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maxstone98 's review for:
The Glass Bead Game
by Hermann Hesse
Really thought provoking. At first I was torn between (a) wow this is interesting and thought provoking and (b) but geez there's a lot of stuff that seems inconsistent or implausible about this world, and/or that seems jarring and bumps me out of my immersion in the world Hesse creates.
But now, having finished it, I think a lot of the jarring stuff was deliberate, the result of an unreliable narrator. By which I don't mean the narrator lies, but is so deeply into a particular world view that he interprets everything in line with it, and that world view is not really how humans work in my view, and what created the implausibility. But the world revealed in the actions and words of the main characters is much more real and recognizable. And yet different enough that it is really interesting to ponder. As well as just being a cool story with characters the reader comes to care about.
It has some usual Hesse features:
-organized around the life of a seeker (of meaning, of spirituality, of understanding, etc). I like this personally but you might think at moments "wait is this Siddhartha?"
-the main character is impossibly boss. I tend to like this too (Dune, Ender's Game, etc. or for that matter Siddhartha)
-people have things like amazing demeanors and gazes that cause wonderment and awe and love in those around them. feels a little like a cheap way to enhance the boss-ness of various characters.
-there are exactly zero female characters of note. even one of the segments of the book, set "in a time when women ruled the world", is all about men.
But overall I really enjoyed it, plus spent much more time thinking about it, when not reading it, than for the large majority of books I read.
But now, having finished it, I think a lot of the jarring stuff was deliberate, the result of an unreliable narrator. By which I don't mean the narrator lies, but is so deeply into a particular world view that he interprets everything in line with it, and that world view is not really how humans work in my view, and what created the implausibility. But the world revealed in the actions and words of the main characters is much more real and recognizable. And yet different enough that it is really interesting to ponder. As well as just being a cool story with characters the reader comes to care about.
It has some usual Hesse features:
-organized around the life of a seeker (of meaning, of spirituality, of understanding, etc). I like this personally but you might think at moments "wait is this Siddhartha?"
-the main character is impossibly boss. I tend to like this too (Dune, Ender's Game, etc. or for that matter Siddhartha)
-people have things like amazing demeanors and gazes that cause wonderment and awe and love in those around them. feels a little like a cheap way to enhance the boss-ness of various characters.
-there are exactly zero female characters of note. even one of the segments of the book, set "in a time when women ruled the world", is all about men.
But overall I really enjoyed it, plus spent much more time thinking about it, when not reading it, than for the large majority of books I read.