The Magic Mountain

This morning the first patient of the day (but never believe a word I say about my patients, it could be a woman, it could be a man, it could be someoneI met years ago) brought up Thomas Mann's THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. Her husband was once a literature professor at Columbia and she was having a hard time staying awake long enough to listen to him read to her about our dear friend Hans Castorp. "Have you read it?" she asked me. "I have," I said. "After much anguish and personal turmoil, I have been able for the past fifteen years to say that I have read THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN."

"Did it take you long?" she asked.

"It took me forty-eight years," I said.

"Forty eight years of reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN?" she asked.

"Forty eight years of TRYING, once every FIVE years, to read THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN," I responded. "It was not an easy process. I started at eighteen."

It was at a fancy party in Olympia that I first even heard of Mann's book. I was speaking with a book editor who wore a mustache and was drinking a martini. First, he spoke of Wittgenstein. His remarks were unimpeachable. He was, he told me, not only an intellectual but an existentialist. He told me how to pronounce Sartre. He told me how to pronounce Proust. He put his drink down on a small table and pushed me backwards into a closet. "Oh boy," I commented to myself, "I am going to be kissed by an existential intellectual editor."

What happened inside the closet was this. He pushed away some of the hanging coats so he could move freely enough to take me by the shoulders. He kissed my forehead and then spoke. He said, "My dear. If there is one book - and one book only - that you absolutly MUST read during this long life you have before you, make certain the book is Thomas Mann's THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN."

That was it. I felt as if I had just been pushed out of the womb. It was quite a tip he had given me, I thought, perhaps a tip that could change the course of my life forever. One book I MUST read! In my entire life! Indeed, I went out and bought it the next day.

And then I began on one of the most difficult reading experiences of my life. I have just run down into my office to locate the book but I was afraid the blog would eat itself up or something if I left for too long and in my large array of books, THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN would not be on the top of any pile. It would be submerged. Buried. Hidden.

I read a few chapters at eighteen, then put it down and decided I would read it again later. Five years later. Which I did. At twenty-two, now married to Jim, I announced that I would soon be reading the rest (ha! The REST!) of THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. I took it out of its hiding place and began where I left off. I tried. I had not been to college yet, but my literary experience was rich. Even so, I could do not it. I could not even make it to the half way point. At twenty-six I began again. At thirty, again. Finally, at age fifty, I had managed to read the entire goddamned book. I owned the copy of the book where, by book's end, Mann implores the Reader to go back and start all over again. I threw the book across the room. Jim raised his eyebrows. I ran towards it and gave the book a good hard kick. Jim sat down in a chair to watch.

That was it. I read THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. In increments of five years. From eighteen to fifty. It had become to seem like some symptom of some kind, a dark symptom where incompetence and the lack of understanding appeared at every stage, every sentence, every paragraph, every page. At one point I vowed to look that editor man's name up and scream at him through the telephone. I did ask around a bit, but nobody seemed to remember him at all. I was not well during those years, perhaps he was some kind of apparition.

Really, today I have nothing much of anything else to say. I have made three birthday cards for three of my dearest friends, friends who HAVE formed and informed my entire life: Bob Dietz, Mel Dietz and Bill Harvey. Without them, who would I be? Without them, what would my life have been like? Friends can do that for you.

Here is part of a poem by Rumi, I send it out to all my friends:

Whatever gives pleasure is the fragrance
of the Friend. Whatever makes us wonder

comes from the light. What's inside
the ground begins to sprout because you spilled

wine there. What dies in autumn comes up
in spring becaue this way of saying no

becomes in spring your praise song YES.