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 A hollow mess July 4, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This novel is a shocking disappointment. From the summary or the favourable reviews elsewhere the reader might be deceived into believing they will be sucked into a wonderful, imaginative, compelling alternate world where philosophy, art, creativity and human endeavor mix.
Sadly the Glass Bead Game fails to deliver on this alluring vision and instead presents the reader with a dreadfully wishy-washy, unbearably tedious, poorly imagined and utterly limited tale.
The Glass Bead game's most serious flaw is that the central crux of the book, the game itself, is never clearly defined and described, rather the reader is left to take Hesse's word for it that the game itself is this incedible synthesis of art, philosophy, music etc. Without ever being shown why, the whole edifice is entirely unconcivincing. Rather Hesse comes across as a name-dropper, mentioning Nietzsche, Strauss, Hegel, etc. without ever explaining the significance of their work. Again, the references to eastern philosophy and the I-ching just sound as though they are mentioned for the sake of attempting to create the appearance of an intellectual melting pot which is never actually realised.
For a story set in an imagined future world, Hesse's novel seems strangely rooted in the Germany in which he lived. Barely a foot is stepped outside of the boundaries of the fatherland throughout the novel, which only serves to weaken the alternate reality Hesse is attempting to create. Similarly the obsession with the involvement of the Catholic church as a sometime enemy, sometime friend of the game only helps to root the book in the world in which Hesse lived, a world which he is apparently unable to escape in his own imagination.
The writing, which is admittedly, often good, is let down by the clumsy attempts to portay the book as the work of a researcher into the life of the main chacater Joseph Knecht. All too often we are given glimpses into the mind, the sensations and thoughts of Knecht that would be completely beyond the power of the researcher to report. Why Hesse didn't simply bite the bullet and write the novel from Knecht's own perspective, as he seems to yearn to constantly, is beyond me.
In his pursuit of the intellectual ideal, and in his description of what appears to be almost an entirely male environment, Hesse manages to create an entirely non-sexual world, another dreadful blow to his setting. So strange and intense were Knecht's close platonic relationships with his male friends that I found myself assuming that Hesse was coding some homosexual subtext into the book, probably out of desperation that there might be something of interest in it.
This book is a massive failure in the exection of an interesting idea, and I wholeheartedly recommend readers to steer clear of it.
 The life of the mind April 6, 2006
33 out of 34 found this review helpful
The Glass Bead Game (1943) is a confounding but fascinating SF novel/biography/spiritual treatise.Hesse (1877-1962) was born in Germany, a rebellious - and, for a period, apparently mentally-ill - son to a pair of missionaries who rejected theological education in favour (eventually) of becoming a bookseller's apprentice and writer. He became alienated from his homeland during WWI, attracting opprobrium for writing an essay in protest at German militarism and calling upon his fellow writers to stop supporting the war. In 1919 he left Germany for Switzerland, and never returned. He was fascinated by Jung and by Eastern spiritual thought (specifically Buddhism, I think), and travelled in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The Glass Bead Game, widely seen as his greatest work, is a fictional biography set at some unspecified point in the future. It deals with the life and death of Joseph Knecht, one of the greatest players of the titular Game that the world has ever known, and who rose to become its Magister Ludi (master of the Game). The Game, we are told in the (narrator's) preface, arose out of an impatience with the frivolity and shallow nature of pseudo-scholarship and mass media/entertainment during the "Age of the Feuilleton" (broadly, an extrapolation of Hesse's own). It was a drive for a purer, higher use of intellectual energy, influenced by Eastern thought; an attempt to find a universal symbolic language through which all scholarly pursuits could be expressed, explored and, ultimately, harmonised: music, maths, philosophy, religion. It began with glass beads strung on wires, like a complex abacus, but soon evolved into a much broader set of representations, becoming, "[W]hat it is today: the quintessence of all intellectuality and art, the sublime cult, the unio mystica of all separate members of the Universitas Litterarum. In our lives it has partially taken over the role of art, partially that of speculative philosophy." The novel takes place largely in Castalia, a province given over to the furtherance of the Game, the intellectual pursuits of its players, and the education of future Castalians. This isn't Plato's Republic, though; the philosophers don't manage society for its own benefit with all their considerable intellectual resources. Rather, they leave the world to its own devices, supported by the revenues of an unnamed state and enjoying sole occupancy of their province. They maintain a monastic existence in their favoured little world, eschewing worldly attachments and devoting themselves to the life of the Mind. The tale of Joseph Knecht takes us through all levels of this rarefied world, from young Joseph's first introduction to the Music Master who teaches him a new way of listening to music and is his first mentor, through his intellectual growth and development, his conflicted (and always unequal) relationships with friends and teachers, and his discovery of the value of meditation, up to his appointment as Magister Ludi, and beyond. It's a dazzling, inspiring world - albeit one with nary a woman in sight (only men can play the Game, it seems). It's also a terribly isolated one, anchorless in undifferentiated time, devoid - as the Benedictine monk Father Jacobus helps Knecht to see - of context, of contact, of a true awareness of the outside world and what it means. Of history. It occurs to me now that this may be a reason behind the unspecified timeframe. In the course of the telling, Hesse naturally plays all sorts of games with the biographical format - a genre that, we are told, is distinctly frowned upon in Castalian culture for its tendency towards both hagiography and needless wallowing in the psychological 'roots' of its subjects. The prose thus strives for dry detachment, modelled on what we later learn is the Castalian authorities' 'house style' - impersonality to the extent of burying the narrator within a first-person plural viewpoint. Nevertheless - as probably will surprise no-one - even as he/they evince a fastidious disdain for such philistine practices, the narrator(s) can't help but indulge in all the traits described as lamentable about biography: psycho-analysis, speculation, foreshadowing, direct speech; even the exploration of Joseph's own thought processes. It's something of a comfort in the midst of this alien society. The narrator draws back, however, when the climax of the novel approaches: Joseph's decision to leave his position, his responsibilities, and Castalia itself, behind. What remains is legend, we are told; only the bare facts, such as are known, can be presented. (There is a little more, but I don't want to spoil the very end). The reader is left to reach their own conclusions. For my part, I see it as an admission that the life of the Mind cannot exist in such rarefied air, forbidden contact with the world that produced and still nurtures it, without becoming stagnant - but your impression may differ...
A fascinating world- a tale of personal growth March 9, 2006
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Hermann Hesse is a magical story teller. He builds his world so masterfully that you step in and travel along, completely at home. His fascination with the personal growth of individual human beings make this novel the very best example of what a "biography" should be. This book is the his greatest of many wonderful achievements, such as Damian and Siddharta, both dealing with the inner growth and development of a single person.
A great book June 18, 2005
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
The Glass Bead Game (Master Ludi), by Herman Hesse, is a great book. Hesse intergrates thoughts and plots from his previous books and delivers a masterpiece. It is better to read his other books first to understand The Glass Bead Game in depth.
The appendices with the poems are not closely connected to the plot and are written by Hesse at an earlier period.
Thought provoking July 26, 2004
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
I read this novel with fascination when I was a student (in the late 70's) and was captured by it's themes of study, intellectualism and their relation to the 'real world'.
As a forty-something I've just re-read the work; this time I picked up the human struggle around the purpose and meaning of these things.
Do people still read these types of novels - I hope so.
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