The Magic Mountain
Mann turned a tuberculosis sanatorium in Davos into a theater for all of European civilization's ideas before WWI. The novel is encyclopedic, philosophical, funny, and exhausting in the way that a long life is exhausting. It also happens to be one of the great examinations of time: how we live in it, waste it, measure it.
One reader has "never met anyone who finished the book," and the reports from inside explain the attrition. Settembrini and Naphta argue for pages with no dramatic movement, leaving a novel "rich on philosophy, poor on plot," and readers document quitting around page 600 of roughly 700 once the debates wear them down. The atmosphere works against you too, "protracted in language, oppressive in atmosphere," closer to being cornered by two men who will not stop talking than to immersion. Clavdia Chauchat gets no interior life beyond Hans's gaze. And the narrator's faint condescension toward everyone he describes grates across seven hundred pages. Mann said the book should be read twice, which is a considerable ask.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
