STEPPENWOLF - Herman Hesse

 Here is a book I bought and finished in Killarney, Ireland on June 5th 1999. (price tag picture included to reference bookshop in Killarney and cheap price back then  - see below)  It is one of 3 books I read in Ireland.  (The others were Brave New World, and Doors of perception, Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley also reviewed in this blog)

The idea to read this book came from a preexisting love of Hesse coupled with it being rainy as shit that day. I had a 2 month trek through Ireland ( rain - what a surprise) so I thought I would cram down a book in the hostel.

As I am saying in most of my Hesse reviews; it's very obvious when reading him that he follows a certain recipe.  A lot of his books tend to focus on self discovery, an 'awaking' of some sort whether through travel and love (in the case of Peter Camenzide) art (in the case of Rosshalde), and often mental representations of the inner-self, which I feel is the case with this book.

First off, and you find this out before getting into the real flesh of the book, that it is written as a manuscript in which the main character Harry Haller (Steppenwolf) himself has written.  The manuscript is found by the nephew of his landlady and there is a short preface at the start left by the nephew outlining these facts. He (the nephew) has the manuscript published. The title of this "real" book-in-the-book is Harry Haller's Records (For Madmen Only)  This confused me in the beginning, but I got over it, and so will you.

Without giving to much away; the book centers around the life of Harry Haller.  Harry is a rather depressed guy, you see right away, but it takes further interpretation to see why, and this is the fun of this book; that there is so much you can pull out of it.  It appears that Harry can not choose between his man-self and his wolf-self. (hence the title) And here is more Buddhist philosophy; that Harry is not really living becasue he is pushing himself in two different directions, thus never really existing as a whole man.  The entire book seems to be about one half of Harry becoming dominate over the other so he can gain the ability to finally live as a whole-self, or truly exist if you will.  The events in the book and the people he meets all lead him down the path to self-discovery.  It's a theme Hesse beats to death in his books, but they all seem to tell it a bit differently, and this one is one of the best.

The key point to look for that I feel was the most important in the book was the moment where Harry is at a colleagues house and insults his Goethe portrait hanging in the house and how it is represented.  This may not seem like such a big deal, but this is crucial becasue it is the point that Harry finally decides he will go home and commit suicide. At that hopeless point where both his two selves that are normally being pulled away, instead now start to move inward as they are being faced with there own mortality. This, I feel, is the part that awakens Harry's 'new' self, as depicted by the character of Hermine who he meets at a dance-hall on his
way back to his rooming house to kill himself.  Pay close attention to her, as Hermine at one point tells Harry that eventually she will make him fall in love with her, then she will ask him to kill her.  Okay, this basically punched you in the face with the obvious duality of the Steppenwolf right?  One half of him must die for the other to exist.  Personally I don't even believe Hermine is a real person, but the guiding voice for Harry that makes him do the things he wasn't allowing himself to do before deciding to end his life; dance, take a lover, drugs, meet musicians, fall in love. (remind anyone of Fight Club yet?  Yeah, me too).  Anyways, I've said too much and don't wish to spoil how it all pans out.       

I recommend this for those that love Hesse for his use of duality (as seen in Damien) where there is again a struggle between two halves of the same character.  In this instance it is Harry vs. himself until one is forced to die and the other is forced to dominate his total self and become the only personality, thus staying true to Hesse's theme of darkness and light requiring each other to become one.  I LOVE this theme, and I love its origins in Buddhist meditation and thought.  No one, to date, has done this better than Hesse. Arguably, and more modernly Chuck Palahniuk?  That's up for debate.

This book is 253 pages long and as I mentioned above I read it on a rainy afternoon in Ireland which was almost too perfect.  On my sliding scale I gave this a solid 10/10 for it's ability to show me Harry as a portrait of the ultimate struggle of the self.  Half man, half wolf - the crippling grasp on staying in his common mold, or the humanistic freedom of his animal self.  Great read, rife with interpretable possibility which makes it such a good one to review and discuss.