Stranger on Earth

Dear Herr Hesse, I know you’ve been dead since 1962, a good ten years before I was born, and my writing to you may come across as a mad gesture the likes of which only the overly obsessed are capable of. I can assure you I’m not mad, even though everyone around me is. I’ve just finished reading your 1919 novel Demian , which you wrote when you’re on the brink of madness (Was the war that bad? Why did all those young men have to die?), and which made you what my generation calls an “overnight sensation” among the disillusioned young. Before I started reading the book, I’d wondered why it’d had such an effect on the young men of the 1910s (and also those of the following decades). It’s just a book, I thought. Aren’t we exaggerating? But I should’ve known. Your Siddhartha has after all been my personal guide since I first read it in 2004, so why should this one be made of lesser stuff? The actor/scholar James Franco, a young(ish) man of my generation, wrote a new introduc...

Is there a need for another analytical essay on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s enduring The Great Gatsby (1925)? One would be inclined to say no. There is, however, a need for a reminder of the novel’s transcendental nature: its ability to cut through generations and zeitgeists to reach the 21 st -century reader. Ernest Hemingway had the privilege of reading The Great Gatsby first-hand in Paris, and was so awed by its artistry that he considered it Fitzgerald’s best work. Generations of readers after Hemingway would come to share his view. What makes the work so fascinating that it is still being read today by high-school students and literary enthusiasts around the globe, despite its opaque language and style? The attraction of The Great Gatsby lies largely in its unabashed presentation of romanticism – the blood that runs through the veins of our imagination. The towering titular character is a man of unconditional dedication. Having lost his love to a wealthy rival, Jay ...