Here's wrote about this read in 2014: "Well, this is my second read of Hesse. Sure does pack a punch. Strikes me as a lot about what is the point of it all, humor and joy are only ways to get through this messiness called life, and we're homesick, aren't we, for the afterlife. Fasinating the legacy into the 60's, the band, the theater, etc." Quotations in the comments section are my exact kindle highlights. ( )

This is a tough one to review. Hesse is an absolutely amazing writer and as the novel unfolded I was fully onboard and thinking, wow, a 5 at last. Alas, this did not hold, as the drug trip within a book within a book drifted into metaphysics and a messed up glob of a story, and a terrible ending. The writing remained extremely good, but I’m just not interested in such pointless expenditure of my mind. It dropped from a 5 to a 4 to a 3 towards the end. I'd say a 3.5, but I rounded up. So sad after such an excellent beginning. ( )

Re-read, first read 25-30 years ago on the boat. It must have been a more staid translation, as I don't remember it being so randy.

Older now, I recognize we are all wandering down the hall long after midnight with the world as we have managed to see it. ( )

Really liked it when I read it in my 20's
But .. similar to Hesse's Debian & James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist..." much of it wafter over my head a poetry that I was enjoying but it didn't stick with me & don't if I fully got it. I'm pretty sure there' store to "get" now that I'm older (& would def re-read) but I do think it's quite poetic / abstract / means different things to different people (i.e not just something you "get" or "don't get" ( )

Start & finish so so , to "etherial". I like the middle of his "awakening". ( )