Beneath the Wheel

Beneath the Wheel, Hermann Hesse, Bantam Books, 1968

Hans Giebenrath is a very gifted young boy and the pride of his small German town. For many months, he spends hours a day after school cramming for a state-wide academic competition to win a place at Maulbronn Academy, one of the few higher education opportunities available (something like contemporary Japanese college entrance exams). 

Hans wins the competition, and at Maulbronn, he meets up with a poetic soul named Heilner who doesn't take all the work, work, work so seriously. They become friends, and Hans begins to see that studying Latin and Greek and math are not all there is to life. Hans's grades and his whole mental and emotional condition don't just sink, they plummet. He barely survives the school year, and doesn't return for a second year. 

He becomes apprentice to a local metalsmith (it's either that, or become a clerk somewhere in the state bureaucracy). Hans quickly learns what his life has become; work in a hot, sweaty, repetitive job for six days a week, and get extremely drunk with some co-workers on the seventh day. The book comes to a a sad and abrupt ending.

Said to be a spiritual autobiography, this book is recommended not just because it's an interesting and well-written story, but because it makes some good points about how the educational system feels that ambition and intellect are more important than things like soul and emotion.