by Ted Gioia
Günter Grass is often lauded for his bold use of the
techniques of magical realism, in his novel The Tin
Drum (1959), to create a wry, indirect indictment of
the moral compromises and pervasive bad faith (in the
Sartean sense of lying to oneself) of Germany during
the 1930s and 1940s. Yet Thomas Mann had already
done the same a dozen years
earlier with his angst-ridden
novel Doctor Faustus, pub-
lished in 1947, and actually
begun in 1943, two years
before the end of World
War II—and when Grass was
still wearing a Nazi uniform.
Here Mann finds a most
fitting symbol for Germany's
plight, building his story
around a deal with the devil,
a universal theme of time-
honored appeal to authors
and readers, but one with
especial resonance for his own nation’s literary history,
and the subject of the greatest work of German
literature, Goethe's Faust. Modern writers are often
fascinated by the potential for updating a classic work
in contemporary trappings, but seldom has the fit
between old and new been so compelling. If any
moment in German history could benefit from a
probing reexamination of the Faustian bargain, it was
the very point at which Mann embarked upon this
project. His countrymen had made just such a deal,
only to learn that, in these transactions, the devil
always dictates the terms and sets the outcomes.
RELATED REVIEWS
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
Even before the rise of Hitler, Mann had been
obsessed with ideas of decline, dissipation and
disease—a striking contrast with his cultural milieu
which displayed a marked obsession with hygiene,
racial purity and expansionary conquests. His debut
novel Buddenbrooks charted the gradual fall from grace
of a mercantile family, and his most famous works,
The Magic Mountain and Death in Venice, reveal an
acute sensitivity to the concept of illness—which in
Mann's worldview was invariably intertwined with
issues of creativity and transcendence.
This strange intersection of the pathological and
transcendental reappears in Doctor Faustus, where
Mann relates the life story of the fictional modernist
composer Adrian Leverkühn, as seen through the eyes
of his devoted childhood friend Serenus Zeitblom.
Leverkühn is willing to barter his soul and much of
physical well-being in exchange for a period of 24
years during which he will be "blessed" with a rare
degree of artistic inspiration. Yet, in a manner typical
of Mann, this demonic contract is more than a
questions of simple barter or quid pro quo: the ravages
of the body are depicted here as inseparable from the
glories of the creative spirit, Leverkühn's highest
achievements revealing their intimate connection to
the composer's most abject debasement.
Toward the conclusion of this novel, Mann's narrator
mulls over this linkage on a larger world-historical
scale. "What will it be like to belong to a nation whose
history bore this gruesome fiasco within it, a nation
that has driven itself mad, gone psychologically
bankrupt," Zeitblom asks himself. Then he
despairingly probes the connection between this
downfall and the cultural landmarks that preceded it,
the achievements of a Wagner, Nietzsche, Beethoven,
Goethe. "Was not this regime, both in word and
deed, merely the distorted, vulgarized, debased
realization of a mindset and worldview to which one
must attribute a characteristic authenticity and which,
not without alarm, a Christianly human person finds
revealed in the traits of our great men, in the figures
of the most imposing embodiments of Germanness?"
Under any circumstances, this would be a bitter,
horror-gripped admission, but all the more so when
one considers that Mann himself was one of these
"great men" of German culture. The most lauded
German novelist of the first half of the 20th century,
Mann could only honor his native land by severing his
connection with it. His aesthetic sense for the corrupt
and debased may have prepared him for this, but
could hardly have softened the blow. As early as
1930, he denounced Nazi ideology in a Berlin speech,
entitled "An Appeal to Reason," asserting that the
new political climate marked a "wave of anomalous
barbarism, of primitive popular vulgarity" and
identifying "a state of feeling that may become a world
menace." Mann was in Switzerland when Hitler came
to power, and remained there for several years, later
moving to Southern California. In the unlikely locale
of Pacific Palisades, home to countless Hollywood
stars and celebrities, he began work on Dr. Faustus
in 1943, with war still raging on three continents, and
published it in 1947.
The novel incorporates the catastrophic events that
presided at its birth. As the narrator recounts the life
story of his composer friend, he frequently breaks
away to mull on the events of World War II, which are
taking place while he (and Mann) write—with bombs
literally dropping from the sky. At first
glance, the story of Adrian Leverkühn might seem to
have little connection with the fate of the German
nation. The composer does not participate in political
movements, and over time isolates himself from social
activities of all sorts. He lives for his art, and can
hardly remember people's names, on those rare
occasions when he goes out into public. Yet even in
his aloofness, Leverkühn reveals traits—of pride,
disdain, narcissism, arrogance—that will infect the
body politic and set events on their tumultuous,
world-shaking course. Leverkühn aspires to a
Nietzschean kind of greatness, and when forced to
chose, is willing to accept an unholy, demoniac
grandeur over a purity and innocence that never rises
above the ordinary. In short, he has made a deal with
the devil.
Among the composer's papers, the narrator finds the
transcript of a dialogue between Leverkühn and the
Devil. Mann is deliberately ambiguous about how we
should interpret this document. Is it a sign of
madness? A symbolic story? A factual account of a
real discussion with some infernal tempter? And this
author, true to his track record, also offers a possible
medical diagnosis of a purely physiological sort—
Leverkühn contracts syphilis during a brief love affair,
and readers are left to consider that this disease serves
as the instigator both for the composer's creative surge
and dementia.
We are thus invited to dismiss the Devil from these
pages, treat him as a mere hallucination. Yet Mann
does not make this easy for the reader. Some larger
demonic force seems to hold a real sway over events
during the course of this novel, and the predictions
and promises made by the Devil during his dialogue
with Leverkühn possess an uncanny knack for coming
true. Certainly the composer himself seems wholly
convinced that he has entered into a Faustian bargain,
one that, once made, cannot be disavowed or revoked.
In their dialogue, which stands as the emotional
centerpiece of this anguished novel, the Devil
demands that Leverkühn abstain from all love. The
composer scoffs at this condition, and expresses doubt
that his interlocutor can enforce such a vague
mandate. "Would you attest to your reputed
stupidity," Leverkühn asks, "and bell yourself as a cat,
by wanting to found your business and promise on so
pliant, so captious a term as—'love'?" The Devil, as
they say, is in the details, but here too the dark side
shows that it holds the upper hand. Whenever the
composer tries to test this restriction, and dares to
nurture and channel his softer emotions, a heavy toll
is exacted. Only his art remains as an acceptable
vehicle for his emotional life. But this too takes on a
dark, woe-begotten aspect. The aptly labeled allegro
con fuoco from his string quartet "sounds as if flames
are licking at one from all four sides," and his final
composition, The Lamentation of Dr. Faustus, is
nothing less than a musical evocation of his own
damned state.
Other novelists have addressed musical themes in
their works, but few can match Mann for the depth
of technical knowledge of the composer's art that he
shows, time and again here. At a certain point, he
describes Leverkühn's immersion in twelve-tone row
techniques, and the lengthy description and apologia
for serialism is as good as anything you will find in
any book of music criticism. Elsewhere the lengthy
asides—on Beethoven's attitude toward counterpoint,
on "servant" and "master" notes, on the compromises
of the well-tempered scale, etc.—may strike the less
musically-inclined as slow going; yet those with a zeal
for such subjects will find Mann a profound,
knowledgeable guide. (In all fairness, he himself had
his own guides: Mann got help from Schoenberg and
Stravinsky during the course of writing Dr. Faustus.)
In truth, there are few interludes or asides here that
do not contribute to the overall effect. Even
throwaway conversations—on Mad King Ludwig or
the theories of sociologist George Sorel—will later
appear to have a connection to the unfolding plot.
Mann is one of the most intellectual of novelists,
treating ideas with a seriousness that one rarely
encounters in authors of fiction nowadays. Yet our
esteemed Nobel laureate had good reason for this
attitude: this author lived during an era in which
intellectual concepts killed far more people than all
seven of the deadly sins combined, and the particulars
of his own biography put him at the geographical
epicenter of these catastrophic ideas. Above all,
Mann's deftness at dealing with the abstract, and
personifying it in the interplay of characters and events
is unsurpassed, and places him in a small group of
literary masters—Musil, Tolstoy, Kundera, Bellow,
Canetti and (pre-eminently) Dostoevsky—for whom
the novel can be a vehicle for ideation on a profound,
almost philosophical level, yet without sacrificing the
intensity and immediacy possible only through fiction.
Günter Grass is often lauded for his bold use of the
techniques of magical realism, in his novel The Tin
Drum (1959), to create a wry, indirect indictment of
the moral compromises and pervasive bad faith (in the
Sartean sense of lying to oneself) of Germany during
the 1930s and 1940s. Yet Thomas Mann had already
done the same a dozen years
earlier with his angst-ridden
novel Doctor Faustus, pub-
lished in 1947, and actually
begun in 1943, two years
before the end of World
War II—and when Grass was
still wearing a Nazi uniform.
Here Mann finds a most
fitting symbol for Germany's
plight, building his story
around a deal with the devil,
a universal theme of time-
honored appeal to authors
and readers, but one with
especial resonance for his own nation’s literary history,
and the subject of the greatest work of German
literature, Goethe's Faust. Modern writers are often
fascinated by the potential for updating a classic work
in contemporary trappings, but seldom has the fit
between old and new been so compelling. If any
moment in German history could benefit from a
probing reexamination of the Faustian bargain, it was
the very point at which Mann embarked upon this
project. His countrymen had made just such a deal,
only to learn that, in these transactions, the devil
always dictates the terms and sets the outcomes.
RELATED REVIEWS
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
Even before the rise of Hitler, Mann had been
obsessed with ideas of decline, dissipation and
disease—a striking contrast with his cultural milieu
which displayed a marked obsession with hygiene,
racial purity and expansionary conquests. His debut
novel Buddenbrooks charted the gradual fall from grace
of a mercantile family, and his most famous works,
The Magic Mountain and Death in Venice, reveal an
acute sensitivity to the concept of illness—which in
Mann's worldview was invariably intertwined with
issues of creativity and transcendence.
This strange intersection of the pathological and
transcendental reappears in Doctor Faustus, where
Mann relates the life story of the fictional modernist
composer Adrian Leverkühn, as seen through the eyes
of his devoted childhood friend Serenus Zeitblom.
Leverkühn is willing to barter his soul and much of
physical well-being in exchange for a period of 24
years during which he will be "blessed" with a rare
degree of artistic inspiration. Yet, in a manner typical
of Mann, this demonic contract is more than a
questions of simple barter or quid pro quo: the ravages
of the body are depicted here as inseparable from the
glories of the creative spirit, Leverkühn's highest
achievements revealing their intimate connection to
the composer's most abject debasement.
Toward the conclusion of this novel, Mann's narrator
mulls over this linkage on a larger world-historical
scale. "What will it be like to belong to a nation whose
history bore this gruesome fiasco within it, a nation
that has driven itself mad, gone psychologically
bankrupt," Zeitblom asks himself. Then he
despairingly probes the connection between this
downfall and the cultural landmarks that preceded it,
the achievements of a Wagner, Nietzsche, Beethoven,
Goethe. "Was not this regime, both in word and
deed, merely the distorted, vulgarized, debased
realization of a mindset and worldview to which one
must attribute a characteristic authenticity and which,
not without alarm, a Christianly human person finds
revealed in the traits of our great men, in the figures
of the most imposing embodiments of Germanness?"
Under any circumstances, this would be a bitter,
horror-gripped admission, but all the more so when
one considers that Mann himself was one of these
"great men" of German culture. The most lauded
German novelist of the first half of the 20th century,
Mann could only honor his native land by severing his
connection with it. His aesthetic sense for the corrupt
and debased may have prepared him for this, but
could hardly have softened the blow. As early as
1930, he denounced Nazi ideology in a Berlin speech,
entitled "An Appeal to Reason," asserting that the
new political climate marked a "wave of anomalous
barbarism, of primitive popular vulgarity" and
identifying "a state of feeling that may become a world
menace." Mann was in Switzerland when Hitler came
to power, and remained there for several years, later
moving to Southern California. In the unlikely locale
of Pacific Palisades, home to countless Hollywood
stars and celebrities, he began work on Dr. Faustus
in 1943, with war still raging on three continents, and
published it in 1947.
The novel incorporates the catastrophic events that
presided at its birth. As the narrator recounts the life
story of his composer friend, he frequently breaks
away to mull on the events of World War II, which are
taking place while he (and Mann) write—with bombs
literally dropping from the sky. At first
glance, the story of Adrian Leverkühn might seem to
have little connection with the fate of the German
nation. The composer does not participate in political
movements, and over time isolates himself from social
activities of all sorts. He lives for his art, and can
hardly remember people's names, on those rare
occasions when he goes out into public. Yet even in
his aloofness, Leverkühn reveals traits—of pride,
disdain, narcissism, arrogance—that will infect the
body politic and set events on their tumultuous,
world-shaking course. Leverkühn aspires to a
Nietzschean kind of greatness, and when forced to
chose, is willing to accept an unholy, demoniac
grandeur over a purity and innocence that never rises
above the ordinary. In short, he has made a deal with
the devil.
Among the composer's papers, the narrator finds the
transcript of a dialogue between Leverkühn and the
Devil. Mann is deliberately ambiguous about how we
should interpret this document. Is it a sign of
madness? A symbolic story? A factual account of a
real discussion with some infernal tempter? And this
author, true to his track record, also offers a possible
medical diagnosis of a purely physiological sort—
Leverkühn contracts syphilis during a brief love affair,
and readers are left to consider that this disease serves
as the instigator both for the composer's creative surge
and dementia.
We are thus invited to dismiss the Devil from these
pages, treat him as a mere hallucination. Yet Mann
does not make this easy for the reader. Some larger
demonic force seems to hold a real sway over events
during the course of this novel, and the predictions
and promises made by the Devil during his dialogue
with Leverkühn possess an uncanny knack for coming
true. Certainly the composer himself seems wholly
convinced that he has entered into a Faustian bargain,
one that, once made, cannot be disavowed or revoked.
In their dialogue, which stands as the emotional
centerpiece of this anguished novel, the Devil
demands that Leverkühn abstain from all love. The
composer scoffs at this condition, and expresses doubt
that his interlocutor can enforce such a vague
mandate. "Would you attest to your reputed
stupidity," Leverkühn asks, "and bell yourself as a cat,
by wanting to found your business and promise on so
pliant, so captious a term as—'love'?" The Devil, as
they say, is in the details, but here too the dark side
shows that it holds the upper hand. Whenever the
composer tries to test this restriction, and dares to
nurture and channel his softer emotions, a heavy toll
is exacted. Only his art remains as an acceptable
vehicle for his emotional life. But this too takes on a
dark, woe-begotten aspect. The aptly labeled allegro
con fuoco from his string quartet "sounds as if flames
are licking at one from all four sides," and his final
composition, The Lamentation of Dr. Faustus, is
nothing less than a musical evocation of his own
damned state.
Other novelists have addressed musical themes in
their works, but few can match Mann for the depth
of technical knowledge of the composer's art that he
shows, time and again here. At a certain point, he
describes Leverkühn's immersion in twelve-tone row
techniques, and the lengthy description and apologia
for serialism is as good as anything you will find in
any book of music criticism. Elsewhere the lengthy
asides—on Beethoven's attitude toward counterpoint,
on "servant" and "master" notes, on the compromises
of the well-tempered scale, etc.—may strike the less
musically-inclined as slow going; yet those with a zeal
for such subjects will find Mann a profound,
knowledgeable guide. (In all fairness, he himself had
his own guides: Mann got help from Schoenberg and
Stravinsky during the course of writing Dr. Faustus.)
In truth, there are few interludes or asides here that
do not contribute to the overall effect. Even
throwaway conversations—on Mad King Ludwig or
the theories of sociologist George Sorel—will later
appear to have a connection to the unfolding plot.
Mann is one of the most intellectual of novelists,
treating ideas with a seriousness that one rarely
encounters in authors of fiction nowadays. Yet our
esteemed Nobel laureate had good reason for this
attitude: this author lived during an era in which
intellectual concepts killed far more people than all
seven of the deadly sins combined, and the particulars
of his own biography put him at the geographical
epicenter of these catastrophic ideas. Above all,
Mann's deftness at dealing with the abstract, and
personifying it in the interplay of characters and events
is unsurpassed, and places him in a small group of
literary masters—Musil, Tolstoy, Kundera, Bellow,
Canetti and (pre-eminently) Dostoevsky—for whom
the novel can be a vehicle for ideation on a profound,
almost philosophical level, yet without sacrificing the
intensity and immediacy possible only through fiction.
| THE YEAR OF MAGICAL READING Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann |
Click on image to purchase
| The Year of Magical Reading (click here) |
| conceptual fiction Exploring the Non-Realist Tradition in Fiction |
Welcome to my year of magical
reading. Each week during the
course of 2012, I will explore an
important work of fiction that
incorporates elements of magic,
fantasy or the surreal. My choices
will cross conventional boundary
lines of genre, style and historical
period—indeed, one of my intentions
in this project is to show how the
conventional labels applied to these
works have become constraining,
deadening and misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only
in recent years have we segregated
works arising from this venerable
tradition into publishing industry
categories such as "magical realism"
or "paranormal" or "fantasy" or some
other 'genre' pigeonhole. These
labels are not without their value, but
too often they have blinded us to the
rich and multidimensional heritage
beyond category that these works
share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in
our individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative
fiction through stories of myth and
magic, the fanciful and
phantasmagorical; but only a very
few retain into adulthood this sense
of the kind of enchantment possible
only through storytelling. As such,
revisiting this stream of fiction from a
mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us
to recapture some of that magic in
our imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by
Salman Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick
by John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by
Kelly Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by
Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa
Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of
Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Week 9: The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Week 10: Gargantua and Pantagruel
by François Rabelais
Week 11: The Famished Road by
Ben Okri
Week 12: Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Week 13: Winter's Tale by Mark
Helprin
Week 14: Dhalgren by Samuel R.
Delany
Week 15: Johnathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Week 16: The Master and
Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Week 17: Dangerous Laughter by
Steven Millhauser
Week 18: Conjure Wife by Fritz
Leiber
Week 19: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Week 20: The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien
Week 21: Aura by Carlos Fuentes
Week 22: Dr. Faustus by Thomas
Mann
Week 23: Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Week 24: Little, Big by John Crowley
Week 25: The White Hotel by D.M.
Thomas
Week 26: Neverwhere by Neil
Gaiman
Week 27: Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Week 28: Fifth Business by
Robertson Davies
Week 29: The Kingdom of This
World by Alejo Carpentier
Week 30: The Bear Comes Home
by Rafi Zabor
Week 31: The Color of Magic by
Terry Pratchett
Week 32: Ficciones by Jorge Luis
Borges
Week 33: Beloved by Toni Morrison
Week 34: Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands by Jorge Amado
Week 35: Hard-Boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World by Haruki
Murakami
Week 36: What Dreams May Come
by Richard Matheson
Week 37: Practical Magic by Alice
Hoffman
Week 38: Blindess by José
Saramago
Week 39: The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
Week 40: The Magicians by Lev
Grossman
Week 41: Suddenly, A Knock at the
Door by Etgar Keret
Week 42: Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Week 43: The Obscene Bird of
NIght by José Donoso
Week 44: The Fifty Year Sword by
Mark Z. Danielewski
Week 45: Gulliver's Travels by
Jonathan Swift
Week 46: Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Week 47: The End of the Affair by
Graham Greene
Week 48: The Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis
Week 49: Hieroglyphic Tales by
Horace Walpole
Week 50: The View from the
Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
Week 51: Gods Without Men by
Hari Kunzru
Week 52: At Swim-Two-Birds by
Flann O'Brien
reading. Each week during the
course of 2012, I will explore an
important work of fiction that
incorporates elements of magic,
fantasy or the surreal. My choices
will cross conventional boundary
lines of genre, style and historical
period—indeed, one of my intentions
in this project is to show how the
conventional labels applied to these
works have become constraining,
deadening and misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only
in recent years have we segregated
works arising from this venerable
tradition into publishing industry
categories such as "magical realism"
or "paranormal" or "fantasy" or some
other 'genre' pigeonhole. These
labels are not without their value, but
too often they have blinded us to the
rich and multidimensional heritage
beyond category that these works
share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in
our individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative
fiction through stories of myth and
magic, the fanciful and
phantasmagorical; but only a very
few retain into adulthood this sense
of the kind of enchantment possible
only through storytelling. As such,
revisiting this stream of fiction from a
mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us
to recapture some of that magic in
our imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by
Salman Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick
by John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by
Kelly Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by
Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa
Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of
Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Week 9: The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Week 10: Gargantua and Pantagruel
by François Rabelais
Week 11: The Famished Road by
Ben Okri
Week 12: Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Week 13: Winter's Tale by Mark
Helprin
Week 14: Dhalgren by Samuel R.
Delany
Week 15: Johnathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Week 16: The Master and
Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Week 17: Dangerous Laughter by
Steven Millhauser
Week 18: Conjure Wife by Fritz
Leiber
Week 19: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Week 20: The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien
Week 21: Aura by Carlos Fuentes
Week 22: Dr. Faustus by Thomas
Mann
Week 23: Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Week 24: Little, Big by John Crowley
Week 25: The White Hotel by D.M.
Thomas
Week 26: Neverwhere by Neil
Gaiman
Week 27: Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Week 28: Fifth Business by
Robertson Davies
Week 29: The Kingdom of This
World by Alejo Carpentier
Week 30: The Bear Comes Home
by Rafi Zabor
Week 31: The Color of Magic by
Terry Pratchett
Week 32: Ficciones by Jorge Luis
Borges
Week 33: Beloved by Toni Morrison
Week 34: Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands by Jorge Amado
Week 35: Hard-Boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World by Haruki
Murakami
Week 36: What Dreams May Come
by Richard Matheson
Week 37: Practical Magic by Alice
Hoffman
Week 38: Blindess by José
Saramago
Week 39: The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
Week 40: The Magicians by Lev
Grossman
Week 41: Suddenly, A Knock at the
Door by Etgar Keret
Week 42: Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Week 43: The Obscene Bird of
NIght by José Donoso
Week 44: The Fifty Year Sword by
Mark Z. Danielewski
Week 45: Gulliver's Travels by
Jonathan Swift
Week 46: Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Week 47: The End of the Affair by
Graham Greene
Week 48: The Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis
Week 49: Hieroglyphic Tales by
Horace Walpole
Week 50: The View from the
Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
Week 51: Gods Without Men by
Hari Kunzru
Week 52: At Swim-Two-Birds by
Flann O'Brien
Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
Barth, John
Giles Goat-Boy
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Blish, James
A Case of Conscience
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Bunch, David R.
Moderan
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Delany, Samuel R.
Nova
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan (editor)
Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Farmer, Philip José
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Lafferty, R.A.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Dispossessed
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Malzberg, Barry N.
Herovit's World
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Moorcock, Michael
Behold the Man
Moorcock, Michael
The Final Programme
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the
End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir
Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Percy, Walker
Love in the Ruins
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Russ, Joanna
The Female Man
Saramago, José
Blindness
Sheckley, Robert
Dimension of Miracles
Sheckley, Robert
Mindswap
Sheckley, Robert
Store of the Worlds
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Silverberg, Robert
The World Inside
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Spinrad, Norman
Bug Jack Barron
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tiptree, Jr., James
Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Vance, Jack
Emphyrio
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Zelazny, Roger
This Immortal
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
When Science Fiction Grew Up
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
The Puzzling Case of Robert Sheckley
The Avant-Garde Sci-Fi of Brian Aldiss
Science Fiction 1958-1975: A Reading List
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
SF Novelists
More Words, Deeper Hole
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Tor blog
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction
and its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials from
publishers, authors, publicists or other
parties.
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
Barth, John
Giles Goat-Boy
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Blish, James
A Case of Conscience
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Bunch, David R.
Moderan
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Delany, Samuel R.
Nova
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan (editor)
Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Farmer, Philip José
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Lafferty, R.A.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Dispossessed
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Malzberg, Barry N.
Herovit's World
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Moorcock, Michael
Behold the Man
Moorcock, Michael
The Final Programme
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the
End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir
Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Percy, Walker
Love in the Ruins
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Russ, Joanna
The Female Man
Saramago, José
Blindness
Sheckley, Robert
Dimension of Miracles
Sheckley, Robert
Mindswap
Sheckley, Robert
Store of the Worlds
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Silverberg, Robert
The World Inside
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Spinrad, Norman
Bug Jack Barron
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tiptree, Jr., James
Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Vance, Jack
Emphyrio
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Zelazny, Roger
This Immortal
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
When Science Fiction Grew Up
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
The Puzzling Case of Robert Sheckley
The Avant-Garde Sci-Fi of Brian Aldiss
Science Fiction 1958-1975: A Reading List
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
SF Novelists
More Words, Deeper Hole
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Tor blog
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction
and its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials from
publishers, authors, publicists or other
parties.