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Title: Steppenwolf

Author: Hermann Hesse

Narrator: Peter Weller

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-05-08

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 832 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

With its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, Steppenwolf, Hesse' best-known and most autobiographical work, originally published in English in 1929, continues to speak to our souls as a classic of modern literature.

Members Reviews:

I was the Steppenwolf

I believed from the prologue that I was probably the sort of person that Hesse had intended for an audience to this book. When you enter a writer's world... that is to say, the world of a good writer, you are taken away from your own world to experience joys and sorrows of the author's creation. Hesse's world quickly became my own, but Hesse took me a step further. When I was reading the Steppenwolf, I believed that I was the Steppenwolf. Harry Haller was me and I was him.

Haller begins as a sick and sorrowful man, a brilliant man and I became him as I found myself trudging through his life. When Holler, and thus myself, came out the other side of the story, we were healed, healthier and a better people for having made the journey. For me, reading this was less of an accomplishment and more of an apotheosis... a transcendence. I wish I could thank Hesse myself for creating this wonderful little masterpiece.

Save this Hesse novel for your midlife crisis.

There is this bourgeoisie period in every man's life. This midpoint between birth and death where man is trapped alone. Unable to exist in hot or cold of the absolutes he tries to find his way between the extremes in the comfortable center. Fearing life and death, he just exists ... barely. This is not a novel for the young. Just like it is better to save King Lear for late in one's life, it is better to save Steppenwolf for those crisis years of the midlife.

Hesse's novels seem to flirt between the edge of memoir, scripture, prose poem and Eastern philosophy tract. This isn't a book you want to read in a hot bath with scotch in one hand and a razor blade in the other. You will either spill your drink or spill your blood or lose every printed word, the hot water erasing pages and pickling your fingers, toes and time.

There are parts of me that get super irritated by Hesse and parts of me that absolutely love him. It depends, I guess, on what part of me is dominating at the time, which of my selves is dislocated and which is demanding the most.

Somedays, I wonder if I had my druthers I'd be a shepherd and write poetry on rocks. Unfortunately, I am a bourgeoisie bitch cloaking myself in cashmere and not a mangy wolf from the steppes.

Hesse

Back in the 70's when I was in college and the army Herman Hesse had a surge of popularity that was deemed comin of age stories. Back then I read most of his books. I decided to listen to Steppenwolf to see if anything changed, if I had a diferenct perspective. I don't know that I have the answer, Hesse wrote a forward to this book 30 years or so after he wrote it mentioning how the young enjoyed his writing. But he wrote Steppenwolf when he was around 50 and he said that it was as much about finding peace of mind, your placein life than anything. He mentions that each reader gets somthing diffeerent from the story and any author wants his readers to relate to their stories in whatever way workds for them. This is a book for thinkers, I'm one, if you're one you may enjoy this tale.

Profound

This is one of the most profound books I've have ever listened to.