Death In Venice & Seven Other Stories
Author: Thomas Mann 1992 461 pp
My rating: 3*
Started May 6 2008, Finished May 17 2008

I originally checked out this book with the intention of reading only “Death In Venice” and “Tonio Kroger”, works that seemed to be in the short story pantheon and which online opinions indicated contained most of the pleasures of The Magic Mountain without most of the challenges. Well, don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Not only were those two stories nowhere close to the class of TMM, they were probably my two least favorite stories in this collection.

“Death In Venice” is probably, at least in the US, the most well known of Mann’s works e.g. it shows up in crossword puzzles and was the most prominently mentioned of the works Alvy Singer recommended to Annie Hall in order to raise her cultural IQ. I don’t know what all the fuss is about unless that it was the first work by a major artist to feature a pederastic stalker. It was however worthwhile to read DIV so soon after TMM, as doing so made me more aware of some repeated themes pertaining to a holiday which from which little is expected but soon gets indefinitely extended for reasons of romantic obsession and general pleasure in the new environment:
“He was quick to fall in with the pleasing monotony of this manner of life, readily enchanted by its mild soft brilliance and ease.” (46)
“The term he had set for his holiday passed by unheeded; he had no thought of going home.” (54)

Due to a rock musician stage-named TonioK who amused me in high school, the pseudonym inspiring “Tonio Kroger” had long been on my radar, though actually reading it had made it past the level of velleity until I’d experienced TMM. Now I’m left to wonder how this slight tale ever developed a reputation as a significant work. Its theme – how the artist tends to be disappointed by the lack of artistic sensibility in his models – again for me echoed Annie Hall, to whit the scene where the semi-tormented Alvy approaches a beautiful, smiling couple on the street and asks them how they are able to get along so well and the woman replies “I’m very shallow and empty and I have nothing to say” and the man adds “I’m the same way.” Compare this with moment in “Tonio Kroger” when the protagonist realizes that the objects of his affections “live free from the curse of knowledge and the torment of creation, live and praise God in blessed mediocrity!” (p145)
In general, the stories in this collection project Mann’s class awareness (if not snobbishness) and his interest in the place of the artist in society. With the exception of the too long and literally named “A Man and His Dog”, an 80+ page paen to the author’s dog, I found the other stories in the collection more engaging and more vital, than “Death …” or “Tonio …”. In particular I was struck by the iconoclastic and impudent “Felix Krull”, which Mann later expanded into a novel and the unexpected page-turner, “Mario and the Magician” which manages to draw a lot of suspense from its mere title. However, I would advise anyone who takes these musings seriously to seek out one of Mann’s major novels: Buddenbrooks (which since I haven’t read, I recommend on reputation alone) or The Magic Mountain. With the exception of Jack London’s, I find short stories, no matter how well crafted, to be somewhat disposable – I enjoy them but they don’t make much of an impression; call them the Chinese food of literature, an hour later I’m hungry again.