Death in Venice
and Seven Other Stories
by Thomas Mann · first published 1954
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In DEATH IN VENICE, an elderly, famous, and wealthy writer named Aschenbach goes on vacation. He becomes fascinated with Tadzio, a young teenager who is staying with his family at Aschenbach's hotel. As his obsession grows, and despite warnings that a plague is threatening Venice, Aschenbach remains at the hotel hoping to make a connection with the elusive Tadzio. Mann's novel is celebrated for its subtle characterization, and its exploration of the struggles of the artist--the longing for transcendence and ideal beauty vs. the need to sacrifice for one's art.
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Late to the party, but for anyone looking for inspiration: Fiction: Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig) by Thomas Mann[0] Nonfiction: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard[1] Illustrated: The Insect God by Edward Gorey [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_Venice [1]:…
on “Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?” ↗> you just limit the space to text And even then... why can't they write a novel? Or lowering the bar, let's say a novella like Death in Venice, Candide, The Metamorphosis, Breakfast at Tiffany's...? Every book's in the training corpus... Is it just a matter of someone not having spent a hundred grand in tokens to do it?
on “Opus 4.7 to 4.6 Inflation is ~45%” ↗…Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick -Mandelbrot, Benoît B. Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories -Blackwood, Algernon Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience -Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly Death in Venice -Mann, Thomas Whites -Rush, Norman The Room -Selby Jr., Hubert Book of Numbers -Cohen, Joshua Maggot: Poems -Muldoon, Paul The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia -Vucinich, Wayne S. The Mezzanine…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗…latest outbreak that I realised just how pervasive the ideas of pandemic are in the creative works I consume. This very thought came to my mind too. The examples that I thought of first were Thomas Mann's Death in Venice where Aschenbach hesitates until it is too late to flee. 'Among these things the Englishman said the most important one. "[...] The ban can hardly be delayed for more than a few days." "Thank you," said…
on “On Pandemic and Literature” ↗Just finished: - Selected Stories - Anton Chekhov - Death in Venice - Thomas Mann - The Burnout Society - Byung-Chul Han Currently I am reading an Austrian economics classic - Economics in one lesson by Henry Hazlitt
on “Ask HN: What are you reading?” ↗…(any way you define it) has many of the same building-blocks: gods (The Illiad), fairies (Twelfth Night), voyages through the underworld (Dante’s Inferno), characters who hop from one body to another (Death in Venice), interesting new interpretations of language and cognition and radically different cultural/social customs, etc. etc. But works (including those set in space) that oversimplify and preach at us, or…
on “Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner” ↗I had forgotten about this. Absurd it went on so long. As it happens I'm currently reading Thomas Man's English translation of Death in Venice from Gutenberg. That doesn't seem to be included in the embargoed texts.
on “Project Gutenberg is no longer fully blocked in Germany” ↗