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Benjamin
https://www.goodreads.com/neohell
But my story is more important to me than any author’s is to him, because it’s my own; it’s the story of a human being—not an invented, potential, ideal, or otherwise nonexistent person, but a real, unique, living one.
Contrast with FD's Underground Man intro.
"The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course, imaginary."
FD states in his introduction that he is not the UM but that such man must exist. He attempts to delve and understand the POV of a person who is anathema to him through a stark realism, while Hesse claims the story is his own, then by the end Sinclair has retreated to a walled garden to obsess lustfully after the mother of his friend, while taking no real action to obtain what he desires. The UM at least takes action in attempting to redress the slights that he feels have been done to him, however ineffectual that may be.
Also consider DFW's 'Good Old Neon' where Wallace admits from the outset that his narrator is a life long fraud, but at least strives to escape from that state, however impossible it may be to actually do so. Sinclair evidences no desire to shed his self obsession until the very end, where he fantasizes that Demian has become a part of him.
The irony here is striking. Hesse is inventing a story of unrealized potential, imagining an ideal avatar (a la Tyler Durden) in Demian who, when everything shakes out, may be entirely imaginary.
“Let's say it once and for all: Poe and Lovecraft - not to mention a Bruno Schulz or a Franz Kafka - were what the world at large would consider extremely disturbed individuals. And most people who are that disturbed are not able to create works of fiction. These and other names I could mention are people who are just on the cusp of total psychological derangement. Sometimes they cross over and fall into the province of 'outsider artists.' That's where the future development of horror fiction lies - in the next person who is almost too emotionally and psychologically damaged to live in the world but not too damaged to produce fiction.”
―
―
“Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long —
Even wondered at, because he dropped no sooner.
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years,
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more;
Till like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still.”
― Oedipus: A Tragedy
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long —
Even wondered at, because he dropped no sooner.
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years,
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more;
Till like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still.”
― Oedipus: A Tragedy
“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”
― The Silver Stallion
― The Silver Stallion
“Look at walls splashed with a number of stains, or stones of various mixed colours. If you have to invent some scene, you can see there resemblances to a number of landscapes, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys and hills, in various ways. Also you can see various battles, and lively postures of strange figures, expressions on faces, costumes and an infinite number of things, which you can reduce to good integrated form. This happens on such walls and varicoloured stones, (which act) like the sound of bells, in whose peeling you can find every name and word that you can imagine.
Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. The mind of the painter is
stimulated to new discoveries, the composition of battles of animals and men, various compositions of landscapes and monstrous things, such as devils and similar things, which may bring you honor, because by indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions.”
―
Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. The mind of the painter is
stimulated to new discoveries, the composition of battles of animals and men, various compositions of landscapes and monstrous things, such as devils and similar things, which may bring you honor, because by indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions.”
―
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― The Golden Notebook
― The Golden Notebook
Benjamin’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Benjamin’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,023 books
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53 friends
691 books
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282 friends
157 books
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1,989 friends
17 books
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2 friends
197 books
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99 friends
167 books
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85 friends
228 books
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234 friends
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125 friends
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