Abstract
Abstract This chapter considers themes of illness, suffering, heartbreak, marginalization, and entrapment in The Magic Mountain and its reception history. Three texts that showcase the productive ambiguities surrounding the culturally contested issue of emotional expression and melodramatic sensibility in Mann’s novel are analysed: A. E. Ellis’s The Rack (1958), a half-forgotten English novel, which once was included in the Penguin Modern Classics series; Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (1987), a global bestseller from Japan, which sold more than ten million copies worldwide; and Alice Munro’s short story ‘Amundsen’ (2012), published just a few months before the Canadian author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. These three texts are contextualized through references to other reading records, from fan mail which Thomas Mann received from tubercular readers of The Magic Mountain to recent online accounts of reading the novel by people convalescing from complicated surgeries or suffering from terminal diseases.
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