Tonio Kroger –
Tonio Kroger (short for Antonio) is a dark-haired German lad when we begin this novella. We learn soon thereafter that his father is from the far North (Norway it seems) and his mother is from Southern clime (Spain or Italy it seems). In the opening scene, school has just let out and Tonio has had a planned walk home with Hans, a close friend. We find out through Tonio’s anxiety that it looks as it Hans has maybe forgotten the appointment, or worse snubbed him. There’s a storm brewing and when Tonio finds Hans with his other friends, he learns that Hans thought Tonio had rescheduled or cancelled because of the weather. They walk home where we learn that Tonio hates his strange name, as a marker of his obviously foreignness, and Hans also does not like the name, wishing that he instead had a more normal German name. We also learn that Tonio seems to be in love with Hans.
We jump to later adolescence where Tonio has just fallen in love with a young woman. He meet her at a local dance where he accidentally participates in a dance only for the girls, where he’s mocked.
We jump one more time to Tonio around 30. He’s been trying to make it as a writer, and he finds the process soul-wrenching and deeply painful. He worries he has no talent, only sensibility, which would mean a life of the urge to express himself and no means to do so. He talks with another literary friend, with whom it seems like he has a real kinship, but it’s clear that he’s still thinking about his two childhood friends. He’s about to meet them once again.
Mario and the Magician –
Do you know the “Hey, fuck you clown” joke? This is a kind of slow burn version of that, but the payoff is very different. Our narrator is a father and husband taking his family on an off-season vacation in southern Italy. He’s laboriously explains the difference between choosing one town over the next. He want’s the nicer, less flashy town, that just so happens to be cheaper too. He thinks a lot of tourism, family, towns in Italy, about his complex Northern mind and mindset. We meet Mario very early in the story. Mario is one of the wait staff at the Grand Hotel the narrator and his family choose. This is a 50 page novella (and those are dense pages) and Mario appears on page 4 or so and doesn’t come back for 40 more pages. Anyway, as the vacation wanes down, there’s a few off-putting moments with locals that disturb the narrator, but nothing fully liminal. He thinks he should leave, but ultimately chooses not to. On what will be their last night, the narrator and his wife, against their better judgment, take the children to see a magician performing in the town. This decision is immediately followed by a comment like “Oh, if only we had known” kind of thing and this leads us to a very detailed and very slowly rendered description of the show, knowing that we are going to get a confrontation with the magician and Mario. We know it’s coming, he tells it’s coming, and even by page 48/50, we’re still not there…..
It’s a very slow building story that becomes more and more claustrophobic and weird the further we get into it.