Hermann Hesse: An Imaginary Interview

"I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back."

A lot of people don’t realize that C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy all died on the same day. I was in sixth grade and likely hadn’t heard of Lewis or Huxley yet. Years later, however, I discovered and read a book by Peter Kreeft titled Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley. It was essentially an imaginary conversation between the three after they died on November 22, 1963. I felt that the approach was a truly creative way to show who these men were and what they were about.

This little volume (115 pages) became a seed, and in 2011—after a little watering and nourishment—it resulted in my imaginary interviews. The first three subjects were an artist and two writers: the artist Paul Klee, the French author Honore Balzac, and John S. Hall, the blind poet of Ritchie County. More recently I’ve begun using this approach as a way to highlight other persons of note whom I’ve found intriguing or influential.

Early in my college career I discovered two writers who made a special impact on me: Hermann Hesse and Kurt Vonnegut. My first Vonnegut read was Cat's Cradle. My first Hesse was the novel Demian. In each case I read everything I could find by each.

With regards to Hesse, I used to ponder how a German writer of the 1920s and 30s could speak so directly to American youth in the early 1970s. To answer this question I decided to examine his life by means of an imaginary interview.

Circa 2004 I was given the opportunity to interview Mr. Vonnegut for an article I was writing. Wednesday evening I was unable to sleep till I had captured a rough draft of my interview with Herr Hesse which I published yesterday here: Hermann Hesse's Restoration--Out of Crisis Comes Art.

I’m currently planning to continue. We’ll see what comes of it.