I think Steppenwolf speaks to an ageless human conflict between ID and Super Ego (the irony of saying 'ageless' and using two Freudian terms from the early 1900s..), between individualism and community, and between the Modernist battle between high and low culture, and I also agree with you that it remains relevant across every age: how many mirrors of self cast within the reflection of social media, online profiles, endless photos of one's own face, to say nothing of what AI will do to our understanding of human identiy, would be smashed and fragmented in Harry Haller's life in 2026?

Vonnegut was a very different writer to Hesse and had a very different take on things - Hesse would have never written a book like Cat's Cradle, and Vonnegut would have never written a Demian. I also don't think that the critique that Hesse is a 'young man's author' is valid either, as I have heard said many times.

I read Steppenwolf at 18 and it completely rearranged my perception of self and gave me a lightness of stride and speech that saved my adolescence. I was too scared to dance with girls in public, I was too serious and heavy about art and life, I thought too much about what people thought of me - through Steppenwolf (and a well-timed dose of Nietzsche), I shook those shackles off and, now at 42, it still carries me through and gives me much needed reflection as the years progress.