I’ve just finished Hesse’s Steppenwolf and I have to say I was extremely impressed. I hadn’t really expected much of the book given that I found my first encounter with Hesse’s work, reading the Glass Bead Game four years ago, had left me disappointed. I had found that book rather dull. The problem was I think that Hesse’s obsessions in GBG didn’t really grip me and so I assumed he had little to say to me personally. Also at points I felt that his intense need to pursue his many gripes against modern society got in the way of his creating a truly satisfying piece of art. Nevertheless I went on to read Siddhartha shortly after despite being somewhat wary after GBG. I dunno, I liked Siddhartha, but at the same time I felt that it passed me by a bit.
So maybe it’s just that I’ve matured somewhat over the last couple of years, and that I’m more in tune with what was particularly preoccupying Hesse when he wrote Steppenwolf, but like I say I was deeply impressed with it. The book details the often fantastic journey of a lone misanthropic loser from a suicidal state of being in which he’s convinced that he is absolutely beyond redemption — in fact certain that it would be futile to seek redemption within such a superficial society so at odds with his own aesthetic/moral foundations — via encounters with beautiful young women, jazz playing saxophonists, dancing, and of course hallucinogenic drugs, to a sort of a renaissance of the soul. Not bad for a hopeless 50 year old, back when 50 really wasn’t the new 30 or 28 or whatever it is now.
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