SteppenwolfTwist

 I had my COVID injection yesterday and it physically knocked me with a lot of the symptoms but I think I am now over the worst.

"Steppenwolf" has taken a major unexpected twist, in a drug, drink and sex induced surreal scenario Harry Haller takes a step into a man vs machine world scenario worthy of JG Ballard. I really didn't see that coming , and with about twenty pages left of the book I am not sure what else will happen. If I'd known the format of the book , two breaks in the first fifty pages then two hundred pages of non stop narrative, I think I may have been put off, and it's not for everyone but I am glad I have read and got through it.

I have also decided to revisit "Tarantula" by Bob Dylan next before maybe dipping into another unread (by me) classic.

So as I am still not 100% , I am going to go left field and share "Shadow Line" by Jordan Reyne because it is the song that hooked me on her and the video is wonderful as is the song.

Reading Books

I am still sort of enjoying "Steppenwolf" , but one of te things about books is I prefer a font that I can read regardless of whether I have contact lenses in or not , ie a dark high contracts font that is not to tiny. Some fonts are very faint so unless you have a decent light they become difficult to read. This is where an e-reader scores because you can change the font and even get it to read the book for you. The print in "Steppenwolf" is excellent and I can read it with or without contact lenses in almost any light.

"Steppenwolf" itself despite hitting on suicide and murder pacts , being anti right wing jingoism in a society that is pro right wing jingoism , is very hopeful seeing Harry Haller reluctantly buying a gramophone , learning to dance despite his abhorrence of jazz and eventually realising that socialising and fun is actually enjoyable and something he wants to do. I have actually read over 150 pages in a week so that is quite fast for me and I am not sure whether I will go for another reread next or hit an unread classic.

Books are a wonderful way of exploring whatever you want to explore and it does amaze me the number of people who say they don't have time or can't read books. I am looking at some of my sets of books that I want to revisit including "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings" and the F Paul Wilson "Adversary" series while I am still working through "Imajica" on my Kindle. I also feel I need to revisit some Dean Koontz although my problem with him is that he seemed to publish books quicker than I could read them, but he did publish one of the few novels "Dark Rivers of the Heart" that I read in one sitting, and I may be wrong , but I think that was around seven hundred pages. Another was Matt Haig's "Reason's To Stay Alive" which I gave away on a World Book Night , gave to my friend Paul Campbell the writer for his 50th birthday, but I also read on the train journey to London.

So we need a song to go with this., and what about one of my favourite Beatles songs "Paperback Writer". The B side is "Rain" another of my favourites and it makes up a perfect single. Macca's bass on "Rain" supposedly was so heavy that it made the needle jump the groove and while it is impressive my copy plays OK so I don't know if the bass has been calmed or what, and "Strawberry Fields" has just started playing and for the first time ever I've noticed the morse code snippet near the start.

Steppenwolfery

I am over half way through "Steppenwolf" and in some ways wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but the fact I am half way through it after a week still wondering what's going on means that it must have something going for it. Obviously Hermann Hesse is German and this feels set in roughly the same universe as "Cabaret" , pre WW2 Germany in the background of some Brechtian libretto.

The font in the book is readable and  Hesse's style certainly doesn't stop you from reading, and I will finish the book. I do like chapters or breaks where you can leave the book at a defined point and also have a point to aim for . Because I don't think that there are any breaks until the end. I thought that "Tarantula" by Bob Dylan was the same , but it's not and it's only just over a hundred pages, and that might be a next re read after "Steppenwolf". I am sure I have read other single passage books, but now I can't think of which ones.

So while I wouldn't recommend "Steppenwolf" I would not discourage you from reading it, though it does feel like walking down a long straight road through unchanging architecture or countryside. There are few signs that you are progressing apart from the knowledge that you have read and the page numbers. Imagine a big single passage book with no page numbers, I think I would find that a major challenge.

So music wise I was listening to my David Bowie "Platinum Collection" and one of the songs was "Alabama Song" from Brecht's "Threepenny Opera", I was going to share Bowie's version (it was also covered by The Doors) but I found a performance by Lotte Lenya which I think would be most in keeping with "Steppenwolf".

Steppenwolf

On the back cover this is described as "the hip bible of 60's counter culture". I remember seeing people with bookcases at home thinking "they've never read any of those books" and to some extent that is true of me. I bought several  sets of classic books , in their own boxes and yesterday decided to extract some , and in two of them the books were actually stuck together, only slightly but nonetheless , theses were books I have bought and never read.

I finally decided to read at least one of these, and the one I chose is "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse , the English translation from the original German because like most entitled English people I am effectively monolinguistic. The book is potentially very dark although the author does describe it as hopeful in the preface.

When I started it , I thought it was going to all be the preface after the foreword, because there is not chapter listing , but then I found a break at page 50 and hit another at page 30.

Although the book's preface seems very boring , a lodger staying in a guy's aunt's guesthose the style of writing has me captivated, just wondering how this is going to pan out. As yet it is not the most dynamic or uplifting tome, but I am enjoying , though possibly not the best choice after finishing the excellent but worrying "Fake Law" by The Secret Barrister,

No doubt I will keep you updated as I progress through "Steppenwolf" and my musical accompaniment was going to be something by the band Steppenwolf (I wonder where they got the name from) but then remembered a Hawkwind song from the "Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music" album called "Steppenwolf" though it refers more to a werewolf rather than the nan in the book , our Mr Haller.

.... a Magic Carpet

I finished "Follow The Music" who's final chapter was very contrivedly 33⅓ and was wondering what to read next. I sort of wanted fiction, but something I know I'd be happy with so I have gone back to the first Clive Barker book I read, "Weaveworld", it's in a large format BCA edition with "Cabal" (which found it's way into film as "Nightbreed" , an interesting twist where the real monsters are the humans and the "monsters" are ghettoised and persecuted and features David Cronenberg acting as the major villain).

"Weaveworld" was Barker's second novel after "The Damnation Game" although he had produced "The Books of Blood" short story collection. I am currently reading "Imajica" on Kindle  (my favourite book ever) but I now know why I was hooked by "Weaveworld" , sixty pages in wit just a glimpse of the magic carpet referred to in the title and part of this is telling me "when you have read this you know you have to read the other books" so it looks like I am unlikely to be reading any more new books for a while.

I was trying to think of a song to go with this and while I could have chosen "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf (great name from the Herman Hesse novel), "The Magic Suitcase" by Carbon/Silicon has been playing in my bed, while the subject matter is a little dodgy (the suitcase contains a bomb, I think) it's a superb song and the second best song on their brilliant debut album.

It's grey Tuesday and time for me to leave the house, but if you need some new book places to visit "Weaveworld" is a brilliant place to go.