One of the most important reasons for [America's] overlooking Hesse … was inherent within his own form of writing. He once said, "I know that I am not a story teller," and it is evident from his writings, especially those of his later period, that narration was often sacrificed to didacticism. He believed that "the true profession of man is to find his way to himself;" and the search for this way became a metaphysical search, associated with and intensified by Oriental philosophy. The wisdom of the East was to broaden and strengthen the potentialities for self-realization within the human products of a declining western civilization. If this was the way to self-discovery, it was not the way to popularity, at least not until recently. (p. 75)

[His recent American vogue] is based upon Hesse as the author of mind-expanding works, works in which the emphasis has shifted from the...