Steppenwolf: A Novel
by Hermann Hesse
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hermann HesseTranslator: Basil Creighton
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-12-01
ISBN: 0312278675
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Picador
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780312278670
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Book Reviews of Steppenwolf: A Novel
Book Review: Now I understand that it wasn't so great
Summary: 2 Stars
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse, was one of the most popular novels among young Americans in the 1960s. It was published in 1927. In 1961, Hesse wrote that he considered Steppenwolf to be his most "violently" misunderstood work. This was because he wrote Steppenwolf when approaching 50, and he intended it to be about the difficulties of that age, but it had fallen into the hands of "very young readers."
Now that I am approaching 50, I decided to have another look at Steppenwolf. Did I really miss so much when I was young? I did indeed.
The last time I read anything by Hesse was in 1977, when I was 17. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, I was taking a freshman seminar course about Hesse, in which we read most of his novels.
Hesse's novels are mostly semi-autobiographical. They mainly concern the tension between the intellect and the senses, or in other words the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and the search for meaning in his characters' lives.
Hesse's characters don't search for the meaning of life in general: they search for meaning in their own lives. Some end badly. In Beneath the Wheel, the protagonist is a failed student ill suited for life outside the academy, and he drowns after a bender. (This was based on Hesse's own experience of being expelled from a seminary, and his subsequent attempted suicide.) Some end better, at least for the protagonist. Siddhartha does find serenity, but it's never said whether his abandoned wife and child do. Narcissus and Goldmund is similar: Goldmund decides that a career as an artist will be too mundane for him, but only after he's expended huge amounts of his mentor's time and energy. Goldmund tries to end their association with a handshake: when his mentor gets angry, Hesse wants the reader to sympathize with Goldmund.
But then, Goldmund's mentor is just a narrow-minded, bourgeois stereotype of the kind Hesse enjoys kicking. And what about the trail of lovers Goldmund leaves behind him? How many had children by him, and who will take care of them? Certainly not Goldmund. Since the 1960s, "doing your own thing" like this has become a problem for American society. Far too many people don't seem to realize that other people need to live on this planet too. Hesse's ideas may have seemed intriguing in the repressive and repressed Germany of Hesse's time (and in the America of the 1950s), but now it's become obvious that Hesse's ideas have problems of their own.
Steppenwolf is semi-autobiographical, but it's also clearly suffused with fantasy. Harry Haller has the same initials as Hermann Hesse. Hermine is the female form of Hermann. Some readers wonder how Haller makes a living: he's a writer who is between books, living modestly off the royalties from his previous ones, like Hesse did for much of his life. The ennui engendered by this is one reason for all the existential angst, both for Haller and for Hesse. Haller was lambasted by the jingoistic, reactionary press in Germany for his anti-war work. So was Hesse, who'd emigrated from Germany to Switzerland by the time he wrote Steppenwolf.
One reason that Steppenwolf was so popular in the 1960s, and with young people, is Hesse's view of his superiority over anyone not just like him. Ayn Rand's novels are also full of this, and they appeal to adolescents, too. Another novel popular in the '60s with similar themes was Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. Unlike Rand, Steppenwolf appealed primarily to young hippies, because it's suffused with sex and drugs. This might have been avant-garde when Steppenwolf was written, but nowadays it seems naïve, almost childish. Don't they know that cocaine really isn't good for you at all?
Written between the wars, Steppenwolf has a strong current of apprehension and dread. To me, this was one of the best themes of the novel. It extends to technology, an important theme for our time, but I found the treatment superficial, because Hesse clearly didn't understand technology, or science. Again, I found this quaint and naïve. Seeing how no one wants to give up their cell phones, we're going to have to learn to live with technology, and manage it wisely. Hesse repudiates this at the very end, though, since he notes how he needs to learn to enjoy even "radio music." (High fidelity sound reproduction wouldn't appear until decades after Steppenwolf.) But then, that's the point of the novel: Harry Haller repudiates his old, gloomy thinking at the end, much to his benefit.
Is Steppenwolf great literature? I'm not sure. It seems dated. Considering how American society has coarsened since the 1960s, the first half of Steppenwolf tried my patience. We may stop kicking the bourgeoisie, also known as the middle class: they've been under siege for a long time now. Yes, they can be a thoughtless bunch of yahoos, as the professor and his wife are with Harry Haller, but these sins are not unique to the middle class. As Haller does note, they do have a comfortable, orderly, and often charming lifestyle. They're supposed to have good manners, too. I miss good manners, and am saddened by how they've been abandoned since the 1960s.
I am unusual and lucky, in that I never had problems with the meaning and purpose of my life. Hesse's angst about the meaninglessness of existence in the first half of Steppenwolf therefore fell flat on me, but I can see how it could mean more to other readers. Again, though, it is repudiated at the end of Steppenwolf.
But then, to be great literature, doesn't it have to be universal? Steppenwolf was much criticized because of how it ended, but even when I was 17, I understood that it was only supposed to be a fantasy. The overall message is: lighten up, don't take yourself so seriously, don't fear death since no one escapes it, and above all, learn to laugh. This is a worthwhile message, but I think that Ray Bradbury said this better in Something Wicked This Way Comes. In Something Wicked This Way Comes, this message didn't go completely over my head when I was 17, the way it did when I first read Steppenwolf. But then, when I was 17, I was much too distracted by the sex and drugs.
Summary of Steppenwolf: A Novel
With its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, Hesse?s best-known and most autobiographical work is one of literature?s most poetic evocations of the soul?s journey to liberation
Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. The tale of the Steppenwolf culminates in the surreal Magic Theater?For Madmen Only!
Originally published in English in 1929, Steppenwolf ?s wisdom continues to speak to our souls and marks it as a classic of modern literature.
Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. The tale of the Steppenwolf culminates in the surreal Magic Theater?For Madmen Only!
Originally published in English in 1929, Steppenwolf ?s wisdom continues to speak to our souls and marks it as a classic of modern literature.
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