Very Entertaining

Klaus Mann, the critic Marcel ReichRanicki has said, was triply afflicted: he was gay, he was addicted to drugs, and he was the son of Thomas Mann. With the exception of himself – but at least he could rely on himself in this regard – no one seemed to take Klaus entirely seriously. The best joke about Klaus Mann – deep and strange, as Brecht’s jokes tend to be – is by Brecht: “The whole world knows Klaus Mann, the son of Thomas Mann. By the way, who is Thomas Mann?”. Others are less funny, merely punny: W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman (who were his in-laws, I suppose), hearing there was a Klaus Mann autobiography on the way – he published the first one at the age of twenty-five – proposed such titles for it as “The Invisible Mann” and “Subordinate Klaus”.

--from TLS