Name: Matthew Jackson's review of Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Item: Steppenwolf
Rating: 3
Author: Matthew Jackson

Hermann Hesse

Steppenwolf

Clara Rosenfeld

Matthew Jackson

Gavin

Aging Romantic pessimist Harry comes to a crisis, and learns that fun is fun (and meaningful). I’ve been avoiding this book because of its status in rockist, hedonist circles, but after the first 50 pages it begins to subvert this reputation, and itself, over and over again until charming. 

Hesse also inserts himself, as the domineering, sparkling ‘Hermine’ which is strange and excellent. 

Would’ve changed my life if I’d read it aged 16, or in 1930. As it is, Regina Spektor, the Supremes and DJ Hixxy had already forced me to admit the existence and glory of non-cognitive, non-consequential, non-political quality.

(Read aloud)

suspiria

"bense ne modern, ne de modası geçmiş biriydim; zamanın dışına düşmüş, sürüklenip gidiyordum, ölüme yakın, ölüme istekli."

Omar AlHashmi

Pretty weird book to be honest. I loved the philosophical aspects of the book and how it talked about the nature of the Steppenwolf. The middle section was pretty dull for me, I lost interest in the book pretty quickly at that point. However the final third of the book just cranked the weirdness up to eleven. I can't even begin to fathom what Hesse was thinking when he wrote that. All in all, its the type of weird book that I tend to enjoy, its different.

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. For more than twenty years, Picador has been producing beautifully packaged literary fiction and nonfiction books from Manhattan's Flatiron Building. Our Twentieth Anniversary Modern Classics line pairs iconic books with a design that's both small enough to fit in your pocket and unique enough to stand out on your bookshelf.

A Novel

Fraser Simons

I suspect this would be completely insufferable to some people but it so happens the self indulgent miasma is so granular in the thought process of our protagonist here, I couldn’t help but admire an original No plot, heavy symbolism, no character driving, sad boy moving through the world. DMM rather than DWM (damaged/depressed woman moving), perhaps? 

But what I really liked about this, which put it above the three stars, is how it deftly illustrates the most elided human experience, or certainly obfuscated: the precision and craft the mind puts into building its prison of thought. We swing wildly, code switching between groups, adjusting our patterns and ideologies to better fit the social situation. That’s what kind of animal we are. A byproduct of our socialization always seems to be the construction of unhappiness and self-flagellation. The most intuitive thing any human ever builds is brick-by-brick motivated thinking straight into unhappiness of some kind. Some Psychologists say getting what you want even fucks you up. 

Still, the more complex ending and the ability for the reader to subjectivity throw themselves onto the pages and take away probably very different experiences is admirable craft. Even if it will absolutely bother some readers. I for one love me a good interior novel.

baelgia

2021/04/11
Figure out the few things you need to take seriously. Treat everything else with good humor. Listen more. Don't be so pretentious. Any division is a social construct. We are all the same, all immortals and bourgeois.

2016/07/13
Subtitled: Treatise of the Steppenwolf (in which I, as the reader, am the Steppenwolf in question).

If I had read this book years ago - or even a year ago - I don't think I would have enjoyed it. At times it seemed to completely abandon its narration in favor of a philosophical discussion, and those parts can be quite jarring, if not a pain to read. Of course that just goes to show how much people change (and how change is possible) as now, today, in this very year, I'm left awestruck in the wake of Steppenwolf. Hesse's mind is so enchanting and his way of stringing words together to form a coherent idea feels like 248 pages of charming, drugged cigarettes. Apart from the protagonist, his characters are always very surreal, and perhaps even unreal, but they never fail to captivate. I don't know what to say. This is one hell of a beautiful piece of writing.

Asif Akbar

** spoiler alert **
           I stumbled upon this book searching books on duality of life. How we have multiple selves in ourselves. Which it answers pretty well in the first 100 pages or so, but it soon takes frightful turns to show the despair in life, the pointlessness of everyday.
But it gives hope towards the end. It helps visualise change. Change which is possible in every one of us. We all have, however lost, a capacity to love and a capacity to rediscover ourselves.

sara gerner

** spoiler alert **
           Ich habe den Steppenwolf beim zweiten Mal lesen viel besser verstanden und auch viel intensiver erlebt. Es gibt durchaus Passagen, die mich nach wie vor stören oder die mir persönlich einfach zu lange sind, weil sie mit der Prämisse, die ich persönlich im Steppenwolf erkenne, eher weniger zu tun haben. Die ersten hundert Seiten zu lesen war erneut eine große Überwindung, das Traktat ist anstrengend, wenn auch tröstlich. Die Erzählung Hesses wird durch das Herausgeberwort, die ersten Gedanken von Harry Haller selbst und das Traktat quasi dreimal eingeleitet, was in meinen Augen nicht unbedingt notwendig war, aber was ich auch nachvollziehen kann. Das Herausgeberwort bereitet einen auf den gesellschaftlichen Außenseiter Harry Haller vor, seine ersten eigenen Gedanken zeigen den Zwiespalt und die Schwere, in welcher der Protagonist lebt. Und das Traktat ist eine erste Erklärung dafür.
Ich habe das Ende immer noch nicht verstanden, auch die Bedeutung der Ewigkeit ist mir immer noch ein Geheimnis. Aber wer weiß, vielleicht kommt das noch.

Jaycee

Lukas Behringer

'The unhappiness that I need and long for . . . is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and die with lust. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for.'Alienated from society, Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf, wild, strange and shy. His despair and desire for death draw him into an enchanted, Faust-like underworld. Through a series of shadowy encounters, romantic, freakish and savage by turn, Haller begins to rediscover the lost dreams of his youth.Adopted by the Sixties counterculture, Steppenwolfcaptured the mood of a disaffected generation that was beginning to question everything.

maddox Ireland

Peter

Der Gang eines hochbegabten, übersensiblen Menschen durch die Hölle des Alltags, hinter der er nur allmählich einen tieferen Sinn ahnt.

Der Steppenwolf

Mary A. E. S.

In postwar Germany, a fifty-year-old man regards himself as a dual personality, half man and half wolf.

Translated from the German, Der Steppenwolf

Martin Meyer

A critique of bourgeois society as perceived by a lonely and sensitive man through his partly beautiful, partly diseased fantasies.

Matthew Jackson &
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

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Matthew Jackson &
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse