Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art, A Biography, is a hoax, for it simply is not a biography. The book is instead nearly 600 pages of literacy criticism, and sophomoric literary criticism at that. Kurzke makes the classic undergraduate error of assuming that the artist's work perfectly mirrors his life and that the artist is his characters. Again and again Kurzke strives--and fails--to provide insight into the life of Mann merely by delving into Mann's writing. Consider this passage from page 73: "Thomas Mann's favorite flower was the Marshall Niel rose. He 'is' [Little Herr] Friedemann, the reading and violin-playing ascetic who has succeeded in chaining up the dogs in the cellar. The basic motif for his life and actions is fear of passion, fear that the carefully tended equilibrium of his life could tip over, fear of the return of what was repressed and the collapse of true construction of art. The psycholoanalyst Krowkowski in The Magic Mountain knows with pleasure how to make it perfectly clear." So we learn what Mann's favorite flower was, but nothing more, and the unmistakable tone of undergraduate assertion here makes us shudder.

The absolute dearth of information about Mann is inexcusable, and those who are familiar with Mann's works, as certainly all who would buy this book must be, do not need someone of Kurzke's limited skills to tell us what those works are about. One need only read "Death in Venice," for example, to know it is about suppressed homosexuality, and one need only read Mann's 1918-1939 published diaries (1982) to know that Mann is addressing his own suppressed (or not) sexual inclinations.

In sum, this book is a waste of time, ....

I must beg to differ with my colleague in academia.

If it is sophomoric to assume that an author's life is completely mirrored in his novels, than it is the greater fool's error to believe that there is such a thing as an objective biography -- compiled from some sort of secret correspondence, some sort of puzzle contained in the actions of author's life, which will englighten a literary work further.

Kurzke respects a profound idea in his work: Mann wished to remembered by his fiction, and those letters which amplify his career.

Frankly, Thomas Mann is a figure in world literature who respected the idea of leaving for posterity exactly what he wished to said about him. Apparently, this is insufficient to repeat. It seems better to do what Joseph Frank did with his five volume Dostoevsky biography (everyone applauds this biography) -- to pour over the notes and sketches of rough drafts, as well as his surly day-to-day complaints about neighbors and his hemorrhoids. Frank admonishes Anna Dostoevskaya for trying to etch out and destroy parts of the notebooks that she did not wish to be public. Mann obviously succeeded in protecting himself from vulture professors and writers who would years down the road be searching for material to publish to advance their curriculum vitae.

As Settembrini might have said, a fixation on the concrete banal and prosaic facts about an author's life is an (intellectual) disease typical of the century just past. Kurzke's attitude and approach share nothing of this.

The role of values in public policy is certainly a topic worthy of discussion. Unfortunately, this book does not do a fine job of discussing the matter. It presents the typical think tank view of the world - rigidly ideological defenses of policy backed by a boatload of numbers. Values don't work well when forced into the defense of a viewpoint, and work even less when they are being quantified. The ideas of many of the writers, such as James Q. Wilson's notion of an underclass mentality, had been discredited even before they appeared in this work. For a serious discussion of the role of values in public policy, read a book by Rev. Jim Wallis or a like-minded soul, not by a bunch of think-tank technocrats.