rainbowspoon 's review for:

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

4.0

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this is a book that i didn’t think much of for a fair while — clever and thoughtful, but not compelling. simply, i did not think it was for me. this changed, quite dramatically at that, as soon as the novel escapes it’s devices and mechanisms and begins to plunge into steppenwolf. an easy read of this book, one that i was drawn to in the beginning, is to note its opposed wolf like and man like aspects, how a condemnation of bourgeois shallowness is pitted against a revelry in bourgeois pleasures, or how the demand to genuinely self reflect collides with pure being in the world. of course, novels are like people in that they are not to be read easily and that they do not consist of diametric aspects. steppenwolf, like its titular character consists of a thousand twitching poles — what i find in there, upon an eventual reading, will certainly be different to what i find now, but i am convinced it will be of great importance because i think it will be a shard or aspect of myself.