Thomas Mann's Artist-Heroes

As a biographer, Meyers (Orwell: Life and Art) is nothing if not prolific (this is his 19th biography). His fascination with German author Thomas Mann (1875–1955) dates back to 1955, his freshman year in college; he has previously published 18 articles on the novelist including reviews of other studies or notes written on the tightly wound, elaborately metaphorical topical allusions that abound in Mann's prose. This book's title is mildly misleading: the work is about more than Mann's artist-heroes, giving Meyers a chance to address a number of issues in his subject's writing. Art (and its relation to disease) is clearly a major preoccupation for Mann, but many figures discussed here—Hans Castorp in the Magic Mountain (1924), Felix Krull from the 1954 unfinished novel Confessions of Felix Krull—are artistic in only the loosest sense of the word. Rather, Meyers has written a detailed study of Mann's use of language and ideas in weaving his highly ordered, overtly literary romans. Meyers isn't a felicitous writer and at times the piling on of detail wears on the reader, but his comments regarding Mann seem on the mark.