I'm currently reading Demian and came across the following paragraph:
Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him -- for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure.
I'm finding it a little difficult to full understand what Hesse means. It seems like he's trying to say that novelists have a total comprehension of the story, but he does not. And then he says "I am as little able to do this as the novelist is," suggesting that novelists also have little comprehension of the story (much like Hesse)?
What does he actually mean?