Thoughts on serving temperatures

originally posted by Rahsaan:
As a side note, I recently started The Magic Mountain and really liked the premise but got too bored with the digressions and put it down. (The same fate just befell me with The Man Without Qualities so now I'm moving on. Although I love Proust so it's not just a question of pacing).
Click to expand...

I always stuck at the halfway point of The Magic Mountain. Actually, after loving Death in Venice, I plowed through many other of Mann's novels/novellas: disappointment. Boredom. Ponderousness.

The Man Without Qualities, however, isn't really in the same category; brilliant stuff, there; fascinating. So why do we peter out? (I petered out, there.)

Proust, on the other hand, kept me enthralled all through.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
There is a scene early in The Magic Mountain in which Hans Castorp sends a bottle of Gruaud Larose back to be warmed by a fire so not all C19 people liked wine at C19 room temperature..
Click to expand...

Is that considered a legitimate source for documenting historical wine-drinking practices?

Will future generations look back on our time and use Sideways as the standard for how we all behaved?

As a side note, I recently started The Magic Mountain and really liked the premise but got too bored with the digressions and put it down. (The same fate just befell me with The Man Without Qualities so now I'm moving on. Although I love Proust so it's not just a question of pacing).
Click to expand...
IMO, you can skip The Man Without Qualities, but Magic Mountain is really worth the effort. One of the greatest works of the 20th C.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
For red Burgundy, if the wine is served too warm, the effect of the acidity is lost and the wine loses its precision and purity and can become flabby and in some cases overly alcoholic. This is a prime reason why many people say that they don't understand what others see in Burgundy -- they drink the wines too warm.
Click to expand...

I didn't know that 'flabby and overly alcoholic' was the most common critique of Burgundy.
Click to expand...
Try 'em at '68-70 F. Also, I didn't say THE most common critique.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:

I always stuck at the halfway point of The Magic Mountain.
Click to expand...
I went through a period like that, too (long, long ago), except that I didn't even make it to halfway. And then one day . . . .
Actually, after loving Death in Venice, I plowed through many other of Mann's novels/novellas: disappointment. Boredom. Ponderousness.

The Man Without Qualities, however, isn't really in the same category; brilliant stuff, there; fascinating. So why do we peter out? (I petered out, there.)
Click to expand...
Wow, real opposites. You probably feel more kinship to Austrians than Germans, no?
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:

Will future generations look back on our time and use Sideways as the standard for how we all behaved?

As a side note, I recently started The Magic Mountain and really liked the premise but got too bored with the digressions and put it down. (The same fate just befell me with The Man Without Qualities so now I'm moving on. Although I love Proust so it's not just a question of pacing).
Click to expand...

What a coincidence! I recently started reading Sideways! It's already a better book than it was a movie. This book is also about pacing, but the fastest pace is found within its digressions. I read the other day that the guy who wrote the Sideways book (not the movie) is working on a sequel that will take place in the Willamette Valley. Like we need another pinot story? Why not do something about syrah set in Paso Robles or Dry Creek or some other place with another variety that needs the exposure more than pinot?

-Eden (also finally began reading Wechberg's Blue Trout & Black Truffles...who needs all of Mann's angst when you could be reading something fun?)
 
originally posted by Lee Short:
originally posted by Putnam Weekley:
Can anyone explain what I'm doing wrong?

I prefer Pepiere Muscadet at 65 deg. F
Click to expand...

Putnam, dude, I understand that you guys in Detroit will do anything for heat in the winter...but I lived 18 long years in Minnesota without resorting to this sort of behavior. Clearly you need the tonic of a good Ripasso.
Click to expand...

You say if I were to drink a good Ripasso I could avoid drinking warm Muscadet.

On the other hand, if I drink warm Muscadet then I can avoid drinking good Ripasso!
 
C19 novels are generally pretty good sources for this kind of information as long as you don't think the detail is playing a thematic role. Realism encouraged this kind of dense description. Mann was hardly a typical C19 realist, but part of the working of the Magic Mountain as off kilter allegory is its veneer of detailed realism. I have always found this novel stunning by the way. I'd say that you should give it a chance as its second half is even better than its first, but really, if you don't like the beginning, you probably won't like the middle or the end any better.

Without having a word to say against the brilliance of Proust, I will assert that someone who is "enthralled by Proust" but doesn't like Mann probably has an insufficient taste for narrative and an overdeveloped critical sensibility. It takes years of training to reduce oneself back to a liking for melodrama.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Rahsaan:
As a side note, I recently started The Magic Mountain and really liked the premise but got too bored with the digressions and put it down. (The same fate just befell me with The Man Without Qualities so now I'm moving on. Although I love Proust so it's not just a question of pacing).
Click to expand...

I always stuck at the halfway point of The Magic Mountain. Actually, after loving Death in Venice, I plowed through many other of Mann's novels/novellas: disappointment. Boredom. Ponderousness.

The Man Without Qualities, however, isn't really in the same category; brilliant stuff, there; fascinating. So why do we peter out? (I petered out, there.)

Proust, on the other hand, kept me enthralled all through.
Click to expand...

I am perhaps not the best judge of such matters, as I have a perverse tendency to plow through books that others find unreadable or impossible to finish (one famous example was Gdel, Escher, Bach), but I find most of Mann's output eminently readable and enjoyable. I'll concur with Claude about the status of The Magic Mountain, though there are other works of his that are well worth reading, too.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Without having a word to say against the brilliance of Proust, I will assert that someone who is "enthralled by Proust" but doesn't like Mann probably has an insufficient taste for narrative and an overdeveloped critical sensibility. It takes years of training to reduce oneself back to a liking for melodrama.
Click to expand...

You're right, but I don't see it as a need to peel back to some earlier melodrama-liking stage. I've never had a taste for it (hate Westerns, Alexandre Dumas, and so forth). What's supposed to drive a book ends up sapping it of persuasive force (depth of prose, multilayered awareness of itself, etc.). Cheap calories, man.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Without having a word to say against the brilliance of Proust, I will assert that someone who is "enthralled by Proust" but doesn't like Mann probably has an insufficient taste for narrative and an overdeveloped critical sensibility..
Click to expand...

This may very well describe me!

I used to force myself to finish books that I started. But now I have a different approach, similar to wine, as there are so many other options out there in the world I don't need to kill myself over things that aren't producing returns.

All of this in perspective of course. Many good things do require effort. And I don't think anyone would accuse me of having a short attention span.
 
Count me in the camp that found the Magic Mountain a snooze. But I love Buddenbrooks.

On the question of temperature, wouldn't you expect the Berghof to have been pretty chilly?
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Without having a word to say against the brilliance of Proust, I will assert that someone who is "enthralled by Proust" but doesn't like Mann probably has an insufficient taste for narrative and an overdeveloped critical sensibility. It takes years of training to reduce oneself back to a liking for melodrama.
Click to expand...

You're right, but I don't see it as a need to peel back to some earlier melodrama-liking stage. I've never had a taste for it (hate Westerns, Alexandre Dumas, and so forth). What's supposed to drive a book ends up sapping it of persuasive force (depth of prose, multilayered awareness of itself, etc.). Cheap calories, man.
Click to expand...

"Need" isn't involved. Aesthetic taste has no requirements. If you don't like melodrama, you don't like it. But understanding how novels work is a different issue. You can't really discuss why Du Cote de Chez Swann works for people who don't like the rest of the novel and how Proust constantly imbeds such old-style psychological suspense in moments of intense interpretative meditation (or even why Swann's Way isn't a good translation of the title, though I couldn't offer a better one)without understanding its debts to Balzac via Flaubert. Magic Mountain works by constantly rebuffing the expectations of narrative it sets up and then fulfilling those expectations in ways one would expect. If one doesn't have the expectations and doesn't feel frustrated by the novel's resistance, then I expect no understanding of its historical, political or philosophical concerns will stop it from being a snooze.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

(or even why Swann's Way isn't a good translation of the title, though I couldn't offer a better one)
Click to expand...

Prof, can you by any chance explain the puzzling translation of the overall title into English as "Remembrance of Things Past" instead of the more literal "In Search of Lost Time"?

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

(or even why Swann's Way isn't a good translation of the title, though I couldn't offer a better one)
Click to expand...

Prof, can you by any chance explain the puzzling translation of the overall title into English as "Remembrance of Things Past" instead of the more literal "In Search of Lost Time"?

Mark Lipton
Click to expand...

Not the prof but the Wikians advance a plausible story here.
 
originally posted by Cole Kendall:
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

(or even why Swann's Way isn't a good translation of the title, though I couldn't offer a better one)
Click to expand...

Prof, can you by any chance explain the puzzling translation of the overall title into English as "Remembrance of Things Past" instead of the more literal "In Search of Lost Time"?

Mark Lipton
Click to expand...

Not the prof but the Wikians advance a plausible story here.
Click to expand...

The Wiki explanation that Moncrieff used the line from the Shakespeare sonnet is demonstrably correct. It is a line from a Shakespeare sonnet. I believe there is a letter in which Moncrieff says to Proust that that is the reason for the translation, though I wouldn't swear to that. At any rate, Proust recognized it as such and couldn't understand why Moncrieff chose it rather than translating literally. Beyond that, as with all of Moncrieff's various changes, the only explanation, beyond the occasional miscomprehension, is a desire to make things read more smoothly in English. I have to say that I haven't read any of the recent re-translations, but the demonstrations in various reviews of their greater accuracy does make me have some sympathy for Moncrieff since they frequently sound barbaric in English in a way Proust never does.
 
Whereas I loved Magic Mountain, thought The Man Without Qualities was one of the greatest books I've ever read, and could never get into Proust.

Buddenbrooks was pretty darn good too.

I'd say 60 degrees for the Chianti. It will only get warmer in the glass.
 
fruit bomb type wines that (unfortunately) still lurk in the back of my cellar seem better with a little age on them, and served on the chill side of cool. more pleasurable acidity and tannic grip and overall better balance. the warmer they get, the more they resemble a water-doused wicked witch.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top