SIDDHARTHA by Herman Hesse

Finished Tu 8/11/26

The second book in my Herman Hesse Trilogy from Kindle. Very interesting; Do not strive to emulate a mentor's struggle, but learn to 'evolve' in your own way.   

From Kirkus:

"A serene ""classic novel"" about a spiritual journey through Indian mysticism -- a smooth, bland entity for a special audience by the author of Steppanwalf and winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize. This is the story of the young Brahmin, Siddhartha, and his progress from arrogant asceticism, through abandonment to the senses, rebirth of spiritual vigor, deep human grief, to an appreciation of the unity and beauty of all things, a unity in which words and thoughts appear as shadows. The style reflects this discovery of the timeless rooted in the nature of time- the author's stringent, economical phrasing with its careful rhythms lends the book an air of studied antiquity, refreshing, yet, oddly, new. Limited market."

DEMIAN by Herman Hesse

Finished Th 8/6/26

I read this on Kindle and I got 'DEMIAN', 'SIDDARTHA', & 'STEPPENWOLF' for fifty cents at Kindle. I was looking for 'THE GLASS BEAD GAME', but I couldn't pass up this deal.

Emile Sinclair is bullied at school and he is 'saved' by Max Demian. Max & his mom become the most important figures in his life; Weird sexual attraction to 'his best friend's mother'. Set shortly before and during the first world war. 

  From Kirkus:

"What Catcher in the Rye has come to mean for America's younger generation, Demian proved to be for Germany's early post-WWI youth. Yet though the effect was similar, Hermann Hesse's beautiful, brooding tale, both in style and philosophic intent, bears little relation to Salinger's work. Rather it is in that odd, poetic, distinctly European tradition of Goethe's Werther, on the one hand, and Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles and Musil's Young Torless, on the other. Many diverse notes are struck in this first-person narration of a schoolboy's slow, puzzling awakening to maturity, to the world within and without, as he passes through successively strange encounters with his mysterious friend, Demian. The latter serves as the boy's mentor, his Vergil (in the Dantean sense), exerting now the powers of evil, now of good. The relationship between them is always hesitantly stated: on a psychological plane, an element of homoeroticism; on the social, different sequences describing the boy's various rebellions against his bourgeois background; and finally, religiously, the key motif; a kind of mystic mingling of Christianity and Buddhism. In the startling later passages, the boy, now eighteen, undergoes a romantic attachment to Demian's mother, followed by his baptism through fire at the front and the death of the wounded Demian in his presence. In the dream-like finale the boy bends over ""that dark mirror to behold my own image, now completely resembling him, my brother, my master."" It is Hesse's greatness to make what could be errant nonsense into a quite believable, fascinating, moving portrait of youth."

THE FAMILY ARSENAL by Paul Theroux

 Finished Tu 7/30/26

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read. It's a beautifully written satire about 'Terrorism'.

Set in London during the 70's and it concerns a 'family' of miscreants. 

From Kirkus:

"The popular success of The Great Railway Bazaar may well relax the cordon which has restricted most of Theroux's novels, critical admiration to the contrary. The ""family arsenal"" becomes the tag which means home to divers miscreants and militants in London: two street-smart urchins; a well-educated girl who has ripped off a Flemish painting; some IRA Provos and their pursuants; and a few fringe characters, perhaps too close to caricature for comfort or belief--an aging actress, a prim accountant, and an avid woman with ugly penchants. But at the center of everything is Valentine Hood, a former US consul sacked after punching a government official in Hue--Hood who was ""turned around"" and off by Vietnam, forged a passport for himself, and has taken sanctuary in the lower depths of Deptford. Here he hopes to fred a ""liberating fantasy you could believe in, a new world"" and although remote by temperament and retreating behind a haze of opium, he does participate in the Provo cause. Given no choice, he kills a man. At first out of pity, later out of love, he takes care of his victim's widow, Lorna, and her son. He also moves the dead man's cache of stolen TV sets to his own rooms in the communal quarters where he keeps his diminishing two kilos of opium and a few oriental objets d'art. But after Lorna is assaulted, he realizes that the ""Third World is a graveyard of idealists,"" dissolves the family arsenal, leaves the house wired for demolition, and exits from England. Within the frame of the riffraffish underworld, all spiked with color and humor and noise and cruelty, there's a seriousness of purpose. Hood, gray with indecision and a flawed hope only one step ahead of failure, could easily walk out of a Graham Greene novel. But also like Theroux's own Singapore Saint Jack, he rises and quietly shines above a milieu which has a glib amorality and bravado--""one bomb in Oxford Street is better than ten in Belfast."" Theroux is always an original and gifted entrepreneur--shafting his quick changes of life and death or just catch-as-catch-can survival with style and headlong spirit."