‘New Selected Stories’ by Thomas Mann (2023) – 242 pages Translated from the German by Damon Searls
In his introduction, translator Damon Searls attempts to convince us to want to read Thomas Mann.
“He is often thought to be cold, forbidding, humorless, a kind of impenetrable high-culture obelisk… I hope the new translations in this book show that he was in fact as warm, hilarious, and heartbreaking a storyteller as anyone; his wonderful humor in particular is far more than the supercilious “irony” he is generally credited with.”
‘Buddenbrooks’ remains my favorite of the work of Thomas Mann with ‘The Magic Mountain’ a close second. I needed no special convincing to read Thomas Mann.
The placement of the first story “Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow” is meant to dispel any thoughts of Thomas Mann’s “coldness” a reader might have had, and it succeeds wonderfully. It is a family story written in 1925.
It would have been helpful for me if each short story or excerpt from a longer work were printed with the year it was written along with the title.
There are only two short stories, one complete novella (‘Death in Venice’), and two excerpts from longer novels (from ‘Buddenbrooks’ and from ‘Confessions of Felix Krull’), so the title is rather a misnomer. I do believe the book serves as a good sampler of the fiction of Thomas Mann, but it would be difficult to make any claims about Thomas Mann as a short story writer based on only two stories.
I had already read the entire ‘Buddenbrooks’ and read the novella ‘Death in Venice’ at least twice, but these are new translations by Damon Searls so I suppose they merited rereading. Still I was quite surprised there were only two short stories in this selection.
‘As for the ‘Death in Venice’ translation, the special magic that Venice has for the visitor arriving by boat is conveyed more vividly and colorfully in this translation of ‘Death in Venice’ than in the two previous translations that I have read. As always, Aschenbach’s intense interest in the young boy Tadzio remains questionable. I prefer to think of it as the innocent passion of an old man.
The last excerpt, the Felix Krull excerpt, really dragged for me. This excerpt contains reminiscences from his childhood rather than a well-formed short story. He even confesses,
“I am writing down my memories first and foremost to entertain myself, and only secondarily the public.”
There surely must have been one other Thomas Mann short story with enough quality to replace it.
Grade: B
Tony's Book World 
Posted by Lisa Hill on July 28, 2023 at 3:24 AM
Well, this review is gold, because I came here all excited that there were short stories I didn’t know about… I would have been livid if I’d bought it and discovered that this book is mostly fiction I’ve already read. And I loathe reading excerpts, the sheer frustration of not knowing the context and not being able to read the rest of it as it should be read.
BTW That fictionalised bio by Colm Toibin probably helped to form my opinion of Mann as “cold, forbidding, humorless, a kind of impenetrable high-culture obelisk”, but I do not care one whit about that: I love his fiction. Yes, Buddenbrooks is a favourite, but that’s not what makes me look for more. I’ve like the ones that are rich in symbolism, that bear endless re-reading and (almost) make me wish I could read German.
PS You know what ChatGBT did when I was writing this? It predicted Mass from the first two letters of Mann and I didn’t notice (because I’m not a touch typist) till I was proofreading the comment, which I have to do more and more these days because of AI interfering with what I write. ‘ss’ is nowhere near ‘nn’ so it wasn’t my typo.
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Posted by Anokatony on July 28, 2023 at 5:57 AM
Hi Lisa,
Yes, I was really hoping this collection would be all short stories, all new to me since I hadn’t read any of his short stories. So I was quite disappointed to discover long excerpts from ‘Buddenbrooks’ and ‘The Confessions of Felix Krull’ as well as the entire novella ‘Death in Venice’ which I had already read two times. Writing short stories apparently wasn’t Thomas Mann’s thing.
So you are already into ChatGBT ? I’m still stuck in prehistoric times trying to figure out the intricacies of my ancient word processor.
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Posted by Lisa Hill on July 28, 2023 at 6:17 AM
Noooo, I am certainly not into ChatGBT. I tried it at the same time as did The Spouse, wrote a mocking report of it on my blog, and forgot about it.
Only, I can’t. I have not figured out whether the AI that gets in the way of my writing is from Windows or from WordPress, but it constantly predicts its inane suggestions for what it thinks I want to write, and if look up from the keyboard to check my spelling (because I do make typos), it slows me down while I sort out what I was trying to write rather than what it is predicting. It’s not like predictive text on a phone which you can ignore, it’s on the screen and if you touch the wrong key (Tab, I think but maybe others as well) there it is in your writing.
I used to have spell check which would fix my errors and that was sometimes helpful (except for Aust/US spellings) but that doesn’t seem to work any more. And I could turn it off if I wanted to.
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Posted by Anokatony on July 28, 2023 at 6:22 AM
If the words and sentences we are going to write can all be predicted, what’s the sense in writing them?
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Posted by Lisa Hill on July 28, 2023 at 6:36 AM
Well, yes…
It works by harvesting stuff that’s on the web (too bad about your copyright) and so yes, whatever they use has already been said.
I don’t know where it’s going to go. One of our most respected journos says that a lot of low-grade journalism (lifestyle stuff) won’t look different. But it can’t do anything requiring complex thought (yet).
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Posted by Janakay | YouMightAsWellRead on July 28, 2023 at 4:18 AM
I agree with Lisa — a very helpful review, Tony. I also love Thomas Mann’s work, although it’s been some time since I read any of it. I’m not sure whether I’d list Buddenbrooks as my favorite or Magic Mountain, as I loved them both! I’ve had Doctor Faustus on my TBR for some time; not sure, however, that I’ll ever tackle Felix Krull.
Have you ever read Mann’s Royal Highness? It’s a charming, fairy-tale like novel that, at the time, struck me as very “un-Mann” like. In retrospect, I suppose I missed all sorts of allusions to various things, but it really dispels the stereotyped view of Mann’s work as being exclusively cold & cerebral.
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Posted by Anokatony on July 28, 2023 at 5:26 AM
Hi Janakay,
I guess the title ‘Royal Highness’ has scared me away from that work so far. It is one of Mann’s early works, so I expect it might be good. In many cases that I’ve noticed, the early works that built an author’s reputation in the first place are better than some of the works the author writes after they have the reputation.
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