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Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years
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Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Thomas Mann
Publisher: Vintage
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Our Price: $11.53
You Save: $ 5.42 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Thomas Mann
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
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Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 833.912
EAN: 9780679739043
ISBN: 0679739041
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 400
Publication Date: 1992-03-31
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1992-03-31
Studio: Vintage
Dewey Decimal Number: 833.912
EAN: 9780679739043
ISBN: 0679739041
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 400
Publication Date: 1992-03-31
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1992-03-31
Studio: Vintage
Editorial Review of Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years
Recounts the enchanted career of the con man extraordinaire Felix Krull--a man unhampered by the moral precepts that govern the conduct of ordinary people.
Customer Reviews of Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Aesthete's Gather Round, and enjoy this book
Review: If you're a struggling writer, artist, musician, Thomas Mann is for you. This book is wildly funny and satisfying.
The author understands the struggle and invites you in. The protaganist of the novel is realistic and naughty. You will see how Mann has inspired other writer's in his wake---look at the Talented Mr. Ripley novels by Patricia Highsmith---this book was her inspiration.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a prostitute ply her trade
Review: "Confessions of Felix Krull - Confidence Man" by Thomas Mann, © 1955
I have read this before, but I wanted to make sure I remembered right. He does mention watching a prostitute ply her trade, but it is not as much as Gabriel García Márquez does in "Love in the Time of Cholera," which I will have to read again, as well, to refresh my memory of the story.
Such a book, you would never imagined that a Nobel winning, world renowned author like Thomas Mann would have written it. It is amazing that he writes of a person who is so ignoble as Felix Krull, is worthy of writing of. Yet, it would have been a challenge to write of this immoral fellow in a positive way, as this is.
It must be admitted that there is a bit of a pun in 'confidence man' and the person, himself, Mr. Krull. He is the utmost confident fellow, conceited even.
The oddest thing of this whole story is that it is unfinished. He, I subsequently found out, died before he finished it, but it does end with a bang (pun intended).
Devin,
This book, "The Confessions of Felix Krull," I thought you would enjoy. It is about a fellow who flaunts social conventions and becomes people he is not. In essence, he is theatrical his whole life. A good half of this book details his life of being someone he is not, but he starts out very much as an imitator. In his earliest childhood memories, he imitates princes. His godfather is an artist who dresses and uses Felix as a model as he grows up. His godfather can not believe how much he becomes the character Felix dresses as, be it a King or an artist or a gentleman on a fox hunt.
His spirit is suffused with his ability to be who he wants to be, so he becomes a Marquis or a waiter or a thief. His confidence is uppermost. His employer thinks he can speak French, English, Spanish, etc. at a whim (though he only repeats phrases he has learned elsewhere, it sure sounds good). Not everyone can do this. Felix says he is of finer clay, and, being fiction, it is beyond dispute. You have to realize, there really are people of 'finer clay' around, that is the basis of aristocracy. We should not cowtow to them, but we should emulate them, as best we can (they know how to act properly). This is a dichotomy of life: we are all made equal in the eyes of the Lord, but some are better than others.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Cautionary Tale For The Pseudo-Intellectual
Review: THE CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL CONFIDENCE MAN is Tomas Mann's last work, and reportedly the first part of a longer, fictitious autobiography that Mann was never to finish.
Felix Krull, the narrator, begins his story by recalling his upper middle class childhood, and recounting the loss of his family's fortune, which leads to a series of memorable adventures in Europe.
The book breezily entertains episode after episode until one long dreary stretch of drudgery near the end when Krull details a trip through a science museum in Lisbon. However, his tedious lapse into pedantry has a purpose. It finally separates Krull from any scintilla of Judeo/Christian moral constraint, allowing him, without conscience, to pursue his predatory ways.
Interesting how when I first read this book at age 20, I identified with Krull, cheering his every conquest and deception; but now, a generation later, I regret that Mann never finished the second part of this book in which the amoral Krull gets his comeuppance. Krull tantalizingly refers to his arrest, but alas, we never learn the details. We can only hope that Mann was going to put Krull away for a long, long time.
Krull's is a cautionary tale for today's arrogant, self-absorbed amoral pseudo-intellectual. He keeps telling us how smart he is, and how much above the common crowd he lives. Then he shows us how easily he can deceive others -- his mother, his uncle, his boss, and strangers who put their faith in him. He deceives without conscience, whether he steals jewelry or a young woman's virginity.
The particularly striking thing Krull reveals about his con man methods is his confession that he has the ability to learn just enough of any subject to deceive a person into thinking he is an expert. Krull is so taken with this ability, he even cons himself into believing he is an intellectual when he is, in fact, finally, a tedious pseudo-intellectual bore.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Portrait of Narcissism
Review: Finishing this novel left me wishing Mann had lived long enough to give us the second volume. I found his depiction of Krull to be an exquisite-- and hilarious-- exploration of narcissism from the narcissist's point of view. How delicious! The astounding egotism the protagnoist shows is a promise that he would have many adventures and his hints about jail time suggest that he over-stepped his bounds at least one time too many. How unfortunate for us readers that Mann died before he could complete the story. The situations at the end of this volume suggests the author got to about the halfway mark of where he wanted to go in the tale of this self-absorbed youth.
The fact that Mann was working at the end of his life was amazing enough. That he could so convincingly convey the inner life of an adolescent was, for me, proof of a talent that had dazzled me in *The Magic Mountain.* Comedy is a very difficult genre to work in effectively. The hints of the comic that were found in *Mountain* are in full effect in *Krull.* I'm eager to learn about Mann himself, given the titanic ability in evidence here.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Mann in a humorous vein
Review: This picaresque novel of adventure by the writer of such ponderous masterpieces as _The Magic Mountain_ is one of my favorite books.
Many readers who come to it after _Buddenbrooks_ or "Tonio Kroeger" note the parallels Mann felt existed between the artist and the confidence man. In Tonio Kroeger, the eponymous central character has an encounter in his home town where he's mistaken briefly for a con man. In the earlier story, it's an incident full of irony. In _Felix Krull_, Mann turns that theme on its head and plays it as a burlesque and shows us the artist seen through the fun-house mirror of the artist-equals-con man metaphor.
A number of the themes of Mann's earlier novels are taken up here in humorous and ironic form, e.g., the rise of the artist through the decay of a respectable family (a theme in _Buddenbrooks_) is transmogrified into Krull's lineage from a good-but-dissolute family; in consequence, their respectability is more apparent than real, and as much an illusion as Felix Krull's career of deceit.
It may be that Mann intends that Felix Krull symbolically represents decay beneath his disguise (like the actor Mueller-Rose in the story), but the reader doesn't *feel* this is true. Krull might be the healthiest character in Mann's work, full of that zest for life that so wearied the bourgeois manque' Tonio Kroeger in Italy. Felix Krull isn't a "manque'" anything; a consummate actor on the stage of life, he is simply whatever or whomever he wants to be.
The elegance and suavity of the writing, captured well by the Lindley translation, are both a pleasure to read, and an analogue for the well-oiled confidence skills of the first person narrator. It's helpful to remember that we are being told "true confessions" by a man who has made his way in life by taking people in.
Another feature of the work, not often commented on, is the element of parody. Mann wrote the book with one eye, as it were, on the great German picaresque novel by Hans von Grimmelshausen, _Simplicius Simplicissimus_. Krull's travails, talents, and successes are at times a humorous transposition of those in Grimmelshausen's famous work. (Grimmelshausen's book is worth seeking out in its own right.)
And then, there's the Goethe reference: the artful, confessional style was intended (or so Mann claimed in an interview) as a parody of Goethe's style in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_. Mann had much to say about Goethe during his career, much of it freighted with a lot of seriousness (e.g., see his essay on "Goethe and Tolstoy"), but proves here he could regard his great predecessor with more than a little irony.
Because the book was started back in 1910, and reflects on a period 20 or more years earlier, it's a historical time capsule of sorts. This might annoy some readers; for others, it grants the work a certain period charm.
Finally, we should remember that the work is incomplete. This was intended to be the first part of a full-dress fictional memoir. Had he lived longer, Mann might have written 2 more volumes. The result is that the book is a bright fragment rather than a fully realized work of art. We're left to imagine what the remainder of Felix Krull's adventures might have been like. In an interview in 1955, Mann remarked that Krull would have a matrimonial adventure, as well as a prison sojourn and a retirement in England.
A pity we can never see the completed work, and cannot know with certainty how Krull's career would develop. I, for one, am happy with what Mann was able to bequeath us. I feel almost as if he left me a legacy.
Review Summary: Aesthete's Gather Round, and enjoy this book
Review: If you're a struggling writer, artist, musician, Thomas Mann is for you. This book is wildly funny and satisfying.
The author understands the struggle and invites you in. The protaganist of the novel is realistic and naughty. You will see how Mann has inspired other writer's in his wake---look at the Talented Mr. Ripley novels by Patricia Highsmith---this book was her inspiration.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a prostitute ply her trade
Review: "Confessions of Felix Krull - Confidence Man" by Thomas Mann, © 1955
I have read this before, but I wanted to make sure I remembered right. He does mention watching a prostitute ply her trade, but it is not as much as Gabriel García Márquez does in "Love in the Time of Cholera," which I will have to read again, as well, to refresh my memory of the story.
Such a book, you would never imagined that a Nobel winning, world renowned author like Thomas Mann would have written it. It is amazing that he writes of a person who is so ignoble as Felix Krull, is worthy of writing of. Yet, it would have been a challenge to write of this immoral fellow in a positive way, as this is.
It must be admitted that there is a bit of a pun in 'confidence man' and the person, himself, Mr. Krull. He is the utmost confident fellow, conceited even.
The oddest thing of this whole story is that it is unfinished. He, I subsequently found out, died before he finished it, but it does end with a bang (pun intended).
Devin,
This book, "The Confessions of Felix Krull," I thought you would enjoy. It is about a fellow who flaunts social conventions and becomes people he is not. In essence, he is theatrical his whole life. A good half of this book details his life of being someone he is not, but he starts out very much as an imitator. In his earliest childhood memories, he imitates princes. His godfather is an artist who dresses and uses Felix as a model as he grows up. His godfather can not believe how much he becomes the character Felix dresses as, be it a King or an artist or a gentleman on a fox hunt.
His spirit is suffused with his ability to be who he wants to be, so he becomes a Marquis or a waiter or a thief. His confidence is uppermost. His employer thinks he can speak French, English, Spanish, etc. at a whim (though he only repeats phrases he has learned elsewhere, it sure sounds good). Not everyone can do this. Felix says he is of finer clay, and, being fiction, it is beyond dispute. You have to realize, there really are people of 'finer clay' around, that is the basis of aristocracy. We should not cowtow to them, but we should emulate them, as best we can (they know how to act properly). This is a dichotomy of life: we are all made equal in the eyes of the Lord, but some are better than others.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Cautionary Tale For The Pseudo-Intellectual
Review: THE CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL CONFIDENCE MAN is Tomas Mann's last work, and reportedly the first part of a longer, fictitious autobiography that Mann was never to finish.
Felix Krull, the narrator, begins his story by recalling his upper middle class childhood, and recounting the loss of his family's fortune, which leads to a series of memorable adventures in Europe.
The book breezily entertains episode after episode until one long dreary stretch of drudgery near the end when Krull details a trip through a science museum in Lisbon. However, his tedious lapse into pedantry has a purpose. It finally separates Krull from any scintilla of Judeo/Christian moral constraint, allowing him, without conscience, to pursue his predatory ways.
Interesting how when I first read this book at age 20, I identified with Krull, cheering his every conquest and deception; but now, a generation later, I regret that Mann never finished the second part of this book in which the amoral Krull gets his comeuppance. Krull tantalizingly refers to his arrest, but alas, we never learn the details. We can only hope that Mann was going to put Krull away for a long, long time.
Krull's is a cautionary tale for today's arrogant, self-absorbed amoral pseudo-intellectual. He keeps telling us how smart he is, and how much above the common crowd he lives. Then he shows us how easily he can deceive others -- his mother, his uncle, his boss, and strangers who put their faith in him. He deceives without conscience, whether he steals jewelry or a young woman's virginity.
The particularly striking thing Krull reveals about his con man methods is his confession that he has the ability to learn just enough of any subject to deceive a person into thinking he is an expert. Krull is so taken with this ability, he even cons himself into believing he is an intellectual when he is, in fact, finally, a tedious pseudo-intellectual bore.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Portrait of Narcissism
Review: Finishing this novel left me wishing Mann had lived long enough to give us the second volume. I found his depiction of Krull to be an exquisite-- and hilarious-- exploration of narcissism from the narcissist's point of view. How delicious! The astounding egotism the protagnoist shows is a promise that he would have many adventures and his hints about jail time suggest that he over-stepped his bounds at least one time too many. How unfortunate for us readers that Mann died before he could complete the story. The situations at the end of this volume suggests the author got to about the halfway mark of where he wanted to go in the tale of this self-absorbed youth.
The fact that Mann was working at the end of his life was amazing enough. That he could so convincingly convey the inner life of an adolescent was, for me, proof of a talent that had dazzled me in *The Magic Mountain.* Comedy is a very difficult genre to work in effectively. The hints of the comic that were found in *Mountain* are in full effect in *Krull.* I'm eager to learn about Mann himself, given the titanic ability in evidence here.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Mann in a humorous vein
Review: This picaresque novel of adventure by the writer of such ponderous masterpieces as _The Magic Mountain_ is one of my favorite books.
Many readers who come to it after _Buddenbrooks_ or "Tonio Kroeger" note the parallels Mann felt existed between the artist and the confidence man. In Tonio Kroeger, the eponymous central character has an encounter in his home town where he's mistaken briefly for a con man. In the earlier story, it's an incident full of irony. In _Felix Krull_, Mann turns that theme on its head and plays it as a burlesque and shows us the artist seen through the fun-house mirror of the artist-equals-con man metaphor.
A number of the themes of Mann's earlier novels are taken up here in humorous and ironic form, e.g., the rise of the artist through the decay of a respectable family (a theme in _Buddenbrooks_) is transmogrified into Krull's lineage from a good-but-dissolute family; in consequence, their respectability is more apparent than real, and as much an illusion as Felix Krull's career of deceit.
It may be that Mann intends that Felix Krull symbolically represents decay beneath his disguise (like the actor Mueller-Rose in the story), but the reader doesn't *feel* this is true. Krull might be the healthiest character in Mann's work, full of that zest for life that so wearied the bourgeois manque' Tonio Kroeger in Italy. Felix Krull isn't a "manque'" anything; a consummate actor on the stage of life, he is simply whatever or whomever he wants to be.
The elegance and suavity of the writing, captured well by the Lindley translation, are both a pleasure to read, and an analogue for the well-oiled confidence skills of the first person narrator. It's helpful to remember that we are being told "true confessions" by a man who has made his way in life by taking people in.
Another feature of the work, not often commented on, is the element of parody. Mann wrote the book with one eye, as it were, on the great German picaresque novel by Hans von Grimmelshausen, _Simplicius Simplicissimus_. Krull's travails, talents, and successes are at times a humorous transposition of those in Grimmelshausen's famous work. (Grimmelshausen's book is worth seeking out in its own right.)
And then, there's the Goethe reference: the artful, confessional style was intended (or so Mann claimed in an interview) as a parody of Goethe's style in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_. Mann had much to say about Goethe during his career, much of it freighted with a lot of seriousness (e.g., see his essay on "Goethe and Tolstoy"), but proves here he could regard his great predecessor with more than a little irony.
Because the book was started back in 1910, and reflects on a period 20 or more years earlier, it's a historical time capsule of sorts. This might annoy some readers; for others, it grants the work a certain period charm.
Finally, we should remember that the work is incomplete. This was intended to be the first part of a full-dress fictional memoir. Had he lived longer, Mann might have written 2 more volumes. The result is that the book is a bright fragment rather than a fully realized work of art. We're left to imagine what the remainder of Felix Krull's adventures might have been like. In an interview in 1955, Mann remarked that Krull would have a matrimonial adventure, as well as a prison sojourn and a retirement in England.
A pity we can never see the completed work, and cannot know with certainty how Krull's career would develop. I, for one, am happy with what Mann was able to bequeath us. I feel almost as if he left me a legacy.