V-2 - Chapter Nine - Fasching/False Time

[alice wellintown]

Also, obvious I guess, Thomas Mann's _The Magic Mountain_ and Henry
Adams's _The Education of Henry Adams_ are parody of the bildungsroman
genre.

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 10:10 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe this is too obvious to mention, but the direct description of
> Kurt is none too flattering. He is voluptuous.  Odd word for a man,
> no? He seems a bit like that fat boy in Willy Wonker and the Chocolate
> Factory. He has, as do many characters in this novel, a problem with
> the sun. The sun, it seems, is late. It's not exactly a train. And it
> mocks him. The irony of his situation is acknowledged by Kurt, though
> the narrator suggests that the situation may not be ironic. In other
> words, there is nothing ironic in the situation that Kurt doesn't make
> ironic. We are also told that he fancied a horrid perversity. He
> fancied it. Was it real? Did he imagine it? Did he desire it? He
> shares something (we are told this is a major trait) with Karl
> Baedecker, a basic distrust of the South. He shares this trait with
> Henry Adams too; he also shares Adams's itinerary.
>