* Hermann Hesse's 'Steppenwolf' - the man who chooses to devote his time to the intellectual, or to the 'low-brow' pleasures of life. Steppenwolf is a heart-felt revelation of the high-achieving older man who thinks he has two natures within him: appearing some of the time - a man, an intellectual who's at home reading the gods of writing and listening to the gods of music, a man unsuited to letting-go in a room full of noise and the sexual jerkings of modern dance; and appearing at other times - a wolf of the steppes who seeks isolation, a wild and self-centered life.
He is a suicidal man. Through a series of bizarre meetings, a tract seemingly written precisely about him, drugs and a fascinating theatre of resolutions, he comes to realize that men are made up of many more than two 'natures', that he is able to loosen-up and enjoy the dance and shared sex, and that just possibly he might be able to reach contentment if he can approach life with a genuine sense of humour.
The Steppenwolf as described in 1927 is still around of course; but oddly in 2018 the exact flipside of the story would hit far more targets - the pleasure-seeker (man and woman) who now well into middle-age is staring out the window for he (and she) has not achieved anything. The pleasures of sex and dance and 'low-brow' music are casual and ubiquitous. But how many 50yr old ex-pleasure-seekers are returning home down the same streets that 1927 Harry Haller walked, increasingly depressed by the fact that they have never stood on any of the many stages that high-achievers do indeed step onto, delivered an astonishing performance, and felt the rush of applause from an audience that knows its subject, people who will never get an obit. in The Times newspaper? Of course, work isn't everything; achievements are elsewhere too; a weekly call from people who are interesting and wish you to join them, a weekly call from those who know you can entertain, would do. Being a receiver of fun, an enjoyer of other people's music not a maker of music yourself, a 'passive' woman or man like the Steppenwolf at the end of the book is fine, yes? But, like the younger Steppenwolf, achieve something eh? In addition to your sucking up of pleasure? Here lies another novel, different to Hesse's wonderful Steppenwolf, but an equally pertinent one?
*Hermann Hesse's 'Steppenwolf' - human insight. Writers of literature do sometimes offer up some insights that are new to some people. The troublesome business of finding out how girls are; how boys are. Along with the more important pleasures of reading it, was literature ever one of the places particularly young people visited for the difficult and often painful business of seeing the ugly of the opposite sex? Did Victorian and Edwardian women writers provide that service for their girl readers? Hesse, usefully for his young boy readers, writes of one possibility which, frankly, had never occurred to me. It takes an amount of experience to 'see' the first type of ugly girl, below - the girl who needs to feel that she is worshipped before she can reach her pleasure. It takes an amount of experience to 'see' the second type below - the ugly girl who needs to feel 'used' before she can reach her climax. But - frankly it had never occurred to me that the two types could be housed in the same girl (for they are opposites) depending upon the mood she's in. Buyer beware.
'"One oughtn't to talk of these things and want them accounted for. Listen, when you kiss my neck or my ear, I feel that I please you, that you like me. You have a way of kissing as though you were shy, and that tells me: 'You please him. He is grateful to you for being pretty.' That gives me great, great pleasure. And then again with another man it's just the opposite that pleases me, that he kisses me as though he thought little of me and conferred a favour."'
* Oh the half-landings in suburban houses that Hesse writes of. There's a little sociology paper to be written on it somewhere; certainly there's a fat photographic-book to be published. Stairs, landings, and half-landings, are connections to rooms; they are places you cross to get to the other place where you wish to stop. It need not be so of course. And even if the owner of a half-landing does not wish another stopping-place, why should it be so . . . bland? These stairwells and half-landings are often high and narrow: you are wasting vertical opportunities.
* What's wrong with the novel? There are failings certainly. Perhaps a few adolescent dramas - 'Tonight At The Magic Theatre - For Madmen Only - Price Of Admittance: Your Mind.' Oh Dear. And if any classic author can actually write good sex, it certainly isn't Hesse: do fast forward the two-beings-as-one, the transports-to-another-plain stuff. But for some readers the good, the majority of the novel, is very good indeed. The first two-thirds appeal to readers who self-identify with 'the loner'; the last third is weirdly wonderfully unusual.
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