Modern books are often littered with testimonials. My copy of Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse needs just one: “There are only few books which transform us, which give us courage to change our lives,” French writer Frederic Beigbeder says on the back cover. “Der Steppenwolf is one such book.”
Since I already loved Siddhartha, maybe I’m just a sucker for Hesse, but when it comes to Steppenwolf, transform me it did. And while it sure gave me courage to change like Beigbeder suggests, perhaps even more importantly, it gave me permission to do so.
This novel about a depressed, torn man who rediscovers the joy of living is many things, but to me, first and foremost, it’s an exploration of identity.
Harry Haller starts out on the verge of suicide. He is deeply dissatisfied with life itself and his own in particular. Only once he meets the chirpy but mysterious Hermine, a woman who seems to live life to the fullest yet still be aware of all its existential conundrums, does he begin to change his point of view. Harry finally learns to dance. He attends night clubs and events and rediscovers the other sex. Many of his experiences end up being surreal. As a reader, you won’t know what was real and what wasn’t until the very end—but by the final pages, you’ll understand: Life is about laughter more so than about delivering a neatly compressible image of yourself to everyone else.
The book addresses the theme of identity head on more than once, one of the more memorable instances being that, and I’m paraphrasing, “while science insists we present only one orderly self to the public, actually, we each hold many selves within us.” By his friends and mentors throughout the book, Harry is encouraged to let go of the civil self he clings to so desperately yet so unhappily, and once he does, he finds the freedom to reinvent himself at any moment rather enjoyable.
I’m not sure the book’s powerful illustration of this journey can be made colorful any other way than by reading the book itself, and while I’d like to try my hand at that some other time, for now, know the book’s central theme is that identity is a meme—and far from our best one.
I’ve thought about, written about, and tracked this phenomenon in the arts for a long time. It appears in the penultimate episode of Arcane. The Bourne movies are all over it. Jim Carrey is a remarkable example of someone who got the joke. Time and again, I encounter books, TV shows, and people who ask an innocent yet profound question: Who are we—and why does that seem so important to begin with?
It took me five years of writing to fully claim the identity of “being a writer.” After five more years of feeling much more comfortable in my own skin, I concluded that “your identity is a cathedral made out of water.” It looks much more precious than it is. If you dare—if someone gives you permission—you can snap your fingers and, swoosh, the whole thing collapses into a teacup. Then, you can start over, and while some towers will take time to build, some labels take a while to claim, you’ll be able to raise other new structures as quickly as you crushed the old ones.
If you feel stuck in any way, shape, or form, read Der Steppenwolf. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do it justice in my own words, but perhaps all I need is to echo Frederic Beigbeder’s: There are only few books which transform us, which give us both courage and permission to change our lives. Der Steppenwolf is one such book.