Demian
A young man awakens to selfhood and to a world of possibilities beyond the conventions of his upbringing in Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s beloved novel Demian. Emil Sinclair is a quiet boy drawn into a forbidden yet seductive realm of petty crime and defiance. His guide is his precocious, mysterious classmate Max Demian, who provokes in Emil a search for self-discovery and spiritual fulfillment. A brilliant psychological portrait, Demian is given new life in this translation, which together with James Franco’s personal and inspiring foreword will bring a new generation to Hesse’s widely influential coming-of-age novel.
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- Demian by Hermann Hesse. I wanted to scream "Stop overthinking!" to the protagonist. Something I can relate to.
Siddharta by Hermann Hesse. Helped me understand that a perfect life is a collection of ups and downs and that one must accept it all.
Amerika by Franz Kafka. Could relate to the protagonist because people take advantage of his naivety.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Made me see the world in a less pessimistic way.
- Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse I assume?
If you want to try more Herman Hesse I preferred Demian & Siddharta far over Glass Bead game (read in German though, can't speak for translations).
- Picking a "favorite" is generally hard. I once learned that the best way to phrase this question is in the form of e.g. "What are some of your favorite books?" so the responder doesn't have to force rank their all-time-favorite in their head, which can feel taxing. So I'll name two:
I'm actually a bit surprised to not see "Brave New World" mentioned yet. That was a life-changing experience to my teenage self
And since someone else has already picked Steppenwolf by Hesse, I'll mention Demian instead.
- - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig)
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (Hofstadter)
- Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (Penrose)
- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Suzuki)
- Demian (Hesse)
- The Stranger (Camus)
- Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)
- Another Roadside Attraction (Robbins)
I have read many books that have had an impact on me for a time, but these are the books that have had an enduring impact going on now for decades.
And yes, one of these books, Another Roadside Attraction, is unlike the others. You can substitute any Tom Robbins book, or read them all!, but this is the book that started it all for me. Tom Robbins' books taught me to not take life so seriously.
Demian and The Stranger may be fiction, but let's just say their purpose is to get across a philosophical point.
Finally, with regards to Slaughterhouse-Five, you'll just have to read it.
Enjoy!
- I like this passage from "Demian" by Herman Hesse:
And at this point I felt the truth burning within me like a sharp flame, that there was some role for everybody but it was not one which he himself could choose, re-cast and regulate to his own liking. One had no right to want new gods, no right at all to want to give the world anything of that sort! There was but one duty for a grown man; it was to seek the way to himself, to become resolute within, to grope his way forward wherever that might lead him. The discovery shook me profoundly; it was the fruit of this experience. I had often toyed with pictures of the future, dreamed of roles which might be assigned to me --- as a poet, maybe, or prophet or painter or kindred vocation.
All that was futile. I was not there to write poetry, to preach or paint; neither I nor any other man was there for that purpose. They were only incidental things. There was only one true vocation for everybody - to find the way to himself.
He might end as poet, lunatic, prophet or criminal - that was not his affair; ultimately it was of no account. His affair was to discover his own destiny, not something of his own choosing, and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself.
Anything else was merely a half life, an attempt at evasion, an escape into the ideals of the masses, complacency and fear of his inner soul. The new picture rose before me, sacred and awe-inspiring, a hundred times glimpsed, possibly often expressed and now experienced for the first time.
I was an experiment on the part of nature, a 'throw' into the unknown, perhaps for some new purpose, perhaps for nothing and my only vocation was to allow this 'throw' to work itself out in my inner most being, feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. That or nothing!
- Demian by Herman Hesse.
Taught me to not rely on logic/rationality alone. Sometimes you have to trust in intuition and the unconscious to guide your decisions.
