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Title: Disappointing
Review: This is a famous book purportedly dealing with the conflict between science and art. Narcissus is an austere monk striving for purity in thought and logic, while Goldmund is the artist reveling in the sensual pleasures of the world. I felt very cheated in reading this book. The book is filled with too many gratuitous descriptions of sex and the conflict of science and art is dealt too pedantically with oft-repeated, clichéd ideas. I found two novel insights in this book. One was that joy and pain can be depicted by the same lines and forms in art. The other was a description of Goldmund's feelings in a fish market and he is moved by the callousness of humanity in the face of these dying fish. It is not a new thought, but writers rarely touch this topic of the accepted human cruelty to animals that is carried on under the guise of survival.
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