The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

I picked this book up at a local bookstore called Brave Books. I've read two other of Hesse's books; one of course being Siddhartha and the other Steppenwolf. Hesse to me represents a western man who has been heavily influenced by eastern thought. Each of his main characters practice intense inner reflection and advancements in plot represent epiphanies or realizations. Wikipedia categorizes his genre of fiction as "existential".  If Siddhartha finds Peace and Steppenwolf discovers Balance then The Glass Bead Game realizes Futility: now that's existential. I think I started reading it around May and just now finished it in October. It's a very slow burning book. Reading one of Hesse's works feels meditative with this one being especially monkish. Though, it was very pleasant to be transported to Castalia. Hesse did fantastic world-building for Castalian society and relationships with other characters were in-depth and core to Knecht's bildungsroman. However, I definitely had to be in a peaceful sort of mood to pick this book up to read. It wasn't the normal kind of peace reading calls for either. I had to be meditative and patient to enjoy Knecht's simple adventures.

The premise of the glass bead game itself is appealing to me because it reminds me of programming and the internet. Did we have computers back in the 1940s? Hesse found a way to combine art, literature, music, science and math into a plot device characters can design. The Glass Bead Game was Hesse describing media as we know it today: multi-faceted and interactive. Students at Castalia learn to program these games as they become more educated and throughout the book there are beautiful descriptions of the games being designed. Hesse's love for music is clear in this novel because he experiences it in everything. As his last book, I believed it initially to be too ambitious had he kept focus on the game itself. The book begins with descriptions of the game, but it becomes clear Knecht is the focus. Hesse knew he had a clever plot device, but he didn't get carried away with it.

Hesse has always been enlightening, but this novel had less impact than Siddhartha or even Steppenwolf for me. Though, I believe Hesse found peace here. He didn't give a shit about the story being entertaining or attempting to enlighten his audience like his other books. Hermann wrote this one for himself.