Thomas Mann

[Thomas Eckhardt]

> I am/was definitely not bored by Mann because someone told me or it was
> fashionable at a time when I read Hesse, Salinger, Kerouac and other stuff,
> thus being simply to young to understand him.

I did not intend to imply that someone told you Mann was a boring old
fart.
Just wanted to say that taste and aesthetical sensibility have radically
changed
during the last thirty years or so, which I think is what makes so many
people
dislike Thomas Mann. From the 60s onwards no one wanted to be a
"Bildungsbuerger", and Mann was the epitome of "Bildungsbuergertum".
Yes, my
argument was from the point-of-view of literary evaluation, but quite
probably
reading Hesse in my youth has left a deeper impression than reading "The
Buddenbrooks" a few years later.

I still believe, by the way, that "The Buddenbrooks" is Thomas Mann's
best
novel.

Thomas