From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

Doctor Faustus

Thomas Mann

Start date: March 1, 2017

Finish date: March 31, 2017

Discussion: Around Europe 2017

Why we're reading this: The winner for our March Around Europe group read.
[close] The winner for our March Around Europe group read.

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What Members Thought

Jan 23, 2022 Pamela rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: boxall-1001-read

Mann’s reworking of the Faust legend is original and challenging, combining the story of a brilliant composer and his innovative compositions with an examination of Germany’s cultural and moral decline. Adrian Leverkühn’s fictional biography is recounted by his childhood friend, Serenus Zeitblom, an unassuming Classics teacher.

While admiring the intellectual power of Mann’s writing, I personally found this novel rather disappointing, especially as I had enjoyed The Magic Mountain. First, the con ...more

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May 07, 2017 Janice (JG) rated it it was amazing

I notice that many reviewers begin by saying that they really don't know how to adequately discuss this book, and now I'm adding my affirmation to theirs - I won't even try to review this novel, adequately or otherwise. And as a matter of fact, the book description that comes with its GR posting is actually spot on, summarizing in just a few paragraphs what the story reveals.

What I do want to talk briefly about, however, is its author, Thomas Mann. About halfway through the novel it began to da I notice that many reviewers begin by saying that they really don't know how to adequately discuss this book, and now I'm adding my affirmation to theirs - I won't even try to review this novel, adequately or otherwise. And as a matter of fact, the book description that comes with its GR posting is actually spot on, summarizing in just a few paragraphs what the story reveals.

What I do want to talk briefly about, however, is its author, Thomas Mann. About halfway through the novel it began to dawn on me just how painful it must have been for Mann to write this novel. Mann exists in the novel as both the narrator Zeitblom and as the protagonist Adrian Leverkühn - as the Witness and the Fallen - who must examine and describe and confess the fatal error of the country and the countrymen he loved, Germany. I believe he wrote this novel while living in Los Angeles, California, which must have added an uncomfortable irony to his efforts.

The story is about the life of a musical composer, and the novel is crammed with music theory and descriptions of musical compositions and notations, and unless you are a highly skilled and experienced classical musician or connoisseur, you will be baffled and discouraged and frustrated with nearly the whole first half of the book. I have wondered about this the whole time I spent reading this story. Why did Mann do this? He must have known how difficult it would be to get readers past these dense chapters in order to discover the excruciating process of Adrian's downfall.

I have two possible theories for this. One, that these forbidding chapters are meant to discourage all but the most dedicated reader, because Mann is going to lay his anguished heart out for all who are able to see. And two, because Mann had some kind of an epiphany about music and its role in human destiny as well as spiritual evolution. Throughout the story Mann comments on the similarity between music and words, as if they were the same thing, and led to each other. I think Mann is saying that the bridge between music and words is similar to the bridge between intellect and emotion/soul. Because of the massive amount of research he did to become so knowledgeable in music theory and composition, I am leaning heavily towards this second theory. Or, maybe it's both.

I know that I have only been able to appreciate a surface understanding of the depth of this novel, but I'm not sure if I will ever return to it. It is a disturbing look at our human inadequacies and failings, and I'm not in a hurry to go there again. However, there are a few chapters in this book, and one in particular where Zeitblom describes Adrian's composition Lamentations of Faustus, that are some of the most profound and profoundly moving pieces I've ever read.

For me, Mann continues to prove his worth as one of the greatest writers to ever grace the stage of this Earth gig. ...more

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May 29, 2025 Genia Lukin rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, classics

Thomas Mann is very hit or miss for me, it seems. Buddenbrooks was a hit, The Magic Mountain was a miss. Death in Venice was a hit, and Dr. Faustus, it seems, is a miss.

The subject is interesting, and there are parts of the book I really liked, but Mann is so invested in this boring, droning narrator, that it's exhausting. By the seventh time he apologized that the chapter before was too long, I was really done with the gimmick. Plus, I like music theory well enough, honestly, but I could find t ...more

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Apr 06, 2017 Joey Anderson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

An incredible novel that illustrates what it meant to be German in the first half of the twentieth century. How Germany lost two wars, and how the narrator, Serenus Zeitblom, interprets those events in his questionable biography of the composer Adrian Leverkühn, who becomes emblematic of late eighteenth century and early twentieth century music.

The novel explores more of the ambiguity of evil in terms of the legend of Faust and Goethe’s play. Do not expect a retelling of the the Faust story, fo ...more

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