You nailed it …GB – It’s a mess …This is part of the problem of having a great idea and not knowing how to present it narratively … that you’ve try in so many ways over so many years that you end up with all these ideas and other forms of writing that you just throw it all into the kitchen sink… or end up cobbling the entire Infrastructure together with safety pins and glue to support your treasured trove of an idea, which Hesse’s definitely has!— the glasbead game , which is a metaphor – I think- for thinking in relational terms or polar thinking… Polanyi, Frye, Sewell… Barfield – call it polarity, Giordano Bruno2) … The point is bringing unity out of opposites by showing relationships that resonating, I.e: The beautiful ideas in poetry … Maybe he finally just accepted the mess … I guess he thought it would be better to present a mess and than lose saying anything at all about such a great idea … that really no one Has presented fictionally ever that I know of… But He spends vast amounts of time as you point out trying to justify the presentation of the idea By juggling around with the narrative voice … in the meantime, destroying the unity, which is part of the idea of relational … polar thinking …to bring about a unity From opposites… And in the end, the messy effect is the opposite, which is ironic and sad… The Nobel Prize committee didn’t think so! Ha! the laugh is on the reader.