Reviews

Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse

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peebee's review

4.0

A good enough book but holy shit, there's a tissue paper thin membrane between this and Into the Hills, Young Master.

Dude literally ends up living at his parents' house after never having even told either of the women he's 'loved' (developed a crush on after about two brief interactions apiece) how he felt, after faffing around about them for months and years, in a world where single women are locked down by like, nineteen years old until oh no! they get married to a guy who actually asks them to. See also the move of both women being described as gross looking at first, until he comes around and loves them because they talked to him a second time. Wouldn't be a stretch to assume the dude is a 40/50 something virgin at the conclusion of the book.

He has exactly one friend, who drowns when they're like 20, and THATS IT. Briefly has others, but explodes any time a friend busts his balls even slightly and never climbs down.

He also ends the book never having written word one of the massive epic lyric nature poem that we hear throughout is going to elevate and transform mankind's relation to the world and itself.

About the only difference is unlike the incel dorks Into the Hills spoofs, he actually does kinda live his (repeatedly) stated values, once, at the end when he's kind to Boppi when no one else would have been. Until then he does things like talking about how the pace of life in Northern Italy made him realize the petty rat race of life is just a fiction and resolving to bring that easy going grace into his everyday, and two pages later is in a catty back and forth pissing match in literary journals with some Berlin author he gave a bad book review to.

Like, it's well written, and a good read, it's fucking Hesse, but holy shit, this kind of guy must have been so much rarer in 1900 that anyone took anything at face value. If I'm a moron and this book was written as a lampoon of this kind of guy, like Into the Hills, I retract my statements. I just feel like fancy fauntlerois with no personality could get away with claiming to be devoted to a life of the mind and the soul, and people believed them. Like, that used to be a job because people used to just be impressed enough you could read to step back give you all the rope you needed.