Peter McEllhenney's Reviews > Steppenwolf

Now that I’ve reached middle age, I thought it was time to revisit that classic of earnest adolescent angst (despite the fact the novel’s hero is nearly 50 years old), Hermann Hesse’ Steppenwolf.

I found the early sections of the book dull, flat, pretentious, and swimming in its own vanity. But the later sections corrected some of these faults, and made the book interesting and worth reading overall.

My main problem with the early parts of Steppenwolf is that the novel is constantly tells us how fine a soul Harry Haller has: how intelligent he is, how spiritually enlightened, how artistically refined, how little he can tolerate the world of power and money and order and easy pleasures, or understand the lives of ordinary people, and how much he suffers.

But the novel is always telling us these things about Harry; it never shows us these qualities or convinces us that they are true. Harry’s uniqueness is described first in an introduction to the manuscript written by a middle class businessman of slight acquaintance with Harry; then by passages written by Harry himself; then in a magical “Treatise on the Steppenwolf” that Harry buys from a mysterious vendor.

Normally, one piece of sustained exposition is enough to set up a story the author can’t quite get going on its own. Three is too much. And the constant repetition of how exceptional Harry is makes me suspicious. Accomplished people go about the business of being accomplished. People who are not accomplished – but very much like the idea of being so – will announce their exceptional attributes constantly, substituting pronouncements for action.

The novel’s investment in Harry’s extraordinary qualities makes me believe that Hesse is also invested in them and that he is inviting us to invest in them as well. Only a great artist could bring a great artist alive on the page, is the implication: therefore I am a great artist. Only a truly intelligent and perceptive reader could understand a great artist; therefore you are an intelligent and perceptive reader.

This mutual admiration society constructed by Steppenwolf would be harmless enough if such vanity were not the most deadly enemy of art. All that is strange and delicate and inexpressible and irreducible in art – all its sublime alchemy – is thrown under the feet of flattery and easy compliment. The work exists only to puff up the ego and ambitions, and comfort the insecurities, of those associated with it.

This is harsh criticism, and it seems like it should be a fatal one. But as the book progresses, Hesse’ destroys any sense we have that all of Harry’s accomplishments have any real value. The book still sees him as a unique and rare soul – but a unique and rare soul leading a useless existence, a man who has forgotten how to laugh, who has forgotten how to find pleasure in life, who is a fool, a baby, and a wretch who should be pity and scolded and taken by the hand and pulled away from his stubborn loneliness and self-importance. This humanizes Harry and gives the book blood.

Finally, Steppenwolf has an interesting structure. It’s a mess, but it’s a mess that works pretty well with the novel’s themes and characters. Harry is always talking about great composers, Baroque ones like Handel, Mozart above all, but it is Berlioz' “Symphonie fantastique” that really is playing throughout the book.

So two solid stars for Hesse’ Steppenwolf. You could spend you time with many books, and many writers, far worse than this one.