T. Mann Explained to Germans

I installed this e-version diary program a month ago and currently the dilemma is whether to let my butterfly spirit waste away in a piece of sure to become junk equipment or somewhere unseen on www.

But – as I have two German friends who will stop by, thought I'd do something topical.

It has often seemed bizarre to me to see all those arduous interpretations of The Death in Venice. Definitely the strangest one I can remember is how the protagonist is punished by death.

I would even be ashamed to mention this here, because the idea is spelt out and printed by the close of the book, but a week or two ago I offered it to another friend who has a BA in German lit – and she commented she had never looked at it that way.

The whole point of the man-to-boy relationship comes together in the sentence of just how absurd is that artists' works should be made the stuff of education of the young when their worlds, ideas, norms, attitudes and behaviour do not belong to the world of the majority. How futile an attempt.

Indeed. And I don't mean the sexual bit.