Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, with Chad Post | Big Book Project

Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus is a puzzling novel, and in this episode of The Big Book Project host Lori Feathers and guest Chad W. Post take on the first two hundred pages featuring an unreliable narrator, an unorthodox musical prodigy, and the transformation of art making into conformity to a systematized order.The Big Book Project was created as a forum to share ideas about challenging novels, and today's conversation makes clear that questioning together is far more rewarding than puzzling alone.Here's a few of the threads that we pull on in this episode: how much should we trust Zeitblom the biographer writing almost fifty years after the fact, insisting on his fabulous recall ability, and probably in love with his subject; Zeitblom's commentary on his own manner of writing Adrian's story; the coded use of Esmeralda's name; and, the twelve-tone system that Schoenberg made famous.Throughout the discussion Lori and Chad keep returning to the tension underneath it all--humanism set against order, sentiment against system, during the decades in Germany when these arguments carried consequences far beyond music.We hope that anyone who knows of Doctor Faustus only by reputation will find in this episode a reason to read and discuss it with us. Subscribe and follow along. Share your thoughts in the comments.#DoctorFaustus #ThomasMann #TheBigBookProject