Steppenwolf

I'm reading Steppenwolf. The back cover bills it as "a savage indictment of bourgeois society," and it's supposed to be a classic. I had trouble getting into it - the first 50 pages were really repetitive, describing again and again what steppenwolves are. I thought Hesse needed an editor. OK, OK, we know already that the Steppenwolf feels like an outsider in society!

But then it started getting really good. The main character, this lonely old guy who spends all his time reading literature and moping in his attic room, runs into an old acquaintance in the street, a professor he used to know. He doesn't have any friends and it's been so long since he even talked to anyone, that he feels really wooden and fake even standing there in the street talking to the guy. He feels like the "wolf" part of him is standing there laughing at him for trying to be sociable. When the professor invites him to dinner, he says yes but immediately starts freaking out about going. He knows the evening is going to be weird.

He goes back to his room to shower and dress, and the whole time he's wishing he could just stay at home and read his book - the evening looms ahead of him like a terrible chore. Eventually he forces himself to go, and yeah, it turns out pretty bad. He feels totally repressed throughout the whole meal because it's clear the professor's politics are the opposite of his, and he has to keep biting his tongue. After dinner, there's an awkward silence, and in desperation for something to say he ends up saying something insulting, and the professor gets upset with him, and he leaves in a huff.

The whole time I was reading this scene, I was enthralled. I know exactly how he felt. I am not a steppenwolf, but I am shy to a degree that I've never quite been able to overcome. If it was a pure and simple choice, I would much rather read a book than be social on any given evening. But I know being social, in the long term, makes me happier, so I usually talk myself into going. There have been many occasions where I basically browbeat myself into going to some party where I knew I'd be out of place, because I knew I needed the practice, and besides, if I didn't go out, how was I ever going to meet someone? I didn't usually insult anyone, but I'd generally go home afterwards feeling a combination of "whew, glad that's over" and "I'm so bad at this." It's so fascinating to me that Hesse was writing, in 1927, in German, something that speaks to me on a core level, something that makes me say, "ahh! He understands." Like he reached across the ages and squeezed my hand.