Learn to laugh. That seems to be the lesson Jerry
Brown wanted to impart when recently he answered an interviewer’s question:
What book should people read?
In January 2019, Brown relinquished his role as
governor of California, having served four four-year terms with a 28-year gap
in the middle. His life story inspires reflection in thoughtful people: his
father was also governor; he entered a seminary to become a priest, dated Linda
Ronstadt, worked with Mother Teresa in India and was elected mayor of Oakland,
California. His endorsement was enough for me to check out “Steppenwolf” from
my local library.
Herman Hesse wrote the novel about the spiritual
journey of Harry Haller, a tormented intellectual confronting his fiftieth year
and the prospect of suicide. The title derives from the protagonist's
description of one of his personalities as "wolf of the Steppes," or
Steppenwolf, that snarls at his other bourgeoisie-loving self.
A manuscript found by the narrator, a neighbor in a
boarding house, is the device to tell the story set in an unnamed German city
where Steppenwolf reveres Mozart and Goethe, condescends to everyone else and
is socially isolated. Walking through the city on a rainy night, he sees an
“electric sign” that flashes then vanishes. It reads: “Magic Theater / Entrance
Not For Everybody.” He tries and fails to open the adjacent door then wanders
away but sees reflected on wet asphalt: “For Madmen Only!” (52)*
The scene rings a bell for me about life in the
city, where so much is concentrated in a small space that you don’t have time
to pursue everything at once. Such things brought to your awareness become a
promise for the future.
Before
gaining entry to the Magic Theater he encounters Hermine, a female
representation of the best friend of his youth, Herman, and the first guide on
his spiritual journey. She tells him: "'You have a picture of life within
you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and
sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds
and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with
heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable place where people are quite
content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And
whoever wants more and has got it in him -- the heroic and the beautiful, and
the reverence for the great poets or for the saints -- is a fool and a Don
Quixote...'"(267)
Jerry Brown, it seems to me, has that picture inside,
and I sometimes find it difficult to explain to others my desire to write and
compose. If I am such a fool, I can’t be anything but.
Hermine draws Steppenwolf out of isolation,
challenging and teaching him to dance, setting him up with a beautiful woman to
love and introducing him to the jazz and club scene. The lesson demonstrates
that his disdainful intellectual’s guise is self-imposed, echoed later in the
Magic Theater where he gazes at his reflection in a mirror, which shatters into
shards that transform into chess pieces, the “many selves” comprising the
“unity of (his) personality.”
A chess player sitting “in Eastern fashion on the
floor” places some of the pieces on the chessboard and says, “’…man consists of
a multitude of souls, of numerous selves…that he can rearrange…in what order he
pleases, and so attain to an endless multiplicity of moves in the game of life.
(341-344) The chess player plays a series of games in which the pieces,
representing Steppenwolf in youth, in old age, singly and as part of groups,
interact.
Our society, however, considers as crazy those
displaying multiple selves and lauds those with a singular focus. A contender
for a job might be encouraged to say, “My whole life I wanted to be a hedge
fund manager (or banker or accountant).” That’s ridiculous and I pity anyone
really thinking that. Perhaps I’m shortsighted, waiting on the next day to
reveal what life has in store, which requires that I roll with punches, admit
mistakes and turn around at dead-ends.
Pablo, another guide, holds a mirror before
Steppenwolf and says, “You will now erase this superfluous reflection, my dear
friend. That is all that is necessary. To do so, it will suffice that you greet
it, if your mood permits, with a hearty laugh. You are here in a school of
humor. You are to learn to laugh. Now, true humor begins when a man ceases to
take himself seriously.” (317)
I had to learn not to take myself seriously. When I
left the Marines, I moved to San Francisco to continue my education.
Subconsciously, I thought gorging on knowledge was enough and was satisfied to
be isolated from people “content with eating and drinking…” Life, though, is
too large and complex to comprehend without interaction with others who help
reveal your mistakes. That’s comedic enough; add the mistakes of others and
soon you’re Uncle Albert bouncing off the ceiling!
In his first eight years, Jerry Brown attracted
significant opposition, which might have been a reflection of his youthful
white-hot intensity. In the second eight, he seemed better able to absorb
criticism and even head it off by moderation. “Paddle a little to the left and
a little to the right,” is one of his sayings about navigating politics. That’s
funny and true. Jerry learned to laugh.
By the end of the novel, Steppenwolf still has more
to learn. Pablo tells him: “[Y]ou have disappointed me a little. You forgot
yourself badly. You broke through the humor of my little theater and tried to
make a mess of it, stabbing with knives and splattering our pretty picture-world
with the mud of reality…” In the last lines of his manuscript, Steppenwolf
writes: “One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn
how to laugh…” (388-89) Steppenwolf vanishes from the boardinghouse and the
reader is left to ponder whether he lives or commits suicide.
Life in the city is about awareness and exploration
of the new and strange. This curiosity goes hand in hand with relinquishing
control to a collective experience. The difference is like that between riding
a bus and driving your own car. Laugh –quietly-- at the guy ranting in the back
while on your way to the waterfront to see tall ships pass through the Golden
Gate.
On encountering the unknown, don’t resort to guns
and knives. Instead, laugh and inquire. Learn to understand why something’s
been unknown (to you) so long and consider where you have been. Steppenwolf, I
believe, has turned to the next page of his life and I second the
recommendation to turn the pages of this curious novel.
___
* Excerpts from Steppenwolf (First Picador Modern Classics Edition:
November 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) The novel was originally published in
1927 and translated from the German in 1929.
