THOMAS MANN: Life as a Work of Art

More than any other modernist writer, Thomas Mann (1875–1955) has remained something of a mystery. Biographers have concluded from his writings that he was an anti-Semite, a closet homosexual, a proto-fascist and an authoritarian father. In exhaustive detail, renowned Mann scholar Kurzke offers what may easily become the definitive biography of the great writer. Drawing deeply on letters, journals, diaries and essays, he engages in close readings of all of Mann's writings to demonstrate the ways the writer's life so intimately informs his art and the ways that his art informs his life. Kurzke reads the essay "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man," for example, to show how Mann's resistance to WWI nevertheless convinced him of the political power of art. Kurzke's Mann emerges as a celibate homoerotic writer who sublimated erotic desires and political questions into his art. Above all, Kurzke's biography proclaims, Mann ambitiously and tirelessly worked at his art ("He exists not for the sake of living but for the sake of writing") as he became an aesthete and man of letters. Kurzke's narrative is an unusual one that moves from past tense to present, from Mann's childhood to his later years, drawing on his writings blended with Kurzke's own interpretations. This style won't please everyone (and this is probably not for those looking for an introduction to Mann), but his portrait overcomes the theoretical tendencies of some recent Mann biographies (such as Anthony Heilbut's Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature) to offer a balanced, if sometimes hagiographic, study of Mann. 40 b&w photos. (Sept.)