Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories Review

In my humble opinion, one of the most important functions of literature is to make us more aware of ourselves by cataloging and dissecting the varieties of impaired self-awareness. Almost all of these stories do just that without either villifying or pitying their subjects. We see in his stories that lack of self-knowledge both as a defense mechanism and a pathology, and on a few occasions, shows how painful it is to remove that veil of self-ignorance.

It would have helped to know something about Wagner's operas before reading, but the stories were still amazing, and his last name is fantastic.