This book came across my desk, so to speak, as "a great setting for Disco Elysium DLC," and ashamedly, that (along with it literally being handed to me by a good friend, Scott) was what jumped it up the list. In which Hans Castorp is turned into a NEET. Before they had reels there was a well-established pipeline of radicalization. I guess you had to go up into the mountains to hang out with old dudes who would red-pill or whatever the fuck Masonic-pill'd.

It has been described as a love letter to the final moments of humanist Europe before WWI, with Mann having begun the novel as a brief (lol) story set in the same German sanatorium that his wife was institutionalized at in 1912 (rumor has it she fell ill after finding out about Mann's bisexuality as revealed in his previous novel, which has humorous implications for MM). Completion was deferred until 1924, and the philosophical emphasis of many of the load-bearing dialogs reflects a sense of wistful remembrance of a time past.

I initially rated this book semi-poorly (because I wasn't in the mood for a bildungsroman when I picked it up, mea culpa) but –similarly to Brother's Karamzov– some of the chapters within are so good even taken in isolation that I think I will think of this book fondly despite the hundreds of pages of chaff.

The book follows young Hans Castorp (24), an orphaned engineer destined to become a shipbuilder who visit his cousin Joachim Ziemssen at The Berghof in the Alps. His 3 week visit quickly extends into a seven year getaway from the flatlands and he is basically the subject of intellectual contention by the eclectic old men (Lodovico Settembrini the humanist, Leo Naphta the Jesuit, and finally the plantation owner/coffee king Mynheer Pieter Peeperkorn an eccentric oaf) with zany ideas whom he is exposed to during his stay.

Castrop's cousin Ziemssen is being treated for tuberculosis by the Berhof's director, Dr. Behrens. Castorp intends to leave with Ziemssen after his three week stay, but his cousin insists that he is not (and surely will not be) healthy enough to leave on Castorp's aggressive timeline. There seems to be a sort of iatrogenic requirement to stay at the institution – it's almost giving Shutter Island, but I think when taken in conjunction with the time that Mann was writing, it's more like an attempt to cling to the fantasy of a remote safetyland where conflicting ideas can be dealt with via cordial, albeit heated, conversation rather than trench warfare. On its face, it seems like a bad thing that people wh ogo to Magic Mountain are unable to leave. They get diagnosed and then seem to sustain themselves or get worse if/when they are discharged and inevitably return.

Castorp is introduced to the Italian writer Settembrini who is a political activist fighting (very passively, from the mountains, in the minds of the youths like Castorp who never really make it back down to the Flatlands to proliferate those high minded ideals) for enlightenment, humanism, democracy (the good guys!!!11!!). He's sort of a brash, surrogate mentor for Castorp who seems very impressionable. There's pseudo-flashbacks where we learn not only of Castorp's orphaned disposition, but also of is indifference towards commencing on the professional career for which he has been preparing. He observes that he could realistically stay at the sanatorium in perpetuity living off his inheritance which is but meager in the flatlands.

Whilst denying his membership as a patient of the Berghof in his introductions to Behrens and Settembrini (and pretty much everyone, who all ominously retort something along the lines of "you'll come around" or "that's what they all say"), he is party to a number of invigorating debates or soliloquies, the first of which comes from Settembrini regarding the nature of sickness and love.

He is also introduced to the married woman Madame Clawdia Chauchat (literally "hot cat") who he quickly falls in love with, despite Settembrini's admonition. The Italian tries to impart the necessity of Hans' destiny to work and do labor and find purpose in the Flatlands – getting sick and hanging out at Berghof is not the end all be all (and yet, we're like 150pp in, Hans ain't goin nowhere).

I need the friction. Opinions cannot live unless they have the chance to do battle—and I am firm in mine. But could you claim the same for yourselves— you, lieutenant, or you, my good engineer? You enter the fray unarmed against such intellectual chicanery. If exposed to the influences of this half-fanatic, half-malicious humbug, both your minds and souls are in danger.”

Still convinced that he will remain only for a couple more weeks, Hans takes a hike and gets clapped by the altitude. He gets a nosebleed and has another flashback about an old friend from school who loaned him a pencil once. He blacks back in and rushes to catch a lecture from Dr. Krokowski, Behrens assistant who delivers regular lectures on psychoanalysis. Castorp sneaks in still covered in blood from his near-death nosebleed incident, rife with phallic symbols, and sits behind Madame Chauchat who he thinks bears striking resemblance to his friend from school. Krokowski lectures about love and sickness, sickness and love, and man's need to transform the two.

Just when it comes time from Castorp to leave Berghof, he falls mildly ill and has his temperature taken and decides he better stay to tough it out (that's how they getcha). Castorp stays in bed for 3 more weeks, is xrayed, and then caught in the same sort of loop which seems to have ensnared his cousin: measuring the illness indubitably finds something requiring patient rest and care, but never resolves.

While they exchange cigarettes, Castorp has an orgasmic relief when he is finally able to taste it again – conflating nic sick with profundity:

Hans Castorp put it into words. “There’s life in a cigar. It actually breathes. At home I came up with the idea of keeping my Maria stored in airtight metal containers, to keep out the damp. Would you believe it, she died! Within a few weeks she grew sickly and died—nothing left but leathery corpses.” They exchanged what they knew about the best way to store cigars, especially imports. The director loved imported cigars and would have most preferred to smoke heavy Havanas. Unfortunately they did not agree with him, and he told about two little Henry Clays he had taken a liking to one evening at a party and how they had come close to putting him six feet under. “I smoke them both with my coffee,” he said, “one after the other, thinking nothing of it. But no sooner am I finished than I have to ask myself what’s up. Whatever it is, I’m feeling very rum, stranger than I’ve ever felt in my life. I arrive home, no little problem in itself, and no sooner am I home than I think I’m about to pop my cork—you know, feet like ice, a cold sweat, you name it, face white as a sheet, heart doing crazy tricks, my pulse going from a thread you can barely feel to a helter-skelter, cross-country spurt, you know, and my brain in a tizzy. I was convinced that I was about to kick the bucket. I say ‘kick the bucket,’ since that’s the phrase that came to me then as the best description of my condition. Because actually I was feeling as euphoric as if this were some sort of shindig, although I was scared stiff, or better, I was out of my mind with fear. But fear and euphoria aren’t mutually exclusive, everybody knows that. Some scalawag who’s about to have a girl for the first time is afraid, too. So is she. But they simply melt together for euphoria. Well, I was close to melting myself, about to kick the bucket, my chest heaving away. But then Mylendonk’s ministrations broke the mood. Ice compresses, a rubdown with a brush, an injection of camphor—and so here I am still among the living.”

Hans rips some ciggies with the doc (smoking was good for u back then) and while they're riffing, Behrens reveals a portrait he painted of Madame Chaucat which messes with Castorp (why does everyone seem to have intimate knowledge of Clawdia but him?). This propels Castorp into vigorous study of anatomy so that he, too, might one day have a deep appreciation of fatty tissues.

Time passes relatively quickly as Castorp settles into the daily routine which pleases him at Berghof. He and his cousin take care to look after the sick and dying and take flowers to the graves of the patients who die at Berghof (which seems to be a commonplace occurrence, again not much treatment is actually going on there...) The next even of note is the carnival of Walpurgisnacht, which sparks some discomfort from Setembrini. Castorp and Chaucat play party games including some exchange of a PENCIL and they end up conversing in french all night long. The next night Clawdia is gone from Berghof!

Settembrini is displeased with Castorp for having ignored his suggestions about dedicating himself to his vocation and for having gotten mixed up with Clawdia. A few weeks later, the Italian is discharged from Berghof since his illness is terminal and he can no longer afford to live in the sanatorium. Instead he goes to live in the nearby village. Castorp and his cousin next encounter him a few weeks later when they go visit the village and Settembrini totally big dawgs them, pretending not to recognize his erstwhile disciples. Eventually, he introduces the cousins to his partner Naphta, the "extremist" Jesuit, his neighbor, who teaches at the local school.

The cousins regularly visit them who proceed to do verbal battle for hundreds of pages culminating in The City of God which alone made this book worth reading. The debate religion, philosophy, politics, the nature of man, reason, obedience, religion, ethics, etc. Naphta argues for a dictatorship of the pope, Settembrini argues in favor of democracy. Over time, Joachim seeks to be released from his soft-captivity at the hands of Behrens, and Castorp remains hoping to mount a recovery sometime in the next 6 months. He p much takes his temperature until he pops a fever to justify his sustained stay up on the mountain.

His uncle Tineapple (whom he stayed with alternately with his grandfather after his parents died) eventually visits him, trying to convince him to give up the 18month holiday he's been on and to join the workforce. Behrens tries to convince Tineapple that he, too, may be coming down with something and the uncle gives up and leaves.

Hans goes skiing and gets stuck in a blizzard and experiences some weird psychedelic hallucinations of Settembrini's idyllic humanist vision of a grand society intermixed with spooky visions of old women butchering a child in a medieval Naphta-vision. He is spared death in the blizzard and promptly shrugs off the spiritual enlightenment that befell him while he was near death in the blizzard. 6 months later, his cousin returns as a Lieutenant and dies shortly after. Clawdia also returns from Dagestan, with her husband Peeperkorn in toe who has the same habit of trailing of as does Shostakovich. He seems to be some sort of anti-intellectual foil to both Settembrini and Naphta and makes a point of trying to impress everyone with his eccentric nihilism. Castorp eventually confronts Clawdia asking about her relationship with Peeperkorn and they agree to remain just friends for the sake of her marriage. Peeperkorn interrogates Castorp as to the nature of his relationship with his wife, which Castorp graciously answers with respectful honesty. They seem to part amicably, but the next morning Peeperkorn he poisons himself occasioning the final departure of Clawdia as well.

Castorp becomes bored and depressed by the mountain. He finds a gramophone which reawakens the autistic engineer brain and is fascinated by it's machienry. It is used in a seance by Dr. Krakowski in which a vision of his cousin appears unto Castorp. The mood shifts, Castorp becomes aggressive, as do Naphta and Settembrini who engage in a debate so heated that is provokes a duel between the two men.

It might well be that getting used to things up here was simply a matter of getting used to not getting used to them—but as for his digestive chemistry and his sensitive, dry mucous membranes that tended to nosebleeds, the adjustment seemed complete at last.

Naphta regards death as romantic, and Settembrini paints him a terrorist. When they duel, the humanist Settembrini refuses to shoot as Naphta and instead fires into the air. Naphta shoots himself after calling Settembrini a coward. Something something Europe dies with this gunshot, the year is 1914, and Castorp has been at Berghof for seven years. He departs Berhof, returning to the lowlands to begin his work as a shipbuilder, becomes a soldier and probably dies.

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