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Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | With its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, Hesses best-known and most autobiographical work is one of literatures most poetic evocations of the souls journey to liberationHarry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. The tale of the Steppenwolf culminates in the surreal Magic TheaterFor Madmen Only!Originally published in English in 1929, Steppenwolf s wisdom continues to speak to our souls and marks it as a classic of modern literature. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Hermann Hesse | | Paperback: | 224 pages | | Publisher: | Picador | | Publication Date: | December 01, 2002 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0312278675 | | Product Length: | 8.26 inches | | Product Width: | 5.56 inches | | Product Height: | 0.6 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.45 pounds | | Package Length: | 8.1 inches | | Package Width: | 5.5 inches | | Package Height: | 0.7 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.45 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 145 reviews |
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| | Features | ISBN13: 9780312278670Condition: NewNotes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
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1 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Badly dated self-centered meanderings Jun 10, 2010
I am continuing my review of books popular during the Hippie Era. At that time, "Steppenwolf" was considered advanced intellectual reading, as I recall.
Re-reading it has been something of a shock. For one thing, a lot of the "ideas" are really getting long in the tooth. "Despising the bourgeoisie" used to be a staple of "progressive," Marxist thinking: after all, one was supposed to admire the working classes (and the occasional Nietzchean "superman." Hesse plays this theme at enormous length, and even draws himself up short at one point to apologize. The whole thing seems phony, since Hesse himself was a child of the middle classes --- like his hero, the "Steppenwolf."
But things get much worse than that. Is this really a "novel?" The first hundred pages are an obsessive analysis of Henry Haller, the "Steppenwolf." "Steppenwolf" means "wolf of the Steppes" and Henry is fixated by the idea that he is half human, half wolf. He comes to live in a bourgeois household, and spends his days in idleness. He's obviously independently wealthy (something explained nowhere, since he has a horror of work) and spends his days reading old classics, feeling depressed, contemplating suicide, and then going out to get drunk in the evenings.
What other writer would spend a hundred pages letting this pathetic human specimen gaze at his own navel and wallow in self-pity? Oh yes, self-pity is very much the order of the day here, although (as noted) Henry has an independent income and is as free as a bird.
Some readers feel that this novel is an attempt at a "spiritual analysis" of Henry Haller. OK, I'll go down that road, as long as you grant me the obvious fact that Hesse is a splendid example of a "spiritual opportunist:" he wants ALL religious and psychological opinions to be true. He wants God, and the Immortals, and Buddha, and nirvana, and Jungian psychology: all of these contradictory dogmas are grist to his mill, and Hesse seems incapable of even seeing that the idea of God in His Heaven flatly disagrees with the teachings of Buddhism.
When Hesse gets around to mentioning "the primitive Negro" (one rung above the idiot) and carelessly opines that a few million bourgeois would not be missed, this novel becomes more than unpleasant. For this reviewer, at least, it became a stench in his nostrils.
In fifty years, Hesse will be completely forgotten. He can't tell a story; he can't create believable characters; he only excels at the previously-mentioned navel-gazing and spiritual opportunism.
1 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Oh How We Existentialists Suffer! Apr 19, 2010
Existentialism! What a wonderful philosophy! Even though some folks think it's phony.
Existentialism stands unique as the philosophy dedicated to those people who label themselves "intellectuals," and who place a premium upon self-pity. And so Steppenwolf enters the world where he bleeds and suffers as a victim of entrapment, caught between eros and thanatos, while reason crumbles beneath the devastating power of chaos. He whimpers through life like the Underground Man, who wallowed in self-pity. Both men had medical problems, so I suppose these conditions should be factored into the misery they so deeply treasured.
Harry suffers like Job, but Hermine realizes he is very much a child in need of authoritarian guidance and, well, sex. So she sends the blessed Maria to comfort him. Hermine is his savior, and, like every bona-fide savior, she must be sacrificed. And who better than Harry to render such sacred service?
Hesse was forty years ahead of the hippies. They shared the Magic Theater with the help of cocaine in 1927 and LSD in 1967. They thought the destruction of brain cells was the most intelligent service a person could render toward him/herself. The social consequences have been--and continue to be--a burdensome bummer.
I will credit this novel with one feature: At the end, laughter is recognized as the best medicine for humanity. If anything is there to redeem Steppenwolf, that's it.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Manifesto for our time Mar 09, 2010
The Steppenwolf, the wolf from the steppe, is the misanthropic Harry Haller, and this is written as his diary, or confessions. Haller has reached middle age, and neither a conventional lifestyle nor pure intellectual pursuits can sustain him anymore. But just as he is about to kill himself, earthly pleasures beckon as our protagonist meets the dancer Hermine and her shadowy partner in pleasure Pablo. Haller is sucked into a phantasmagorical chase, a final gamble for reconciliation of the man and beast within him, of the multi-faceted self that is cast back at him as from a broken mirror.
Part psychology and part allegory, the Steppenwolf is the story of Haller's redemption by Hermine and at the same time a denial of simple formulas. It rejects no path and despises no one for the choices they make. In this sense it is thoroughly modern, as it is in its Epicureanism. And if, in its allegorical style, it is thoroughly out of fashion (realism, veracity, research are in, philosophising is out), such is Herman Hesse's writing that at no point does the book seem belaboured. Hesse commented that of all his novels, this is the one that has been the most misunderstood. Of course, in our relativistic age, all interpretations are equally valid. But the author also warned that: `in most cases the author is not the right authority to decide on where the reader ceases to understand and the misunderstanding begins.' Steppenwolf is a work to reflect on. It is also funny, though only in the way that Kafka can be funny: sarcastic, dark, and at the same time poignant. Indeed, it shares something of the timelessness of Kafka, the mix of seriousness and levity, of realism and parable. Steppenwolf was a prescient work. It is both challenging and easy to read: just what our time needs.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Hesse on reaching middle age Jan 20, 2010
Set in Germany between the two world wars this novel chronicles the plight of Harry Haller as he reaches his fifties and descends into a vortex of depression, nihilism and self-pity. Hesse does a magical job of making an almost actionless plot riveting. Harry contemplates his two-fold nature as a wolf-man who is simultaneously attracted and repulsed by society for about half the novel. The second half tells of his relationship with a young woman who is his opposite in her pursuit of pleasure over asceticism. This book is philosophical, metaphysical and spiritual in all the best ways.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Journey of a Literary Loner Dec 10, 2009
I can't believe I haven't read Steppenwolf before this point in my life. This is a great novel that is sure to linger in the mind of the intelligent reader longer after the last word is read. Harry Haller is my kind of guy. He abandons his past life to shack up at a bed and breakfast. There he is surrounded by countless books and spends his days thinking, reading, and writing. At night he goes out for wine and solitary brooding. If I could quit my job and do the exact same thing, I wouldn't hesitate. Harry is a complicated guy who must keep the wolf inside at bay. Hermann Hesse does a wonderful job in the way he inserts beautiful poetry in with his prose. The best part of Steppenwolf for me, and I won't reveal any of it in this review, is from page 160 onwards. I can't remember the last time I got so caught up in an ending and could do nothing else but keeping reading until I was finished. Unlike most novels out there, this story had a good conclusion that didn't cheat the reader.
Steppenwolf is definitely a psychological novel that requires more than one reading to get at all the rich details going on. There is so much in this novel, despite the fact it is only 218 pages. Hesse manages to pack into it much of his thoughts concerning two of Life's biggest subjects, love and death. I can't think of another novel that blends love and death so successfully.
This is a great novel to sit and read. Steppenwolf doesn't take long to finish but it does sit in the mind long afterwards.
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