Fine as a fable. I keep meeting people for whom it counts as having thought about something.

I keep meeting people for whom this book counts as having thought about something, and I've decided that isn't the book's fault, though it is the book's problem.

What's good: it's clear, it's calm, the river material at the end is genuinely lovely, and Hesse has the sense not to pretend the son subplot resolves. What isn't: the rest is a fable in which a man tries a thing, finds it wanting and moves on — in a rhythm you could set a metronome to. Merchant phase. Pleasure phase. Despair phase. Ferry.

Translation matters here more than usual. The old Rosner I found syrupy; a subscriber posted me a newer one and it's plainer and sharper, less incense in the air. If you bounced off this at nineteen, was it the German or was it the English?

What irritates me is the packaging. Jacket copy promising a spiritual journey, a lotus on the cover, a shelf position next to books that will teach you how to breathe. It's a slim European novel from 1922 about a restless man. That's fine! It doesn't need the incense and it certainly doesn't need the endorsement quotes.

Five. Femi rates it an eight and we have agreed, formally, to stop discussing it.