Steppenwolf

[KEV67]

I have started reading Steppenwolf. I have finished the preface, which was narrated by a fellow lodger.

Steppenwolf were a band in the sixties. They sang a song, 'Born to be wild'.

 

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way

 

Boney M also sang a song called 'He was a Steppenwolf' on their album, Night Flight to Venus. They basically sang the synopsis of the book. In the 70s I sometimes wondered why Boney M sang songs about American gangsters from the 30s, Russian mountebanks from the early 1900s, and, here, a German book about depression and alienation. I would have thought they would be more interested in singing about black public figures like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. But then I wondered why the two girls from Abba didn't ditch the two losers.

[Madeleine]

The two losers were the ones who wrote the songs! 

 

I didn't know that Steppenwolf was a book, presumably that's where the band got their name from.

[lunababymoonchild]

I’ve read the book and it’s excellent and not very long

[KEV67]

I am not sure I am really into this Steppenwolf. It's like those other existential books from the early 20th Century, The Stranger by Albert Camus, and The Trial by Franz Kafka. It is like The Stranger in that the hero is tired of life. It is like The Trial in that the hero enters a mad world from which there is no escape. Anyway, I thought wolves were pack animals, not solitary animals.

[KEV67]

Steppenwolf was first published in 1927. It is interesting that Hermine, the intellectual good time girl, thinks another war is inevitable. I wondered why she thought that. The economy had not crashed at that point. Hitler was not on the horizon. 

[KEV67]

Just as well I am not keen on Steppenwolf because my son Adrian is using it as a teething aid.

[lunababymoonchild]

Have you managed to get him home?

[KEV67]

4 hours ago, lunababymoonchild said:

Have you managed to get him home?

No, not yet.

[KEV67]

I let him have my copy of Moll Flanders. Look what he's done to it.

 

[KEV67]

I finished Steppenwolf at last. The last section is like something out of Twin Peaks.

[Danspaghettiman]

I remember reading The Glass Bead Game many years ago and found Hesse compelling though not always easy to follow. I read it after Brave New World and 1984 - was on a utopia/dystopia path at the time. What did you think of Hesse's style? 

[KEV67]

On 11/5/2024 at 9:53 AM, Danspaghettiman said:

I remember reading The Glass Bead Game many years ago and found Hesse compelling though not always easy to follow. I read it after Brave New World and 1984 - was on a utopia/dystopia path at the time. What did you think of Hesse's style? 

Steppenwolf reminded me of Kafka and Camus. Kafka had a bit more humour. Camus was drier. The protagonist in L'Etranger lacked empathy. Maybe he was tired of life. Maybe he was upset with the death of his mother, but did not process it very well. He had some sort of personal code, but he did not articulate it. The protagonist in The Trial by Kafka was an everyman. He was drawn into a nightmare world, through no fault of his own. The protagonist of Steppenwolf had political and philosophical views and judgements. He was self-conscious and self-critical. He was suffering from some sort of deep depression or alienation. He is a generally moral person, but has relapses, but apart from perhaps drinking too much or being unsociable, they did not seem too bad to me. His alienation is more like the protagonist's of L'Etranger. Apart from Kafka and Camus, the ending reminded me a lot of David Lynch, the film maker, because of its nightmarish aspect.