And what a crashing disappointment. From the outset, as I read through the preliminary 'General Introduction For The Layman' I began to feel a vague unease. As I delved into the childhood, youth and middle-age of the central character Joseph Knecht I experienced - by turns - indifference, irritation and finally incredulity. Here was one of the driest, highfalutin pieces of twentieth century literature I had read for a long time: and by a man who should know better!

I won't give a detailed run-down of the plot: other reviews have done that already. But I have a few comments that I must pass on. 'The Glass Bead Game' is an imaginary biographical account of the Magister Ludi (Chief Glass Bead Game Player) Joseph Knecht. This style of writing cannot sustain genuine literary interest if it isn't supported by a credible plot. I would argue that the story of one man's rise to the summit of an intellectual utopia - and his voluntary withdrawal from it - does not sustain 400 pages of muddled intellectual musing.

The ideas and tenets of the 'Castalian' society in which The Glass Bead Game thrives are often contradictory - not to mention half-baked, watery and overstated. Hesse's use of language in this novel is of a high aesthetic standard: I can't argue against that. He writes with genious and skill. But his ultimate point is so laboured and dissected that any joy one may have received from his prose is quashed. This 'novel' (can I even call it that? It strikes me more as a confused manifesto) generalizes MASSIVE cosmic themes that cannot be adequately imparted to a reader in Hesse's chosen medium: I read through the words 'peace', 'truth', 'self' and 'divine' so many times - along with a thousand other similar ones that each have so many different meanings - that ultimately this book ceased to 'mean' anything to me at all.

Such overblown pomposity is disappointing: especially when it hides behind the screen of complex, high-flown language. The ideas behind it are not finished ones: nor do they offer any kind of satisfactory answer to any of the other questions tackled in Hesse's other - much, much better - works.

And why place Knecht's 'posthumous' writings - consisting of some immature poetry and an extra 100 pages of his supposed 'studies' - at the finish? They are utterly irrelevant and bring nothing to the work itself.

I always finish a book and hence I followed this baffling contruction to the bitter end. I almost wish I hadn't, now, as it succeeded in tarnishing my fondness for Hesse's unique intellectual touch. In this dry, de-humanised work of rhetoric it flies a mile wide of the mark.


testament to the academic?   May 5, 2003
 24 out of 30 found this review helpful

The glass bead game is the game of the future, and consists in making aesthetic observations common in diverse academic fields. Joseph Knecht's life is told, from his days as a school boy to his position as Master Ludorum (master in charge of the glass bead game ceremonies) and then his later life where he aspires to be simply a teacher. Is this book a testament to what is intellectual and academic? Or are its aims more modest, pointing towards a simpler life being more productive?
This is Hesse's biggest work, both in physical size, and in literary impact. It also won him the Nobel Prize in 1946.


an easy to read, yet very rewarding introduction to hesse   March 8, 2001
 26 out of 33 found this review helpful

part bauhaus, part shaolin temple, part medieval apprenticeship, the world of castallia is wonderful, mystical and entrancing.

the parallels with many areas of life and the symbolism used are both revelatory and thought-provoking - yet somehow familiar. as though hesse is putting into words, chimera-like thoughts that exist in your mind but are rarely vocalised.

surprisingly easy to read yet very rewarding. one of those books that makes you glad to be alive - but not in a mawkish, sentimental way


Don't read me first   January 5, 2001
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

More complex than his earlier books. Read 'Narziss & Goldmund' first, where similar themes are developed as separate characters, and this will make much more sense. The other main books: 'Damian', 'Steppenwolf', 'Siddartha', explore/describe singular ways of living rather than the deep personal conflict here - read them before or after, as you like. This is the greatest novel about the pursuit of the aesthetic life, its rewards and cost, ever written - I think.


A fascinating and thought provoking book   September 6, 2000
 47 out of 48 found this review helpful

The Glass Bead Game is set in Castalia, an intellectual utopia of the future, where scholars, having cut themselves off from the rest of the world, are free to immerse themselves in the unadulterated pursuit of knowledge.

The Glass Bead Game itself is the embodiment of this community's ideology. It is a game in which contestants attempt to establish patterns of commonality between seemingly disparate intellectual fields. Although the emphasis within the novel is that it is an essentially aesthetic pursuit, it is a fascinating idea that is increasing relevant in modern science with physicist search for the 'theory of everything' and the application of chaos theory to increasing number of apparently unrelated systems.

Although Herman Hesse was something of a sixties icon, and despite its frequent reference to Eastern mysticism, to my mind the sentiments of this book are decidedly anti-hippie. The author is warning us that any community that doggedly pursues it ideology at the expense of the world at large is at risk of becoming stagnant, inward looking, and ultimately decadent and irrelevant. It is a call to pragmatism, as valuable today as it has ever been.

After reading Steppenwolf, which I found a turgid and difficult read, I came to this novel with some trepidation. However, despite it's philosophical overtones and being written in the style of a biography, The Glass Bead Game is far from a struggle to read and you quickly find yourself being drawn into the life of the protagonist. Consummately written, the Glass Bead Game is a fascinating and thought provoking book which will stay with you long after you've put it down for the last time.