Krijgsmanen (Warriors) by Jean-Eugène-Charles Alberti

Krijgsman met getrokken zwaard = Warrior with Drawn Sword (1808)
Jean-Eugène-Charles Alberti (Dutch, 1777-1843)
Oil on canvas
92.5 x 73 cm
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Krijgsman met lans en schild = Warrior with Lance and Shield (1808)
Jean-Eugène-Charles Alberti (Dutch, 1777-1843)
Oil on canvas
91.5 x 72.5 cm
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee

New York : Knopf, 2021

Andrew Haswell Green was shot and killed in broad daylight outside his home in 1903 at the age of eighty-three. Jonathan Lee tells the story of Green—maybe the most important figure in the creation of modern New York City—someone who nonetheless remains relatively unknown. 

Green was instrumental in bringing together the boroughs of New York into what we now know as the modern city, a result dubbed by many as the great mistake. He was also instrumental in making possible such important public works as Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Natural History, and The New York Public Library. 

The Great Mistake opens with Green's murder. There is no question who committed the crime, so the focus becomes why the crime was committed. Told in alternating chapters, the novel follows Inspector McClusky's investigation of the murder while also supplying Green's back-story starting from his youth growing up on a farm in Massachusetts. The chapter titles are taken from the names of the gates for entry into Central Park—Boys' Gate, Children's Gate, Girls' Gate, Women's Gate, Engineers' Gate, Farmers' Gate, Gate of All Saints, Hunters' Gate, Mariners' Gate, Miners' Gate, Merchants' Gate, Naturalists' Gate, Woodman's Gate, Pioneers' Gate, Scholars' Gate, Warriors' Gate, Strangers' Gate, Inventors' Gate, Artisans' Gate, and Artists' Gate. Green insisted the gates be named for all those who came to New York to seek their fortune instead of naming them for the wealthy members of New York society. 

While Green was involved in very important work, that isn't the primary focus of the novel. What we learn in this novel is more about the man himself and his relationships. Recognizing his own homosexuality at an early age and then being shipped off to New York as an apprentice when his friend's mother perceives the situation, he learns to hide his desires. He repeatedly gets the message through the years that it's not acceptable—and it's actually quite dangerous—to be who he is. Even when he eventually meets his greatest friend and partner, Samuel J. Tilden, they seem unable to consummate their great love for fear of what it would mean if they were caught. It's the story of channelling the energy that might have gone toward that relationship into public works that were representative of the things they both valued—nature, the arts, and literature. It was important to Green, who grew up poor, to make all of these things available to everyone. These institutions stand as a monument to their great love.

Die Quelle by Ludwig von Hofmann

Die Quelle (1913)
Ludwig von Hofmann (German, 1861-1945)
Thomas Mann Archives,  Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Hung in Thomas Mann's study and traveled with him to Switzerland, the United States and back again during his years of exile
from Germany.

 

The Magician by Colm Toibin

New York : Scribner, 2021

Like The Master before it, Toibin has centered his novel on an important literary figure. The Master gave us Henry James; The Magician presents Thomas Mann.

Opening in 1891 in Lübeck, Germany with a 16 year old Thomas, spanning sixty years, and ending in 1950 Los Angeles, Toibin presents Thomas' life in detail. Thomas publishes Buddenbrooks and Death in Venice to much acclaim, before World War I. The interwar years are complicated for Thomas with both his brother Heinrich and his children Klaus and Erika becoming quite vocal politically. With the rise of Hitler and the Mann's exile to Switzerland, Thomas doesn't feel that he can speak out against the Nazis—in part because he wants his books to remain in print in Germany, which he still considers home. His decision to remain mostly silent allowed him to continue to sell his works and support his family in an increasingly polarized world.

A particularly strong moment in the novel happens around Thomas' request that his son who is still in Germany retrieve his journals from the safe in their home and send them to Thomas in Switzerland. For a period, the journals are lost and Thomas' concern manifests itself in a flashback based on an entry in the journals that makes clear Thomas' homosexuality. This section provides the strongest sense of what Thomas Mann may have been feeling, while the rest of the novel seems to be solely focused on what happened next.

While many reviewers contend that the novel is about Thomas Mann's secret sexuality, it actually plays a minor role. The focus of the novel is the day-to-day life of Thomas and his family, how they survive the social and political upheaval of the time, and how Thomas' decisions about what to say publicly (or not say publicly) allowed the family to survive World War II. 

Stylistically, The Magician is a novel, but structurally it reads like biography. In this way, I think the adherence to a linear chronological structure with chapters titled by location and year, doesn't allow the reader to learn much about Thomas Mann, the man. While reading, I wondered if a novel structured more specifically around the fear of the Nazis obtaining his journals and flashing back to various experiences through his life documented in the journals might have allowed the reader to have a sense of what Thomas felt about his own life and sexuality, or what or how he felt about his children's sexuality, three of whom would be considered part of the LGBTQ community today.

Nude Bathers by Ludwig von Hofmann

Nude Bathers (after 1937)
Ludwig von Hofmann (German, 1861-1945)

 

Alec by William di Canzio

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of E. M. Forster's Maurice, William di Canzio gives us Alec, a novel that both enhances and expands the original story. While it isn't strictly necessary to have read Maurice to understand Alec, the decisions Di Canzio has made seem more clear having read both and frankly, readers should do themselves the favor of reading both of these excellent novels.

In Maurice, Forster tells the story of Maurice's relationship with Clive both from Maurice's and from Clive's perspectives. But when it comes to Maurice's relationship with Alec, he only provides the story from Maurice's perspective, preferencing an upper class telling. 

Di Canzio has chosen to give voice to Alec in his novel, providing a brief telling of his younger years (as Forster did for Maurice) and then telling the story of Alec and Maurice meeting and falling in love, but this time from Alec's perspective. The author has even used some direct language from Maurice in this section to create a continuity between the works. Where I think Di Canzio excels is at providing believable alternatives to what Maurice thought was happening in the original text. 

One could really be satisfied with just this much of Alec, taking the reader to the point in time where Maurice ends. Di Canzio opts, however to take us further. He creates a life for the characters that is much more uplifting than Forster's ending, much less his abandoned 1914 epilogue. He takes them into World War I, an area we know from Forster himself that he was unable or unwilling to go.

Like Maurice, Alec is a romance. Di Canzio doesn't shy away from the sex either. In the early chapters the sex scenes read a bit like Victorian erotica but they begin to be described in a more modern way as our characters and the world experience the changes that WWI brings. This is a worthy companion piece, allowing us to spend just a bit more time with these classic characters.

Hemdanziehender Knabe = Boy Putting on Shirt by Helmut Kolle

Hemdanziehender Knabe = Boy Putting on Shirt (1924)
Helmut Kolle (German, 1899-1931)
Oil on canvas
92 x 65 cm.