Books: Danse Macabre

MARIO AND THE MAGICIAN—Thoma Mann—Knopf ($1.50). If Thomas Mann ever turned his hand to ghost stories, Bram Stoker’s Dracula would soon have a rival. Mario and the Magician is not a ghost story, but it should bring up duck-bumps on many a reader’s neck.

Told like an actual occurrence, in the first person, Mario and the Magician starts out quietly enough. The writer and his family, vacationing at a little Italian resort, take their children to what is advertised as a sleight-of-hand performance. Before the show is five minutes old, the parents realize they are seeing an exhibtion of hypnotism. Before the evening over the whole audience is under the hypnotist’s sway. Before the final curtain murder has been done. But luckily the children think it is all amusing, delightful. A little book—hardly more than a long short story—Mario and the Magician has more in it than many a lengthy novel, told with the insight and artistry that has made Thomas Mann acclaimed as Germany’s foremost novelist.