Six Early Stories (Green Integer) - Softcover

Mann, Thomas

3.61

72 ratings by Goodreads

9781892295743: Six Early Stories (Green Integer)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1892295741 ISBN 13: 9781892295743

Publisher: Green Integer, 2003

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When they think of the stories of the great German, Nobel prize-winning -author Thomas Mann, most American readers recall Stories of Three Decades, translated in 1936; however, that edition purposely excluded several early tales of Mann’s which the translator found "tentative and awkward efforts." However, within the current literary context, these stories prove quite interesting.

Translating them for the first time into English, Peter Constantine received general acclaim and was awarded the PEN—Book of the Month Club Translation Award for 1997.

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Review:

In 1936, Alfred A. Knopf published a collection of Thomas Mann stories in a volume called Stories of Three Decades. Though Mann himself stated that the book contained all of his short stories, in fact, six were left out. Sixty years later, those six stories get a book of their own: Six Early Stories. These are the work of Mann's youth, written between the ages of 18 and 33. Though none of the stories matches the mastery he exhibited in his later short fiction, all the signs are here of the writer he would one day become.

The preoccupations are here as well; each story in the collection involves sexuality, the position of women in society, morality, and art. Six Early Stories will certainly be of interest to Thomas Mann enthusiasts, but even for those who have never read anything else by him, this collection is worth reading. Even in his juvenilia, Mann's work demonstrates the skill, intelligence, and courage of a bygone literary age.

From Booklist:

The six stories in this collection were left out of the earlier Stories of Three Decades, published in 1936, for reasons that, as the introduction here ably notes, will no longer seem sufficient. Given the enormous talent Mann became, the value of these pieces seems obvious, as they reveal the efforts of a young artist working through the contradictions of bourgeois society and art on his way toward modernism. "Fallen" offers an ironic portrayal of bourgeois romance, of a young man caught up in the idea of loving a young actress in such purified form that "of her mouth he did not even dare think," though he is permanently embittered upon discovering the unromantic realities in which his loved one lives. "The Will to Happiness," on the other hand, offers a complex inquiry into the figure of the artist and Mann's view of the artist's compromised relation to society, an important subject in his later works. Students of Mann's work will also appreciate the one-paragraph introductions to each story. Jim O'Laughlin

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