Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not Hesse's best work.
Review: This is the darkest Hesse book I have read yet. It is definetely worth reading, especially if you liked his other work. I personally think it is not his best, but it's an interesting character study of Harry Haller. A man who is struggling to balance his animal instincts and his human side. He shows constant contempt for the bourgeois society he lives in and it haunts his life.I reccomend this book which is probably the most famous Hesse novel. However, as I said, it's not what I would consider his best. If you like this one try Siddhartha and Demian.
Rating:
Summary: Middle-aged man descends into oblivion.... and likes it.
Review: I am not the right person to critique this book. Its flaws are those to which I am most indifferent. This book tells a story, but it often goes into forays of sermonizing that seemed a little forced. A couple of times I had the distinct impression that I was at some sort of psychedelic self-improvement seminar. This may be a literary flaw, but I loved every minute of it, even at it's most didactic. I think this book touches on a very interesting and relevant concept. It is still timely today, for 2001 America has gone even further down the path that the Germany of Steppenwolf had embarked upon. I suppose the message could have been more comfortably wedded to the narrative, but I don't really care. I loved the book, warts and all.
Rating: 
Summary: Answering Bob Newman...(previous reviewer)
Review: I've read Steppenwolf twice (in Spanish) and, as i have read in another review, it is a book that simply grows in wisdom and magic as you age and "live". However, the reason i'm writting this review is not to comment on the book itself directly but to comment briefly on Bob Newman's review on Hesse's Stppenwolf, particularly on his statement about this book being for 21 year old lost youngsters "looking for themselves", and hungry for "I hate society" or "No body understands me" phrases. It's quite pittful to hear such comments, specially because i had once heard them before from a friend of mine who has never read Hesse (except Demian at school, which by the way she loved at the time) but now has the "Hesse is for youngsters" attitude whis seems is quite popular between certain people. My review will be helpful to those who have been listening to such comments and are doubtful about Hesse's capacity as a writer. Don't hesitate, enter Hesse's world. You will be forever grateful to have met the great german master.
Rating: 
Summary: Dark meanderings of loneliness and psychosis
Review: I read Steppenwolf after Siddhartha and was shocked at the contrast of prose and themes. Steppenwolf was, from what I understand, Hesse's most autobiographical novel. The novel evokes images of painful lonely isolation interrupted by brief flashes of joy in the midst of a colorful female companion, drink, and dance at a local tavern. The story takes strange and bizarre turns into psychotic dream sequences with such explicit vivid quality that I wondered if Hesse had his own psychotic episodes from prolonged isolation (he was was known as a recluse) or ingested hallucinogens. The prose is undeniably powerful and beautiful, but the themes and plot turns are dark, disturbing, and hallucinatory. I found the novel more insightful of Hesse's psychology and writing talents than one that I plan on reading again in the near future. Read Siddhartha for contrast and more steady meditative prose.
Rating:
Summary: A forecast for solitude lovers.
Review: Harry Haller is a lonely adult whose personality is divided by two main phases. The Wolf and the human, throughout the book, Haller finds himself tormented by all things he has done, and all he knows. He acknowledges being entirely separated from his time and culture. This is a good book, specially for those who have, in a certain way experienced such situations of extreme solitude. If you find yourself under desperation caused by being alone in the midst of people, or if you liked "when Nietzsche Wept" Then you must buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Power of a master writer goes beyond the words themselves
Review: I have not taken the time to read all 43 reviews of Steppenwolf, but something I saw as a theme in many reviews was a general disappointment with what was percieved as a dumbed-down nihilism into existentialism, a narrator that felt overly sad for himself, and in general a book fit for teenagers as an outlet for their various age-specific angsts. To the latter, I remind you that Hesse himself wrote this presumably autobiographical work when he himself was well into adulthood, perhaps closer to the age of midlife, when similar yet vastly different and more evolved angsts often arise. Further, as a person who identifies completely with Hesse's character, I can say that in some people these angsts certainly ebb and flow but by no means are they ever "outgrown." And to the former, particularly a person who accused Hesse as being "drunk on Nietzsche." I will gently remind this person that the sentiments expressed in this book are an extention of the portrait of the character, and can one truly criticise an autobiographical portrait for the thoughts of its portagonist? (And by the way, at the times in this book when the narrator spins off into grey sentiments about the world, or of the power he gains by rejecting it, Hesse is quick to introduce a situation that challenges or even mocks this mindset...the substance and depth of the narrator's thoughts grow slowly throughout the book, as he does through his experiences. Ideas and sentiments are constantly maturing, being overturned and reintroduced and turned on their heads--Steppenwolf is not a document of Hesse's polished metaphysic, it is the story of his searching for it. In it he is brave enough to document even the least-flattering nihilistic, self-indulgent babble for the sake of painting this portrait with integrity and honesty towards himself, which is perhaps the hardest thing to do, and because of this it is seldom done. I also feel like cricicism of this book is impossible because to really criticise something, one must maintain objectivity, and this is something Hesse does not allow here. It occurred to me early on in the book that if Hesse wrote it with any specific intention, it was to reach out to those who had these same angsts, and from there do no more than tell of his own search and his own discoveries in the hope that it may provide some insights into the minds of these others who are also searching (for his insights I am greatly in debt). To this end, he presents a number of subtly different portraits of the same man in the first half of the book, to give every reader the chance to identify if he or she has anything in common with any of these descriptions. So already, halfway through the book, you are in some degree either reading it as an insider or as merely an onlooker, a member of the "bourgeoisee" that he speaks so scornfully and intolerantly of. So, for one to write what can be considered a diffinitive criticism of the book, rather than just their personal experience of it, would be impossible after they have considered themself either an 'insider' or 'onlooker' to the story. That said, I just briefly offer my own experience of this book, which is that Hesse has the ability of a master writer, which is to convey things that go so far beyond words, with words. Perhaps it is that he feels what he is writing so deeply that the feelings and sensations can actually be EXPERIENCED, rather than just understood, by the reader. I find that this happens consistently when I read Hesse for an hour or two, late at night when there are no interruptions. There is another aspect to his mastery which I feel facilitates this deep experience, which is that in some sense he acknowledges that experience is subjective and that everyone person's experiences of the same "feelings" or "emotions" are possibly very different, and he surrenders to that, providing much of the time, only the EVENTS that lead to such deep feelings: so in a way, Hesse's poetry is a poetry of events. He will write a possitively life-like document of an experience of wanting to kill oneself and being angry at the world in the abstract, and he writes of finding a person to share the world with after years of isolation, and he writes of searching and searching without any guidance, and then recieving some mysterious, external affirmation that he is somehow on the right track. And if you surrender yourself to him, he will TAKE YOU THERE, and you will feel something...maybe not exactly what he is feeling, but it will be very strong. His mastery also lies in his ability to express very abstract and complex emotions through carefully constructed events, such as dreams. There is a dream sequence in Steppenwolf, for example, that speaks to me so strongly of the subtle melancholy of the space that is always separating people, and the realization that whether it is a long distance, or nearly imperceptable, it is omnipresent and impossible to bridge. To me, he communicates this with the beautiful simplicity of presenting situations where two people are VERY close to each other, and this realization becomes self-evident (read also Demian, and Siddhartha, both by Hesse). Anyway, if I have not communicated it fully yet, this is more a statement of gratitude to Hesse than anything else, and so I will end by just expressing my thanks to him for giving us these enduring gateways into ourselves. Thank you Hermann.
Rating:
Summary: A sip of literary Manischewitz
Review: When I was thirteen and went to many barmitzvahs, chugging down little cups of Manischewitz in a back room was considered exciting and daring. We hardly cared that it was incredibly sweet and not relished by many adults. Manishewitz was wine and the "alcoholic experience". By drinking it, we were participating, we were engaging in adult activity. I seldom drink any of that wine now, though a sip or two over the years keeps me convinced I'm not missing much. As with wines, I think it's fair to say that some books belong to different parts of life. Children's books give way to those meant for teenagers. Then there are some that seem to be exactly right when you've left home, maybe gone to college. Among the latter are Ayn Rand's works, Khalil Gibran, maybe "Catcher in the Rye", Kerouac's "On the Road", and the works of Hermann Hesse. You're young, you're looking for meaning, for the "real you", perhaps for a counterpoint to what you perceive as your parents' suburban inanities. I didn't go through this phase (though I did read Hesse's "Siddhartha")---not because I was so clever, but because I just happened to read other things. That's why now, at the advanced age of 58, I just read STEPPENWOLF for the first time, and that's probably why it reminded me of literary Manischewitz. Hesse's portrayal of the two sides of one man, a disillusioned intellectual who imagines himself a lone wolf of the steppes amidst the crassness of the bourgeoisie, is carefully executed and probably autobiographical. It is full of philosophizing, fantasies, and dream-like sequences. STEPPENWOLF is a freshman literature teacher's dream---there is endless material for tutorial discussions, for essay topics too. If sensitive people wonder what the position of an intellectual or artist in society could be, Hesse provides several interesting answers. But the appeal to young people who feel nobody understands them, that they are separate from the rest of the crowd---is undeniable. "...it is hard to find this track of the divine in the midst of this life we lead" Hesse intones, " in this besotted humdrum age of spiritual blindness, with its architecture, its business, its politics, its men ! How could I fail to be a lone wolf and an uncouth hermit...?" Haller, Hesse's alter-ego in the novel, painfully learns to accept life's various facets. By the end he says "I knew that all the 100,000 pieces of life's game were in my pocket." Very satisfying if you are 21 years old, but I found this novel too full of tired philosophy, heavy sentiment in the rain, incessant references to the "riddle and hopelessness of life", overarching seriousness, and glum deification of "high culture" with the accompanying scathing contempt for America and jazz so typical of European intellectuals of the time. If you're young and searching, this could be a five star book. By the time you are my age, you have either come to terms with much of this or you are in the nuthouse. By slogging through STEPPENWOLF, you will learn what many readers have found so fascinating, you will admire a beautifully-constructed philosophical text which has a vast number of literary and cultural allusions, but you may find that it is not a novel in the usual sense of the word. And you may remember Manischewitz.
Rating:
Summary: We all feel like steppenwolves at some point
Review: This novel is supposedly the writings of Harry Haller, a lonely intellectual who feels isolated from the rest of the world. The story is the account of his existential transformation. Beyond the plot, it is an exploration, a painful one, on the hollowness, emptiness and meaninglessness of life. It talks about how lonely we really are, in the confusing and unexplainable world in which we live. It also talks about the desperation routine brings on, the fakeness of love, the necessity of death. But, in the final analysis, it also shows a probably undeserved love for life. This is not a simple "grunge" book: it's thoughtful philosophy expressed in a fine literary piece of work, which shows vividly some concepts that sometimes formal philosophy renders in abstract and obscure ways. Harry Haller, the steppenwolf, will meet a simple woman who takes him into the life of the flesh and the simplicity of people. This is very important: Haller comes to realize, in an intuitive more than analytical way, how we all humans feel the same loneliness and confusion, but how most of us manage to live and somehow enjoy many aspects of being alive. This is an intelligent, deep and moving novel. It is not always pleasant, but then again life is not always pleasant either. Steppenwolf is perhaps the novel in which Hesse best sums up many of the points made in his other novels, previous or subsequent. It is the round-up of a clear and interesting philosophy of life. No wonder people, especially young people, keep finding inspiration, advice and healing in his works. Maybe I shouldn't give it five stars, for it can't be compared with top-level literary masterpieces; but I think literature's importance is not only and not always stylistical. The content is important too, and at least for me, this is one of the most inspiring and memorable novels I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: A man's savage, twisted confrontation into nihilism
Review: Hesse's "Steppenwolf" is truly a product of the German culture, drawing heavily from Goethe, Nietzche, Schopenhaurer, and even Mozart. It dabbles with eastern mystism, but not so deeply as to make this anything other than a western novel. There is no doubt that this work is a challenging read, delving headlong into philosophic issues which often overbear the story itself. The work's protagonist, Harry Haller, is a miserable man - torn between the safety of bourgeois society and the call of the wild. Hesse's depiction of Haller's slow dissolution into madness is terrible to behold, although written in a style that makes it intentionally confusing. This gives the reader a disturbing feeling that he, too, could approach the brink of insanity. Overall, I found this work very powerful and full of dark emotion, but also a great challenge to read and understand. It is not for everyone, but deserves the recognition that it has received.
Rating:
Summary: A Romantic Outsider
Review: I first read this book over twenty years ago, and I still find it meaningful today. Unlike popular fiction, Hesse's novels have that rare quality of making you think. They echo Socrates' maxim: "The unreflected life is not worth living." Can Clancy, Koonzt, or King make such a claim? If you enjoyed Steppenwolf, consider also Fowles excellent novel The Magus.
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