Review: Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I am 43, now, and last read this work 20+ years ago. Hesse himself says he is disappointed by unwise, inexperienced youth taking in his novel too early. So, I am giving it another try. I much prefer the simple elegance of [b:Siddhartha|52036|Siddhartha|Hermann Hesse|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320519981s/52036.jpg|4840290] and [b:Narcissus and Goldmund|5954|Narcissus and Goldmund|Hermann Hesse|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1374680750s/5954.jpg|955995]. There is too much hand waving and effort here. The fantasy Magic Theater recalls to me the magical carnival in [b:Something Wicked This Way Comes|248596|Something Wicked This Way Comes|Ray Bradbury|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1349015062s/248596.jpg|1183550] or the overwrought metaphor endings of "2010: A Space Odyssey" or the climax to the Matrix trilogy. All the focus on learning how to dance and not deadening a soul with seclusion and books is well and good, but the slumming for bar girls and recapturing a lost youth from rolls in the hay seems uninventive and shallow, like the flirtation with suicide and the fetishistic reclusion. Well, this is great because it is Hesse and I really like Pablo's defense of performed music:

“...I am a musician, not a professor, and I don't believe that, as regards music, there is the least point in being right. Music does not depend on being right, on having good taste and education and all that."

"Indeed. Then what does it depend on?"

"On making music, Herr Haller, on making music as well and as much as possible and with all the intensity of which one is capable. That is the point, Monsieur. Though I carried the complete works of Bach and Haydn in my head and could say the cleverest things about them, not a soul would be the better for it. But when I take hold of my mouthpiece and play a lively shimmy, whether the shimmy be good or bad, it will give people pleasure. It gets into their legs and into their blood. That's the point and that alone. Look at the faces in a dance hall at the moment when the music strikes up after a longish pause, how eyes sparkle, legs twitch and faces begin to laugh. That is why one makes music.”

Also, as someone who basically sees two tons of plastic and metal for personal conveyance a senseless crime that the future will point at, I liked this quote from the fantasy world of wild, gun-toting drivers:

"Yes, there are indeed too many men in the world. In earlier days it wasn't so noticeable. But now that everyone wants air to breathe, and a car to drive as well, one does notice it. Of course, what we are doing isn't rational. It's childishness, just as war is childishness on a gigantic scale. In time, mankind will learn to keep its numbers in check by rational means. Meanwhile, we are meeting an intolerable situation in a rather irrational way. However, the principle's correct - we eliminate."



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