The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) Paperback – September 21, 2013

"The Glass Bead Game" reveals a distant galaxy within the Cosmos, a realm of thought adrift in the universe.Author Herman Hesse stirred this ancient mind when searching life's meaning as a newly arrived member, just entering onto the world stage, literally.Freedom of thought is a constant star sought for by the populations of the world, great and small, noted and insignificant. "The Glass Bead Game" challenges the reader to mount this distant plane page by page, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, thought by thought.A plateau of refuge for all who think, a respite for newcomers seeking the Everest of truth, found only in Jesus.Far down and away on the slippery slopes of reality, as a young man I stumbled upon Hesse on the Emerald Isle, where reality clashes head-on with the mortal mind, directing the temporal person to eternal vestiges unseen.Cleaving open the distant reaches of inter-communications, the author leads the way to the inner depths of connectivity intertwining the pursuits of all in journey of reason and the quest for peace.Hesse's greatest accomplishment is the discovery of mutuality from the heights of intellectual endeavor. One finds a score in music, translated into mathematics, which in turn converts onto a canvas, then pummeled into a figure of clay, finding momentary rest in marble, only to be reflected through a poem, 'und so weiter'.Perhaps the most powerful moment reveals when one perceives arriving only at the edges of one galaxy within the ever-expanding universe of undiscovered space.Even half a century on, the look back is a dot on the map. Man's frustrations announcing the ultimate truth in their unwitting anguished cries which can only be answered through Jesus Christ.And then the shock of hearing one's youngest, embedded in Bible School, requesting a copy of a book he's heard of called "The Glass Bead Game," thrusting one back through the decades to the night's in Grosvenor Square, Rathmines, hot tea and milk before a coal fire, soaking in "Siddhartha", with "The Glass Bead Game" awaiting at the side. Now these seeming eons gone by, new generations continue, also entering upon the world stage, moved to seek the capturing of thought within the cosmos of ideas.TL Farley,author,"Blast Off Rapiemur - IVth Edition" - I Thess. 4:17 - Jesus Speaks to the Rapture, the 1st Century proclamation and practice to this very hour.

The Glass Bead Game is divided into four distinct parts. Part 1, the general introduction to the game, is likely to be the least interesting to the general reader and may be skipped without concern that important information to understand the story will be lost. Part 2 is the fictional biography of Jospeph Knecht, the Magister Ludi of the title of the novel. As other reviewers have noted, the entertainment value of this biography is slight. The story starts slowly with Knecht's childhood and education and then moves to the point in the middle of the novel where he is appointed Magister Ludi (teacher of the game). I was interested in the various problems Knecht faced as Magister in the future world called Castalia. Knecht slowly moves toward enlightenment and we watch his steady progress. His journey becomes more interesting as he faces obstacles, not only with the ruling elite of Castalia, but also in himself. Everyone recognizes that Knecht is an extraordinary human being, but he challenges the status quo and has genuine concerns about the future of Castalia that not everyone wants to hear. The end of Knecht's story comes as an abrupt surprise to the reader.Joseph Knecht's poetry comprises Part 3 of the novel. The poems help us to understand the inner life and world of Knecht and are useful in that regard. The poems are worth reading even if they did not relate directly to the story.In Part 4, the final section of the book, Hesse gives us three long stories related to the novel. Many readers will find these stories the most entertaining part of the novel. In fact, another review suggests readers begin their reading of the novel with these stories - not a bad idea. The stories are well told and genuinely interesting. I read the poems along with the stories; some poems - Stages - I read several times.Summary: Many people will not get beyond the general introduction to The Glass Bead Game (Part 1); watching paint dry is how some readers have described it. Joseph Knecht's story (Part 2) will interest those readers who love the work of Hermann Hesse and want to read his final novel, his crowning achievement, as some have called it. I am in this category of readers and read with interest this final novel. The poetry and short stories which complete the novel are genuinely entertaining and similar in style to much of Hesse's other work. If the general reader starts at the end and enjoys the short stories and poetry, skips the general introduction, and then moves quickly through the early life of Joseph Knecht, reading The Glass Bead Game may be an enjoyable experience.

As we all get older and more jaded it’s not often we find ourselves truly shocked by a book. But this is one of them. I found myself uttering a few exclamatory words at the end - of a kind generally banned from public reviews!!Joseph Knecht is a supremely intelligent diligent and hard working student rising rapidly through the ranks of the elite Order. eventually achieving high rank and status as the Master of the Glass Bead Game. The ultimate intellectual achievement in the minds of many. Though it’s very name suggests a mischievous ambiguity in the intentions of the author.The Order is an independent organisation outside ordinary life and politics devoted entirely to the life of the mind. Large. Powerful. The story is Set some time in the future after a time of great crisis. No hint of modern technology. Almost monastic in its cold austerity. Empty rooms. Parchments. No women allowed. Male only. There is not much overt emphasis on the asexuality of it all. But it’s there as a factor.For Joseph the austere life of the mind is not enough. He sees its ultimate vacuity - and the inevitable fall of an Order becoming increasingly impotent and irrelevant. He yearns for more. Something simpler. More ‘real’. More vital. More significant.He plots his escape. And then ....

People will not like this review but I have to be honest. Hess was popular with the hipsters and counterculture types in the Sixties and Seventies when, as a teenager I read works like Narziss und Goldmund. Coming back to Hess and The Glass Bead Game I just about got through a little over half the book and decided that life was too short for this. If one was cynical one might say this book was a colossal leg-pull, written to impress and confuse the impressionable (not to say gullible) and to convince its audience that the over-educated ramblings of an individual with 'issues' was a work of importance. But I will just say it is not a lot of fun and leave it at that.Some would say that 'fun' is not always the point of a book and I agree, but on some level it must resonate with the reader, or the reader's interpretive community. As I look back at Hess with a gap of 50 years the goal posts have changed; we no longer look at Sgt Pepper as a psychedelic experience, destined to send us into a higher plane of existence, but just a very good album that in many ways changed the direction of popular music. We no longer think of Andy Warhol as a guru, but a kind of Sixties Banksy who saw the way the wind was blowing and weaponised it. Looking through Timothy Leary's eyes was ok until you gave up the drugs and then the scales dropped from your eyes and the love-in of Woodstock faded from memory at the stark reality of Altamont. So, what I am saying is that Hess, and more precisely The Glass Bead Game was the focus of a certain counter culture which has not stood the test of time, a fad that rode on the back of a lot of nihilistic weirdness. Granted, there are certain themes, for example the description of the age of Feuilleton that would appear prophetic and prescient except that the concept has been part of the human condition since writing was invented. So not really prophetic, then.I give it two stars, not one, because it is an interesting curiosity, but not one to be overly concerned with.

This is a shabby treatment of one of Hesse's classics. The translation is lackluster and essay-like; quotations Hesse used at chapter headings - say from originals in Latin - are often simply deleted. Moreover, this edition completely omits over a hundred pages - "The Posthumous Writings of Joseph Knecht" - which appear in Ungar edition. This edition should not be offered for sale . . .

I read and enjoyed Hermann Hesse many years ago but it was coming across a poem called MAGISTER LUDI by the English poet and philosopher Brian Taylor that led to the discover of the THE GLASS BEAD GAME. I ordered the kindle and was amazed and thrilled with the quality of writing and the way the beauty of the story of Knecht encapsulated the quest for Truth, universal wisdom and Centre understanding.Hesse's book is a precursor for understanding  CENTRE The Truth about Everything  a rare book of wisdom about locating the Centre, understanding it, using it and how to enter it.After reading the kindle I ordered the paperback (Vintage Classic) but returned the book as the last three chapters THE THREE LIVES (previous lives of Knecht) are not in this edition! These stories are a vital part of Knecht's quest and preparation for his awakening to universal wisdom. (I found a second hand paperback edition of THE GLASS BEAD GAME that was complete: Picador ISBN 0-312-27849-7).A sublime read reminding us of our human destiny to Awaken. CENTRE The Truth about Everything

Was a great book in its time, a 'bildungsroman' even, but now its cleverness is dated. Great that the author was an anti-fascist during Hitler, but its dilemmas about a (universal) christianity and a 'Glass Bead Game' (a sort of, very very loosely, source of all knowledge that is now available on our handsets as wikipedia etc) are not really enough to spare the time reading this once epoch-making novel. (Also, can you imagine a world of young men where none were, apparently, particularly randy? Current allegations over the RC church and Monasteries etc are a part, but not all, of the way it is dated)

This is the longest book that Herman Hesse wrote and possibly his most creative. The book is one of the finest examples of creativity and the writing art. Whilst lengthy one is left with the feeling that not one word is wasted, every word in the book almost had to fight for its right to be there. No pointless packing paragraphs here. The Glass Bead Game is a truly an excellent book from a brilliant writer.