Yes I came here to post this one as well, together with Narziss and Goldmund and Steppenwolf - I read all of them in a pretty short period. There is a sort of common theme where Hesse explores the trade-offs between a life of thinking vs a life of feeling (most obviously in Narziss and Goldmund) which at that time meant a lot to me. I can't think of another author whose work resonated in the same way, though I'm not sure I would have the same experience rereading the books now.
Same here. I was surprised, because Siddhartha was very easy reading, but I couldn't get past 60% of The Glass Bead Game either, because it was so dry.
I wonder if this is a pre-Internet generation / post-Internet generation assessment of story pace. Because I, born in '64, do not find the prose dry or slow at all. Other readers I've discussed the novel, I've noticed people born after the "jump cut edit" revolution that refaced entertainment media (basically MTV) have a harder time getting into the flow of earlier entertainment.
I'm a sucker for slow burns in cinematography and books, but you can't just have no pace or structure and then say "yeah, these kids have no patience".
My completely uneducated opinion of the glass bead game was that Hesse was describing what could be a very interesting concept in a very poor manner, always high-level, and abstract enough that at times I thought he didn't flesh it out in his mind either and couldn't convey it properly.
