The Glass Bead Game question

Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume and Another Roadside Attraction

Henry Miller....everything but especially Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Hermann Hesse, Demian

i find the bulk of Hesse's work, i cannot read as an adult - other than the Steppenwolf & Narcissus and Goldmund. he appealed to the conflicts i was encountering when i was a teenager. Hesse was that first author i discovered that made me see how foolish and adolescent the beatniks were. and we all wasted our time with Kerouac.

Referencing Hesse, the only book of his that works as a teenager and not an adult is Demian.

Some novels and poetry endure thousands of births and lives and deaths

The same stream twice is Heraclitus...though it could be from China too.
Here's the link http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11752...

I read Glass Bead Game as and adult and don't think I would have understood it as a kid, despite being above average in reading level.

Catcher in the Rye I didn't even like that much when I read it as a teen, I'd probably like it less now. Same with Ayn Rand's Anthem, which I was not thrilled with then.

For me, the early books in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series are a little immature for me in some ways now - I don't care about a character debating fashion choices. But the fantasy aspects and writing style are still excellent. Granted, this is YA anyway.

In terms of non-YA - I haven't reread them but I think I'd like Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles less now than I did as a teen. I've gotten more picky about writing styles over the years, that's part of the reason.

I find this problem more with hack and slash fantasy. Granted there is only one Robert E. Howard.

So interesting. Glass Bead Game is on my re-read list, and I've just ordered it, but wonder how I'll see it 40 years later. I remember the interplay of all disciplines made into a symphony. I worry about the splintering of all of us into factions, and hope to see this as a uniting, fortifying book. Ayn Rand appealed to me when young. Now? Hmm. She's been co-opted by so many groups, it's hard to say. I have not reread, say, "Stranger in a Strange Land," knowing I would find it facile. Have attempted reread of "Nausea" and found it a giant, ego-driven "selfie." Just read in an intro to The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories that Hans Christian Anderson is one of the great short story writers, remember being enthralled by him, feeling even as a child that I was catching only glimpses of things I wasn't ready for. Now I wonder if I need to reread him not only to study his short story forms, but the levels at which it can be read. What accessible to a child, what's there for me in my 60's? My instince is that I will find stories which attempt to explain pain and longing, which have been relegated to the world of children's literature, but which speak to adults, as well. Updike's "Couples" did not hold up for me, but his short stories from the same period have. Interesting question.