# of Words: 247

Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, a novella about a writer who falls in love with a young Polish boy, which has been raising eyebrows ever since its publication in 1912. To be clear, when we state author, we are referring to an adult one--that means this love is all types of forbidden. Before you consider burning your copy of the book in outrage, though, consider this: This book is really about artwork.

And desire. And how art and want are super entangled with each other. Can it be a sexy mess? Absolutely. Can it be a totally captivating read because of this?

Mann, known as "the ironic German" (no seriously--there's even a book by that title), loves to present ethical values and cultural ideals as open questions instead of straightforward facts (they didn't give him the Nobel Prize in 1929 for nothing), and Death in Venice is his depiction of the modern artist, showing the way the artist's love of beauty is often barely any different from erotic fixation. In other words, there's no beauty without sexual desire coursing below the surface.

Caution: You may feel that a little embarrassing calling things beautiful after you finish reading this book--it will probably be a cool minute before you tell your mom she looks fine again. However, if this is the case, then it merely means Mann accomplished what he set out to do. So while it could be embarrassing for us as readers, it's a job well done for Mann.

Related Papers

Dubliners James Joyce

For the majority of the last hundred decades, in case you wanted an interactive geographical adventure of Dublin--the sights, the sounds, and particularly the folks--you could not do much better than read the fifteen connected short stories of James Joyce collection. Most editions of the collection contain two or three city maps from the landing pages, but it becomes fairly clear early on that the stories themselves produce a much better map of the Irish capital because they dig deep into the......Read More

Everyday Use Alice Walker

It is pretty fitting that Alice Walker's "Regular Use" is contained in a brief story collection known as In Love and Trouble. You know, because it has got love... and difficulty, trouble, trouble. Walker released this collection of stories in 1973, just a decade before she won the Pulitzer Prize for just a tiny book you have heard of predicted The Color Purple. Like this super famous novel, "Regular Use" explores African women's struggles with racial identity and racism through a particularly......Read More

Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner

Is the story of a legend along with the men and women who let it over and over again. In September 1909, 20-year-old Quentin Compson proceeds to visit Rosa Coldfield, an elderly girl in his hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi. That exact same night, Quentin goes through the story again with his father, Mr. Compson, that tells the story in another standpoint. Five months after, when he goes to Harvard, he reinvents the story with his roommate, Shreve. In 1833, Thomas Sutpen came to Jefferson and......Read More

Related Topics