Steppenwolf

By: Hermann Hesse

Narrated by: Peter Weller

Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Harry 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.

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.

©1927 S. Fischer Verlag A. G., Berlin. Renewal copyright 1955 Hermann Hesse. English translation copyright B 1929 Henry Holt and Company. Renewal copyright 1957 Hermann Hesse. Revised translation copyright 1963 Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc. Author's note copyright 1961 Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt Am Main (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks America

omg

it was slowly building wrapped in both exileration and calm to a magnificent ending. boom. My favorite author by far.

Book just kinda ends.

I loved Siddhartha. This book starts slow. Then has a lot of character development. Then kinda ends leaving lots to be explained.

Not meant for audiobook

Any additional comments?

This book is very much a work of philosophy. Many of the sentences are meandering philosphical statements that most accessible when read more than once. The performance is monotone (which I suppose is fitting for the story) and tends to be boring. Buy this as a real book to truly access this classic.

nope

couldn't get thru the English version of this, it was just dragging on. I'll try the German original instead.

The Steppenwolf lives on.

An extraordinary book.. Loved in my youth. Loved more now. Read with no pretention. Fantastic.

Painful performance

Couldn’t stand the narrator/performance. If I had to hear him pronounce “bourgeois” as “boogois” one more time I was going to jump out of the window… His delivery in general was grating.

Powerful story

Beautiful narration. This book and its many hidden meanings will stay with me for many years, I suspect.

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.

Weller and Hesse? I say YES

I could listen to Peter Weller narrate the phone book. Here he narrates one of the classics of European literature and it is so good. So so so good.

More than I expected

Would you consider the audio edition of Steppenwolf to be better than the print version?

No, but Peter Weller did an amazing job bringing Haller to life.

What did you like best about this story?

Hesse captures what it means to live, and if read (or listened to) properly, offers a hopeful warning for the young, while also presenting a means of communal acceptance for those who have lived much of their years already.

Which scene was your favorite?

Not the magic theater--it was too "beat you over the head with moralizing symbolism"--although, I would never suggest it isn't a necessary component of the piece. I liked the bar scene where Haller went to avoid his apartment in an attempt to forestall his suicide.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

A film could never do the book justice.

Any additional comments?

After reading Hesse's Siddhartha, I expected a good deal of musings on life. However, where Siddhartha presents ideas in a simplistic archetypal fashion, Steppenwolf has nuance and depth. Excellent, raw emotional exposure.