The main problem with this work is expectation: it is the novel of an author who, twenty years earlier, published The Magic Mountain. We expect, then, that these two decades will be reflected in maturity and higher altitudes—something that does not happen, Mann seeming instead to have come down from the mountain. Doctor Faustus is a fine example of the authentically German defects: it is a work of almost fifty chapters that would be much better and more powerful if summarized in three. Its climax consists of the invocation of the devil, a character that is always interesting in itself. If the work was reduced to this moment and its consequences, perhaps we would have a different impression; but Mann makes sure to bore us with a few hundred idle pages. What to say? Carpeaux compared this work to Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, saying that both authors took refuge in music. But oh, how different! It seems impossible to compare them without leaving Doctor Faustus completely humiliated: this is a work devoid of elevation, boasting a mediocre thoroughness, as written by the bourgeois who entertains himself by displaying useless knowledge and writes as a hobby. What a disappointment! It seems inevitable to imagine Mann, in his luxurious mansions, overcome by a boredom similar to that of the old Indians, unable to perceive himself fading the more he allowed himself to “take refuge.” It hurts to see him in this great writer…