Wildly different from Siddhartha. A beautiful, weird, and fascinating application of Hesse's buddhism-inspired philosophy on life and learning in western society. ( )

Very interesting read. The prose was beautiful and well detailed. It took me a while to read but it was not to the fault of Hesse but my own. I related much to Harry but at times, the sentiment did not stick. The characters were all introduced and created with reason. A great book ( )

There are times when a book like this speaks to you, and times when it doesn’t. This spoke to me even though I found myself annoyed by Henry Haller, frustrated by a dream sequence that went on a little too long…. This was an older translation - next I want to try the new one that came out last year that is said to really make the work sing! ( )

El final es increible pero hasta llegar alli ha sido un poco doloroso, sobre todo la parte del medio o asi, no parecia avanzar.
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Summary: Life is a meaningless void of insufferable daily banalities. But life is fun. Yay! Let’s enjoy it.
Steppenwolf is a philosophical text scantily dressed as fiction. The philosophical part is an iteration of the concepts which worried philosophers of the first part of the XXth century about the meaning –and meaninglessness- of life and the vacuity of bourgeoisie life. The sense of misplacement the individual has in society, which Steppenwolf comes to define as the spirit of a lonely wolf in a human body. And here, one cannot avoid remembering a much better work on that: “The stranger”.
Like other philosophers (Sartre or Camus come to mind), the text brings also the same solutions: End your life, or learn to enjoy it. That is the (very highlighted in the reviews) “eastern philosophy” approach, which was already proposed by Schopenhauer a whole century prior to this book.
The whole thing condensates in a very Zen principle: “If you cannot avoid getting f***ed, relax and try to enjoy it”.

I think that the main problem that philosophical texts have when they are rendered in fiction form, is how easily they may turn preachy, vapid and even puerile. I found Steppenwolf preachy. The text and the conversations in the novel barely change tone. They are all addressed to the reader from a high ground, and the smirk of someone who is telling you how you really are feeling and what you really are thinking. Which adds my second adjective about this book: Pretentious. I see all characters in the book as poseurs with a “more enlightened than thou” attitude that made me feel distaste picking up the volume. And last and more importantly: Puerile. I could not shake off the feeling of listening to a sixteen year old Emo boy whining his recent discoveries of life.
Maybe the book would have improved if it would make a story which would prove Hesse’s points. I mentioned before a similar text dealing with a character detached to society: [b:The Stranger|49552|The Stranger|Albert Camus|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349927872s/49552.jpg|3324344]. The Stranger takes you along a road inviting you to arrive to the conclusions the writer (Camus) wanted you to be exposed. Steppenwolf does not give a damn about the story, characterization or development of the plot. From the very beginning it is hammering you with the same ideas, said by different people in exactly the same words.
To end my review: As a literary work, I find it with little merit. As a philosophical text, it will depend on the permeability of the reader to the ideas. I did not care for them.
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