It feels weird that I never read Michael Ende’s Momo until now since it feels like I’ve lived my life as if it had made a deep impressions on me early on. And lately it feels that way more than ever.
There is a scene when Momo returns to the town after a year and a day and the Grey Gentlemen have trapped everyone. That’s how 2026 feels to me. Suddenly everyone around me is trapped in Screenland and I can’t reach them. I needed to read this book now and I’m grateful to it even though it’s painful. It’s sublimation, it’s validation, it’s hope. It’s “Somebody out there gets it”.
So if you see me criticizing the book below, that’s me trying to shake some of the dust off a masterpiece. I think Momo is an awesome book.
Michael Ende studied Zen and this book seems like his attempt to teach his particular dharma, but for me it feels like only half the picture. This book has a strong focus on the one-step-at-a-time. Remember the movie Don’t look up? The point of that movie was to actually do look up and do see the big story so we can do something about it. That perspective is missing in Momo.
In Momo the villains use handwritten notebooks and transistor radios. The heroes sweep the streets one stroke at a time and tell stories without writing them down or ever telling them again. (Not sure how literally to take that given how Michael Ende himself was an author and actually did write down and publish his stories.)
Got two reasons why I cry away each lonely night: the first one’s named Screenland. The corporate fake Internet-in-name-only that is addictive and intoxicating. For that, Momo is the right book. Everything in it just rings ten thousand times truer than it ever did now for a smartphone-hating luddite like me. The Grey Gentlemen and their time-saving time-wasting scheme is just such a perfect metaphor. It’s too close to even be a metaphor, it just literally is the same thing.
The second one is Climate Change, and doomsday’s on my trail. And for that, this book is not a good fit. The greenhouse effect is unlike any other problem humanity has ever had to deal with, so maybe it’s not to strange that a book that’s a restorative balm for how we human beings can comfortably interact and live has counter-productive advice when it comes to a problem that requires zooming out and looking up; seeing the whole forest just not the one tree we’re tending. Yes, degrowth and Bookchin-style dialectical naturalism and municipalism is one way to build a good life without exacerbating climate change but I believe we need something beyond that in order to stop that. If the next village over has an oil pump they can still wreck the earth no matter how much we don’t contribute to the earth-wrecking in our li’l Odonian Paradise village.
It’s also not a true depiction of monastic zen. Instead, at least in Antai-ji, they sweep the floor quickly. Every day they do it, but they do it quickly. Monastery life doesn’t need GTD because they have a schedule for every hour of every day of every year. It’s ora et labora. That’s what I meant by “half the picture”.
One of my meditation teachers taught me how one model for the thousands of strands of human thoughts, emotions, impulses and sensations is to roughly divide them into three categories. This is just an oversimplified model so don’t get it twisted; the map isn’t the territory. Those three categories are primary sensation, simulated experience, and reflexive awareness. In the book, Beppo represents primary sensation, Guido represents simulated experience, and Momo represents reflexive awareness. A couple of different meditation techniques use focusing on primary sensation as a way to strengthen reflexive awareness. As in, we think of one sensation at a time (like our posture, or our brush as we sweep the street) and when we find that we’re thinking of something else we bring it back, and that “catching ourselves” is the practice and is what strengthens reflexive awareness, is the idea.
So when Ende is extolling primary sensation and one-stroke-at-a-time, that’s not necessarily him being reductionist and “not looking up”; that’s a tool for polishing the mirror. In the end, we learn Beppo alone can’t defeat the Grey Gentlemen. So I’m not at all saying that Ende was trying to push his half-the-picture as if it were the whole picture.
The actual deus ex machina ending is a major copout. Seeing the denoument after is great, hopeful, yes, we can win, planewide celebration, hip hip hooray, loved it, best part of the book, but… Just before that, the actual way Momo wins is heartbreaking because it’s not real. The first part of the book does such a great job setting up how Beppo can experience (and convey through Right Speech), Guido can dream, and Momo can listen. Zen mind beginner mind. The ultimate Ligotti refutation. But then none of that works and instead here is some magic flowers, they did the work.
But. That’s fine. What matters is that this book shows that there are people who know and understand problem and can convey it beautifully and poetically and with hope. This book is priceless.
Sometimes I do feel like we can’t win against the fash and that if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever. Other times I find a book like this and it lights a fire in my heart and the fire tells me to stay true and the name of that fire is Momo.