{ Monday, April 18, 2005 }
Mann, Gloater
Thomas Mann, model sibling? No. I came across an old issue of Grand Street (as I was getting rid of four years worth of magazines, mostly New Yorkers that I finally accepted would never be read) and in it were two letters from Mann to his older brother Heinrich, also a novelist, that had been found in a bookstore in Berlin. Just before he proceeded to mercilessly tear Heinrich's most recent novel to shreds, he gloats just a little:
Oppressed by low barometric pressure, rushed, and utterly dispirited, I scratched it down on paper in eight days. When it was "finished", I clearly felt that it had gotten completely away from me, and I sent it off with a bad conscience in the definite expectation that it would be sent back, with derision and shame, as unsuitable. Now I've already dealt with the proofs and had a grateful letter from Fischer: he read the piece with great pleasure and indicated that it proved me a master of the sketch, and, by the way, that another printing of Buddenbrooks (copies 11 to 13 thousand) was underway as he wrote. It's always that way. I work with loathing and without the slightest satisfaction, send the garbage off in profound despair, and then come the letter, the money, the praise, the handshakes, the "adoration".
And with that, to the main point, to your novel!
LINK | 12:58 AM | TB