Although Hesse’s fiction generally depicts skepticism toward modernization’s seeming corruption of the arts, like Popova, we might be wise to heed the alternative perspective presented in “The Magic of the Book.” Hesse’s contention that mass production has, in fact, facilitated deeper connections between the nations of the world offers an optimism that might help remedy today’s increasing anxieties over the state of literary studies. In 1987, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida bleakly forecasted the death of literature as computer technology continued to reshape the fabric of society.
1“An epoch of so-called literature, if not all of it, cannot survive a certain technological regime of telecommunications (in this respect the political regime is secondary).” Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 204. And thirty-five years later, as universities ubiquitously diminish and, in many instances, eliminate compulsory literature requirements for general education, Derrida’s prediction seems far from speculative. The influential literary critic J. Hillis Miller even proclaimed in 2016 that the growing popularity of world literature as an academic discipline is a “last-ditch effort to rescue the study of literature.”
2J. Hillis Miller and Ranjan Ghosh, Thinking Literature Across Continents (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 139.Miller’s argument, though, comes with a critical oversight. In the same vein that world literature scholars continue to debate the very definition of world literature and negotiate how to address the problematics of our
scholarly endeavors with it, Miller limits the scope of world literature’s impact to the realm of academia alone. But, as this essay has shown, literary engagement is not limited to the passionate scholar, nor is the non-scholarly reader’s enrichment rendered
only by a teacher’s guidance through a mandatory reading list. The reader who has chosen a book out of their own interest is the reader whose response we should look to in order to measure an author’s impact in the world literature market.
3Karolina Watroba has recently argued similarly, questioning the means by which “global” literature—now often equated with “pop” literature—is judged solely by academic monitors. Such judgments, she claims, are primarily determined in western academic circles, where the “local” perspectives of non-western texts are disregarded because the stick of measurement for quality is an academic’s western-conditioned aesthetic preferences and thematic concerns. Texts once deemed “lowbrow” because they do not adhere to a dominant culture’s aesthetics might now be appreciated for the very locality they reflect. Watroba thus suggests that turning our attention to the average reader’s assessment rather than the academic’s is a necessary shift in our measurement of literary value. See: Karolina Watroba, “World Literature and Literary Value: Is ‘Global’ the New ‘Lowbrow’?,” Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 5, no. 1 (2017): 53–68.And what better place than the internet to gauge the impact of an author in the Digital Age? This superhighway of information exchange has allowed literary engagement to reach beyond borders even more so than the mass production of printed books that Hesse so warmly welcomes in “The Magic of the Book.” Of all the debates over how to define world literature, Hesse’s definition seems the most relevant of any today because it recognizes the crucial role a reader plays in determining the value of literature. Adam Kirsch is perhaps correct in his assertion that Hesse is “unfashionable” among academics. The “Hesse Boom” of the sixties and seventies might be long gone, but this conclusion is once again measured by a very tenuous instrument: by counting the output of academic publications. This essay has illustrated, however, that Hesse certainly is not unfashionable amongst the reading public. I have shown that readers far and wide take interest in his works, accessing numerous sites committed to his life and works and gathering in digital communities to share their enthusiasm for him.
Hesse continues to inspire readers and engender lively discussions that range from the intellectual to the spiritual and philosophical. By surveying and assessing internet engagement with Hesse and his works, we have seen an evolution of his readers’ responses and can thus discern his lasting impact. As Hesse once wrote, everyone “should undertake a free and personal selection of masterpieces, to which we devote ourselves completely in moments of leisure.”
4Hesse, “Library of World Literature,” 420. Examining internet engagement with literature makes it clear that readers continue to compile their own libraries of world literature and that Hesse is without doubt a part of these personal selections. That these readers
choose him for “leisure” reading indicates that his literature has found a place on the world stage that has cultural import outside the exclusionary discussion room of academia. As we have seen, Hesse sits on many a bookshelf within arm’s reach; or, in this Digital Age, he is stored in the library of one’s e-reader, only a click away.