Colm Tóibín most recent novel, The Magician, is about the German writer Thomas Mann — or as the book’s jacket puts it, “[I]n a stunning marriage of research and imagination, Tóibín explores the heart and mind of a writer whose gift is unparalleled and whose life is riven by a need to belong and the anguish of desire.”
More on the book itself in a moment. What caught my attention this morning, what made me pause in my reading and stare off at the trees where late-August cicadas are singing themselves to death while the apples slowly find their autumnal sweetness, was one of Mann’s observations in the novel (as imagined by Tóibín). At this point in the story, between the first and second world war, Mann’s young adult children, Klaus and Erika, seem to be thriving on disintegration of German society. Or at least they are enjoying the shifting norms that allow them to be whomever they imagine. Klaus and Erika, as you may know, would go on to become writers of note on their terms. At this point, Klaus has written a play that focuses on two young men and two young women whose sexuality is clearly fluid.
More on this, too, in a moment. In the novel’s scene, Thomas Mann’s observation is just one of those passing thoughts. But, of course, it runs deep. Listening to Klaus talk so animatedly about his life in the city, his father comes to the realization “that writing, for Klaus, was a dreary process compared to the excitement of doing other things.” An interesting insight into a man who would go on to writer seventeen books, including Mephisto (1936), before dying in Cannes in 1949 of an overdose of sleeping pills — probably suicide, says Wikipedia, “because of financial problems and social isolation.”
I don’t know much about Klaus Mann. From what I’ve read in The Magician, his being gay clearly made him a target in Germany (and later in America, where he would become a citizen and serve in World War II). But Tóibín suggests that Klaus had his moments of joy, especially his close and meaningful relationship with his sister, Erika — who in time moved to Switzerland, met and married the poet W.H. Auden in a marriage of convenience that enabled Erika to become a British citizen, and then worked as a BBC war correspondent.
The whole Mann family saga is fascinating — thus Tóibín’s novel —but this question of whether or not writing is a dreary stopped me in my tracks.
It made me wonder: Do I think of writing as a dreary activity? Maybe, sometimes — especially when comparing it to, say, nights on the town with friends or a summer-afternoon bike ride along the Atlantic coast. But I don’t think “dreary” is the right word for what I feel most of the time. It’s more like a struggle, a difficult task, a confusing process — one that often leaves me exhausted, frustrated, and maybe a bit depressed, but that also can lead through the forest of tangled thoughts and emotions to something that feels close to clarity (with nonfiction) and art (with poetry and fiction).
I know the internet is abound with commentary on writing. Some of it is how-to stuff. Some of it is inspirational. Some of it focuses on craft. Some of it focuses on practices that keep us in our seat — the bird-by-bird metaphor, and so on. I know the world doesn’t really need my opinion on the writing life. But this question got me thinking, not just about writing, but also about how so many people are constantly looking for insights into writing — writing better, writing without worry, writing more consistently, writing successfully, writing for money. Personally, I try to keep it simple. My mantra is contained on a small note by my desk given to me by my daughter: “Talk less. Write more.”
But on occasion, I, too, find myself paying particular attention to what other writers say about the process of writing. I don’t know if any of it is helpful. I’m mostly looking for a sense community in the struggle, a sense that — at all these writing stations around the world at this exact moment — those of us who are engaged in this process of shaping words into sentences with some intent are not alone.
Maybe what I’m thinking, maybe the cicada-like buzz in my head, is that writing does feel dreary some days. Some days, I’d give anything to just be with friends and family and not worry about how I need to crowd the empty page with tiny symbols. Somedays, I find myself longing for a job that allows me to be attentive to the world around me in the moment — or just some professional activity that comes more naturally to me. I think it’s the daily need to close ranks around my thoughts in order to write that feels too heavy some days.
But then again, I like producing writing that enables human connection on another level, on another scale. I love the way literary art (like visual and performing art) functions in life to help elevate our sense of being. Maybe even impact the world for the better.
In Tóibín’s novel, one of the elements of the story that caught my attention is that Thomas Mann seems to write without fear, without deep struggle, without any sense of dreariness or doubt. This may simply be a flaw in novel. Or, since I’m only about a third the way through, perhaps Mann’s writing process will come to light later in the book. But, wow, do I feel enormous jealousy at the way Mann seems to churn out beloved, widely read novels with such seeming ease — and manages to win the Nobel Prize in the process.
At this point in my reading of the novel, though, the lack of description of Mann’s time spent writing feels like a shortcoming. Surely Mann wrestled longer and harder for every page than The Magician suggests.
The other thought that came to mind is that maybe the novel isn’t really about Thomas Mann the writer. It may not even be a novel about the Mann family, despite all the fascinating parallel stories. The way in which Tóibín glosses over the horrors of World War I — almost shockingly so — makes me wonder if this novel is deliberating keeping its distance from historical realities and the whole question of being a novelist and, instead, is a multi-pronged investigation of sexuality — a kind of proof of the truth embedded in the notion of sexual fluidity and the way society has in the past, and continues today, to punish those who find themselves outside the heteronormative bounds.
It seems odd for me to be writing this piece before finishing the novel, before having a solid sense of what I think the book is about. I don’t know if I’ve ever done this before. But, well, I felt compelled today to write this from a position of uncertainty. I suppose that’s because I increasingly live in sphere of personal uncertainty inside a world itself that feels caught in a whirlwind of confusion. For human society, it boils down to a question of what the hell are we doing and why? When I’m writing, that same question keeps shoving its way to the fore. Writing feels particularly hard these days because of the breadth of uncertainty.
But the writing isn’t dreary. It can’t be dreary as long as the stakes feel so high.
Amid all this, it also somehow helps to know that, whatever he felt about writing, Klaus Mann, like his father, kept writing.