Episode 109: Infinite Play: On 'The Glass Bead Game,' by Hermann Hesse

JF and Phil have been talking about doing a show on The Glass Bead Game since Weird Studies' earliest beginnings. It is a science-fiction novel that alights on some of the key ideas that run through the podcast: the dichotomy of work and play, the limits and affordances of institutional life, the obscure boundary where certainty gives way to mystery... Throughout his literary career, Hesse wrote about people trying to square their inner and outer selves, their life in the spirit and their life in the world. The Glass Bead Game brings this central concern to a properly ambiguous and heartbreaking conclusion. But the novel is more than a brilliant work of philosophical or psychological literature. It is also an act of prophecy -- one that seems intended for us now. Header image by Liz West, via Wikimedia Commons. REFERENCES Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game Paul Hindemith, German composer Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture Alfred Korzybski, concept of Time Binding Christopher Nolan, Memento William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism Jeremy Johnson, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness Teilhard de Chardin, French theologian Mathesis Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze Weird Studies, Episode 22 with Joshua Ramey Joseph Needham, British historian of Chinese culture James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games