The Story of a Novel: The Genesis of Doctor Faustus

What happened during the genesis of Thomas Manns great 'German Novel' Doktor Faustus, the life of the German composer Adrian Leverkuhn, told by a friend, the political and family events as well as the world-historical, was carefully noted in his diaries. Eighteen months after he finished the book, late June 1948, he "had an autobiographical fragment on his mind, concerning the period of the Faustusand he immediately started writing this Story of a Novel, for "many things are to be said about this remarkable adventure of creation. Gradually while writing it however, he realized it was "really more like an autobiographical work, of which I am not quite sure whether to publish it publically or rather keep it just among friends". On the other side, it was intended as a general 'thank you' for "all the support..., I got during the work"- and so it the fragment grew into a little book of its own, and "clearly too long, to serve as preface or afterword to accompany the novel"; when reading the novel of Doktor Faustus, in which everything, as Thomas Mann confessed, is an indirect self-confession, this book is the companion that explains about the relations with all those personal and historical events.