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From: hanss@microsoft.UUCP (Hans Spiller)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Hesse
Message-ID: <8648@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Aug-83 04:57:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: microsof.8648
Posted: Wed Aug 24 04:57:41 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Aug-83 03:31:36 EDT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Lines: 20

I have read most of Hesse's work--'The Glass Bead Game' is unquestionably
his best.  Obviously my opinion, but the people that give Nobel prizes
in literature agree.  Hesse said it was the synthesis of everything he
tried to say in all his other books.  It certainly says a lot about a
lot of things.  It is also published as 'Magister Ludi', but I can't
imagine anybody that understands the point of the book and catches the
double entendre that the 'The Glass Bead Game' is, calling it anything
else.  The book is filled with such things, and impressively a lot of
them work (like the title) even after translation.  Anybody else catch
'Sinicism' (sp), referring to the study of China by jaded scholars?

The glass bead game, if you were wondering, is about academia.  So is
much of the rest of the book.

I am a slow reader, and it is fairly big (~~500 pages) and demands more
attention than some of his lighter stuff.  Nevertheless, I read it in a
single sitting, if you don't count catnaps.

				-Hans Spiller
				{decvax,uw-beaver}!microsoft!hanss