Books: “The Magician” by Colm Toibin
Colm Toibin is a magician. The author of “Brooklyn,” a novel which was made into a splendid film starring Saoirse Ronan, he has managed to turn the Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann into a rock star, nearly 70 years after his death.
“The Magician” is Toibin’s novelization of the life of one of the 20th century’s greatest writers—from Mann’s humble beginnings in Lubeck, Germany (an hour’s train ride from Hamburg), to his first semi-autobiographical novel (“Buddenbrooks”) written in Munich, to his stature as the leading German opponent of Nazism worldwide.
Understand that this is not your grandfather’s kind of biography. Told from Thomas’ point of view, Toibin imagines TM’s motivations for “Death in Venice” (closeted homosexual inclinations), for “Doctor Faustus”’(his acquaintance with Arnold Schoenburg), and “The Magic Mountain” (his wife’s stay in a sanitarium). Most of all, it digs deep into Mann’s
moral crisis—wanting to denounce the Nazis from the get-go vs. his fear of their reprisal against his Jewish in-laws trapped in Germany.
Speaking of family, part of the charm of “The Magician” is how Toibin imagines Thomas’s interactions with his wife and six madcap children. Through Toibin’s eyes, they will seem as familiar as your own cousins, uncles and aunts. Except their family friends are Alma Mahler, W.H Auden, and Eleanor Roosevelt—and yes, Toibin imagines their speaking roles flawlessly as well.
This novel has a special place in my heart, as we were lucky enough to visit the Thomas Mann Museum in Lubeck, where his life and that of his brother Heinrich (who wrote the novel that became “The Blue Angel”) kept us transfixed for hours. I remember thinking TM’s life would make a great novel—or maybe even a movie someday. In the latter, I see John Lithgow as Thomas, Debra Winger as his wife Katia, and Katie Perry as the wacked-out daughter Erika. Anybody talk to CAA yet?