Steppenwolf

The idea of wireless transmission was first proposed and accomplished in the late 19th century, and regular broadcasts via wireless radio began in the early 1920s, making it a novel technology in the time in which the story takes place. Even the narrator of the Preface has only just constructed his own wireless radio. For Haller, the radio represents modern technology as a force that clouds or distorts culture. In rejecting the radio, Haller reveals both his anti-Modernism and the inherent contradictions in that anti-Modernist perspective.

Haller feels that the radio transmits good music inaccurately, describing a transmission of Handel as “slime,” but he also feels that the radio is predominantly used for jazz music, which he considers antithetical to “real” art. These perspectives align with Haller’s anti-Modernist sentiments, as he resents the popularity of modern technology and the way it appears to move society farther from the idyllic past which Haller idealizes in the novel. Like the picture of Goethe, Haller feels there is a hubris in transmitting classical music via radio, and he does not think it presents an accurate construction of the music he values so highly. This criticism is an antidemocratic tendency that is always present just under the surface of Haller’s anti-Modernism.