Why I Like: Hermann Hesse

Fortunately, the first book of Hesse’s that I read is still my favorite. DEMIAN was the first book I read where I had an emotional attachment. The title character’s attitudes towards, well just about everything, were frighteningly similar to my own. Tough my responses to those attitudes were quite unlike Demian’s. Only one other book has been even been close to this and that was Saul Bellow’s HERZOG, but that mirrored my life in my early middle ages, which was a much less conflicted time. Of all the books I’ve read those are the only two to reach me at the deepest levels of my brains secret rooms.

I use the word fortunately in my first sentence because, while I have read and enjoyed many of Hesse’s books, none have hit me like DEMIAN. That book gave Hesse a special place in my heart. For instance, if my introduction to Hesse had been ROSSHALDE, I may not have read another.

It was Hesse also that helped shape my own writing’s quests of spirituality. Though my journeys take place within the modern mechanized world, I may not have started these journeys without Hesse’s examples.

Most people when discussing Hesse tend to jump first into STEPPENWOLF. I have no dislike for the book, but it did not reach me like DEMIAN. Actually, what I consider my second favorite Hesse book is his last, THE GLASS BEAD GAME, a giant inside joke of a send up of education, biographies, epic stories and just about everything else that kept me from becoming a serious reader till I was in my forties.  

For me Hesse’s greatest strength was seeing the truth behind the veneer and exposing it without judgment. A skill I have yet to master.