1 Hesse puns on the word 'Trottel' ('fool') by coining the word 'Foxtrottel' here, which is impossible to render in translation.
2 Though not named, the film, to judge from Hesse's description, must be Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 silent epic, The Ten Commandments.
3 The novel's cult status also owed a great deal to the drug scene of the time, especially after Timothy Leary recommended it as 'the master-guide to the psychedelic experience and its applications'.