Thomas Mann - Death In Venice II

"A disenchanted middle-aged German scholar stalks a young teenage boy during his retreat to Venice during the plague."


"The boy represents 'ideal beauty', but why? I know that may seem like a dumb question to some, but, I never quite got it. Why did HE have to represent it?"


"There is a running joke within myself that whenever I am in a tiresome situation, I would say, 'You know, I feel like Dirk Bogarde at the end of the movie.' Well, yeah...ironically, that's how I felt the same when I was reading the book Death in Venice, especially in the last twenty pages or so. I did see the movie and found it lacking in details. There were too many of unexplained moments that had me peeved, so I dismissed the movie as an artificial exercise of the intelligence. While browsing around at a used bookstore, I was surprised that there was a novel before the movie was made. My hope was to gain more insight about the main character Gustave von Aschenbach and the motives behind his obsession. While reading the book, I felt overwhelmed by several aspects drawn out by the author. One is that he wasted too many pages when describing Gustave. Two is he tends to go off a tangent with his philosophical statements. I kept waiting until he got back to the main character and his actions. I would say more aptly, his writing tends to become purple prose in disguise. Three is that the writer is stuck in the moment for a prolonged period of time before moving on. In the end, I didn't learn anything new or discover very much. In the movie, I was confused if it was a plague in Venice, but in the book, there are three explanations: sirocco (but not really), cholera, and plague. The bottom line is that Gustave von Aschenbach is a newborn pedophilic, and that sort of thing doesn't interest me. I would say that Death in Venice is much like Lolita but in a different league. All in all, Death in Venice isn't worth reading because nothing seems to happen, and there isn't much difference between the book and the movie."


"it was gay pedo fantasy disguised as Greek angst? Art as agit-prop."


"I was a philosophy major in college and I hated this book. But then again, the whole NAMBLA fic genre really doesn't do it for me. I'm sure some literary aesthetes are going to pick this review apart, good for them. I'm incredibly well-read and thought this one was just a tepid bore."


"It is a gay pedo fantasy, nothing more."


"It is considered great tragic literature and even added to the 'Cannon' of Western Literature. I, for one, found the plot disgusting; dense and boring text does not help the struggle to finish the reading. Hemingway, Faulkner, and Conrad, though dense (and at times, dull in their own right), capture the attention and imagination of the reader, creating an adequate encounter."


"If you like short stories about grown men who are sexually attracted to boys, suicide, incest, and self-absorbed German narcissism, you'll love Death in Venice. Me, I don't much cotton to such themes in what I read, so I had trouble wading through this morass of early 20th century European bourgeoisie decadence.
...
As a whole, this is exactly the type of work that made me dislike studying modern literature as a student. The prose is dense and despite Mann's impressive descriptive ability, the stories do little to uplift the human spirit. Instead, the reader is left encumbered with a myriad of very negative ideas and dreary observations about life. In short, this book was a depressing, annoying, and occasionally disgusting read.

If you want to read something interesting and uplifting, try Angels in Iron."

Thomas Mann - Death in Venice

"I dod not like the writing. Almost entirely about homosexuality."


"I can relate to regretting a hasty travel decision and wishing it wouldn't pan out somehow.
But the pedophilia just creeps me out."


"This is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. It takes a while to get going, but it's eventually made clear this work is about a man delving into becoming a pedophile. It's a book that never should have been written, there is nothing uplifting or redeeming to be found here. Yes, the man comes to a tragic end, but I don't think I needed to read this book to make that realization. I was reading about Thomas Mann on wikipedia and apparently he struggled with his own sexuality and this story was written about an eleven year-old boy he had similar thoughts about to Von Aschenbach in this book had for fourteen year-old Tadzio. I find that to be very sad and unnerving in every way."


"Basically this was an older man's ultimately lethal obsession with a young boy. Wish I knew that ahead of time because that's not exactly my thing. It was short, that's about all I can say about it that was good. Besides that, there just wasn't anything that hit me as exceptional about this. Maybe it's just personal as I just don't get off or see much in the old person sexual obsession with youth, regardless of sex.

I mean I'm pretty liberal about things like this and welcome everyone to get the most out of life as long as all parties agree and it doesn't exploit children. Fantasies about young children even as literature strike me as a bit creepy and I wonder if they don't get more credit for that than their actual literal merit.

This is just sticking in the back of my mind I guess as I read Lolita recently too and was equally underwhelmed ... I'm not convinced that literary arguments or the amount of symbolism discussed actually redeem these works as much as they're hyped. I guess I'm cynical enough to believe it's just a dated PG sexual fantasy regardless of what others say.

So to wrap up, in this day there's much better porn out there on the internet if that's your thing. I wish we'd just call this type lit what it was, risque soft porn of the time, that way I don't accidentally waste time reading more of these type 'classic works of literature'."


"There is nothing appealing to me about lonely middle-aged man who becomes obsessed by a 14 year old boy."


"I have no idea why I've read in the past year so many books about old people obsessed with little kids."


"the end could only have been worse if it was a 'and then i woke up' book...but it might as well have been"


"a 160 page celebration of a pederast and his target. I find it interesting that Mann is revered as an author, but most people would be hard-pressed to come up with 3 books that he wrote."


"As I can still recall how annoying boys are at that age, I found it hard to swallow that such a sophisticated and worldly author would fall in love with a little boy based purely on looks."


"What an insane book. I don't know how you give a lot of stars to a book about a dying pedophile but most of what I remember about the book is the graphic descriptions of how everyones genitals smelled, which I guess is worth something."


"I just didn't like it. Sorry, sorry, sorry, Mr. Nobel-Prize-Winner, I - just - dont - like - it. Too much blabla (and I'm not even referring to the looooong sentences, no), it just didn't give me anything. At all. Sorry, no points of friction there"


"He seems to be talking about how amazing and deep artists are, and how their lives and struggles are so important and set them apart from mere mortals.
If he's serious, then -- ugh and ick. You're just another dude who writes books, okay?"


"Spoils the magic of Venice"