Nathan Bick

  I first read The Glass Bead Game in my high school years, I believe the sophomore or junior year. This would be 2011-2012, a full decade ago, as of this writing. At that time, I was infatuated with the ideal of abstract intellectualism, scholarship, and academics. I identified with that world, aspired to join it, and drew a kind of arrogance and confidence from the prospect of one day being within it. I looked down on other things and the people that preferred those other things. The copy of the book that I had was under the alternate title Magister Ludi . This exotic, latinate name lended it a mystique, an aura of hidden wisdom, and that played into my aspiration to access such wisdom which other people were either too stupid to reach for or to understand.  The work’s high respect given to academics is matched by that paid to music, another of my high school era interests. Clear to see why I loved this book - it apparently elevated exactly the kinds of things that I liked,...

  I picked up my copy of Mephisto during a vacation to the Pennsylvanian Appalachian Mountains at a small independent bookshop in the little town of Jim Thorpe/Mauch Chunk, which is actually aesthetically an appropriate match - this town has an almost Swiss Alpine appearance, and both this book and its author are unmistakable Germanic in all the important ways. I didn’t seek out this book. Rather, the last name of the author provided an intriguing surprise.  Klaus Mann is a son of the eminent author Thomas Mann, one of my personal favorites, particularly due to the great Buddenbrooks. At the time of my trip to this mountain town, I was in the middle of writing and editing my first novel which heavily referenced Buddenbrooks . From somewhere within me, I had the notion that I could somehow relate to Klaus as a writer - in my mind, his relationship with his father, of which I knew nothing about at the time of my purchase of his book, somehow became connected to my own with my l...