horsemouth (by way of comparison with the steppenwolf)

TREATISE ON THE HORSEMOUTH

there once was a man, paul, called horsemouth. he went on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being. nevertheless he was really a donkey from a beachside donkey rides operation. he had learned a great deal of everything that people, with a fair mind, can, and he was a rather clever fellow. what he had not learned, however, was this; to feel content in himself and his own life. the cause of this apparently was that at the bottom of his heart he knew all the time (or thought that he knew) that he was not a man, but a donkey from beachside donkey rides, a mule in fact. clever men might argue the point whether he truly was a donkey, whether he had been changed, before birth perhaps, from a donkey into a human being, or had been given the soul of donkey though born as a human being.; or whether, on the other hand this belief that he was a donkey was no more than fancy or a disease of his...

horsemouth is rereading steppenwolf  (it goes down very easy). he has a penguin copy (with the paul klee cover) in the stacks but what motivated him to read it was finding a copy in a local book box with a yellow cover featuring stills from a film version with max von sydow. 

of course then, by the miracle of the internet and the generosity of the people, he could soon find the film itself online.

steppenwolf is a book of the type 'the humanisation of the misanthrope' and of the type 'found book' - the book being the treatise on the steppenwolf found by the landlady's son among the steppenwolf's papers (in the book). (this character is mainly supressed in the movie). in the film it is the tractate on the steppenwolf. 

instead we stay with max as harry harrer/ the steppenwolf. (ok there's some fun/ dumb animation in a terry gilliam/ jan svankmeyer way of him and the wolf (by jaroslav bradac) , mati klarwein paints the magic theatre, charlie mariano does the music). they wander round basel (which looks beautiful). there's some cute and cuddly drug use. all such films labour under the sign of cabaret. 

horsemouth, by way of comparison with the steppenwolf, is reasonably happy and cheerful. his life is a comfortable round of reading walking and farting about on the internet (the riches of which compensate for his material poverty). the fires of his being are dampening down. he is less irritable than he used to be. the world is full of bad evil things (war, pestilence, famine and death to name but four) but his life has entered a quiet peaceful mode. 

but really it isn't material poverty. he has more clothes than he can wear, accumulated over the years from charity shops, more books than he can read, accumulated over the years from library sales and second-hand  bookshops (and now book boxes). until recently it was possible to heat his room and eat decently for not very much money (this is now in the process of being changed (such is the wisdom of our rulers)).

but hermann hesse isn't thomas mann. 

'this book, written when I was fifty years old, and dealing, as it does, with the problems of that age, often fell into the hands of very young readers.' says hesse in his author's note from 1961

horsemouth read it when he was young maybe he will find more of what he needs in it now he is older. 

hesse sings a good song, he sings a song of the deep and the cosmic but it's mann who can go deep and take you there. in many ways steppenwolf is horsemouth's favourite book by hesse because it is less cosmic and more psychological than his usual offering. he was probably influenced by the schlock horror element of the werewolf theme (that and bob calvert's excellent rendering of it all in the hawkwind song - that was probably his point of entry). 

the book itself bears marks of previous inhabitation. the cover is pretty battered. there's an accidental printing onto page fifty of a trees/ lotus flower design (on the page facing the treatise on the steppenwolf), a barcelona area network card used as a bookmark, a green post it note with the phone number of a casting director on page 128, various passages are marked in the margins with blue biro, pages 127-8 are marked with pencil (a quibble over the translation). 

before making a start on steppenwolf (the movie) horsemouth watched Q-the winged serpent a new york (and chrysler building) set creature feature and he made progress reading steppenwolf.  

today it's a bright beautiful morning. horsemouth needs to go and vote. (oh how his younger anarchist self would sap and snarl at such a suggestion!). 

'it seems worth asking why someone might spend eight years creating an online world in novelistic detail, and why they might begin to live in it.' remarks a recent article on catfishing (online impersonation). 

a mere eight years? horsemouth has been at it much longer than that.