This narrator, Serenus Zeitblom, is a curious instance, but a choice necessitated by the novel’s logic, it’s working mechanism: does the protagonist – Adrian Leverkühn – really make a pact with the devil the reader must be able to doubt this ever actually happened, as well at the same time imagining that it might just have happened. There are minor stories of jealousies and love affairs that carry the reader far more than the protagonist’s struggles, or indeed the narrator’s. But there’s everything else swirling around too that’s the problem.Īnd the central story isn’t even the most compelling part of it. So how great? Well, this is by the author of The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice & Buddenbrooks – what makes them great is still, in part, in this novel. Whilst great, this is hard going, if only for the acres of verbiage on musical theory, that however clever, seem difficult to justify as apt, as integral, as anything other than gratuitous – so it’s a rather flabby novel.
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