[CHANNEL 4 is serialising Thomas Mann's novel, 'Confessions…]

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CHANNEL 4 is serialising Thomas Mann's novel, 'Confessions of Felix Kral, Contidence Man' , on Saturday evenings.

From the 18th century, German writers had been concerned by what (in different ways) they saw as a conflict between; on the one hand, critically analysing society and its values, and, on the other, being part of an integrated society with shared values.

Even Marx was concerned by this problem. He found a solution in a programme of changing society. Bourgeois German writers continued to wrestle with the problem, and none more so than Thomas Mann.

Switched

During World War I Mann supported the German war effort, in the name of tradition and the nation• as against democracy and radicalism. After the War he switched, becoming an outspoken supporter of democracy and opponent of Hitler. Throughout, his thinking remained sceptical, self-doubting, full of paradoxes and reservations.

He had started 'Felix Krull' in 1911. In his strongly conservative matrintin mitinno during World War I, he condemned the satire: 'A writer who, when this war broke out, was on the point of writing a parody of the German Bildungsroman in the form of memoirs of confidence-trickster, has a share in the intellectual disruption of German culture'. (Bildungsromane were novels centred on the formation of the character of the hero as a young person.)

At the same time as Mann criticises himself, he also ridicules his self-criticism. When, in 1954, he completed 'Felix Krull' , it was ridicule piled on ridicule, irony piled on irony, parody piled on parody.

The theme is not very different from that of Mann's other novels - like 'Doctor Faustus' in which a composer agonises over selling his soul to tbe Devil, or "The Magic Mountain', in which a rationalist intellec. tual and a Jesuit obscurantist battle for the allegiance of the hero. But the style "Felix Krull' is close to slapstick.

"To be allowed to live symbolically spells true freedom', says Felix. It could be the motto of the artist; but the formula is mocked, criticised and examined by being made the motto of a con-man.

The style, the allusions, and the theme are all distinctively German - very different from most strands in English literature.

I hadn't read 'Felix Krull' before, though I had read some of Mann's other books. None of the other books are easy reading, and 'Felix Krull' is (for me. anyway) often difficult to follow. Still, I found it readable and watchable, even though I sometimes lost the thread - and also interesting enough to make me want to read more of and abou Thomas Mann.

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Socialist Organiser no. 134, June 2 1983 Page 14