Zauberbergmann IG April 30, 2020 November 2, 2020 / Leave a Comment View this post on Instagram The @thomas_mann_house is running an ingenious five-day collaborative reading of Mann’s “Mario and the Magician,” a horribly timely selection, via the hashtag #mutuallymann . Thought I’d highlight in response some lines from yesterday’s pages that encapsulate an all too familiar mix of brooding, testiness, entitlement, floating anger, resentment, sense of victimhood, and smarting over some feeling of lost belonging, followed by the frustration of a fruitless search for lost possessions or lapsed pride of place. The alternation between strong (even if grudging) identification with these feelings and disgust on seeing them in others is a standard feature of this attitude. The narrator’s mood is at the personal level what, at the cultural and political levels, becomes the very atmosphere of authoritarian ferment. A post shared by RJ Bergmann (@zauberbergmann) on Apr 28, 2020 at 5:32pm PDT