Demian and Friends
But it seems to me that in weather like this a man does the right thing when he looks for a quiet place where he can drink a good glass of wine or something. Will you join me? I happen to be all by myself at the moment. Or would you rather not? I don’t want to be the one who leads you astray, mon vieux, that is, in case you happen to be the kind that keeps to the straight and narrow.
- from Demian by Hermann Hesse (spoken by the character Alfons Beck)
Yes, yes, yes. Love it. I really really do. One of the great things about this book is it’s unexpected quotability. It sometimes slips my mind, but as I was reading, I was startled when the quote I used for my senior photo in the high school year book lept back out at me from the page:
People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest. It was a scandal that a breed of fearless and sinister people ran about freely.
Hah, I was a presumptuous little punkass, wasn’t I? OK, I have to admit that I truncated the quote a little because Demian is actually talking about the story of Cain and Abel, and I didn’t think that part of the quote applied to me, but apparently the part about courage, character and seeming sinister did. Hahaha.
I don’t know why anyone let me get away with that nonsense, but I’m glad they did. I adore this book, honestly. I may or may not write a review of it. It’s hard to review a book you’re still madly in love with.
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6 Responses to “Demian and Friends”.
While I would love to see your thoughts on the book, I understand why it would be hard to review. The temptation to delve into every piece of it that you find relevant is farfarfar too strong to be meaningful to someone else. (Can you tell I’ve tried this before?). Perhaps a snippet of thoughts from the different sections as you go along?
Yeah, I think I might do that, just like I did with the Silverstein bio and then compile them for a “review” so if anyone wants to see what I thought of the book, they can just look at the handful of posts I made about it. One day I might be able to write a single intelligible review of it, but… not sure that’s going to happen yet.
What book did you love too much to review?
So, I was getting ready to type out a nice long message about how the only Herman Hesse book I had read was Don’t Stop the Carnival, and that though I enjoyed it thoroughly, I didn’t think it counted as high literature. Then I realized that Herman Hesse wrote Siddhartha, a book that I did not enjoy at all. Puzzled by the degree to which Siddhartha and Don’t Stop the Carnival are different, and how much less I enjoyed the former, I did a quick google search and discovered that the latter book was written by Herman Wouk.
TL;DR: Tom thinks everyone with the first name “Herman” is the same person.
LOL Tom. If it’s any comfort, I didn’t like Siddhartha, either. I was assigned that book in high school at some point … must have been senior English. It was after I read Demian. The style is totally different. I think you might like Demian.
You’re really enjoying this book… lol. Keep it up.
Yes, I agree demain is a realy hard book to undersatnd but other then that its a realy good book once you read it once more for a clarification and understanding.
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