Extremely stimulating but not exactly enjoyable. What pulled me through was the writing; the awareness of Mann's brilliance and the occasional perfect turn of phrase. I was fascinated by the narrator's depiction of, and ambivalence about, the German character and psyche in the years before WWII. And, of course, the reprise of the Faust legend and rumination on the nature of evil are quite engaging. But the music theory 8-} was brutal.