Knut Hamsun (1859–1952)

It’s telling that the narrator in Hunger is unnamed, as that choice strongly symbolizes the psychic destruction this character faces throughout the book. Lacking a name, the character lacks a degree of substance, becoming something less than a full character. The lack of a name also suggests the character’s social displacement, being outside of the routines of a life in which it is important to have a name and to be known to others. The latter displacement may be self-imposed to a show more degree, but it is amplified by the narrator’s actual hunger and the actions it compels him to take.

Food also plays a dual role both, literally, as the sustenance that the narrator needs and, figuratively, as a sustenance for the soul or for the self. The lack of food (in the literal sense) causes the narrator to lose his energy, his hair, his health. The figurative loss of food causes the loss of relationships, dignity, and self-worth and that a different. As the narrator laments at a moment when he considers begging for money or food, “you’re too poor to afford a conscience” (82). This is one of those moments when it becomes clear that it costs money to be human and to keep the respect and dignity that goes with it.

The narrator comes to recognize that being poor and hungry and doing what it would take to meet basic needs requires a compromise on the sense of dignity and self-respect that he connects with himself as a writer. Getting past his immediate needs requires submission to those needs, to appear needy, wanting, and willing to open to charity. Doing so would require a sacrifice of dignity, independence, and perhaps a sense of self-worth. And he fights this apparent debasement, which only allows his actual hunger to ravage him further, devouring him, literally and figuratively.

There is a scene in Book 2 where the narrator, in the depths of his hunger and poverty takes delight in folding a piece of paper to look like a money holder. It is empty, of course, a reflection of his poverty, but his delight comes in throwing the paper / his poverty onto the ground, displacing it from him, and in tempting someone to pick it up and take it onto themselves. This is one of a few acts of retaliation about accepting poverty and hunger as a mark of his sense of self. There are also the narrators’ inexplicable acts of magnanimity, giving away money that he needs, giving away possessions, making promises to help others before helping himself, refusing charity when given. In the abstract, all of these acts of self-sabotage seem exasperating, but they also appear to be preserving of the self at the expense of the body.

There is plenty of think about here. This one will stay with me a while. show less

Norwegian Wood

It was hard to believe that this book was written in 1892. Certainly in style it’s ahead of its time. The depiction of the inner life of its characters, the stream of consciousness writing, the strange feelings we get of the troubled Camus-like anti-hero, are the most memorable features of this Norwegian novel.

Although written in the third person, Hansun drops into the mind of Nagel, the rebel without a cause who is the protagonist of this fascinating book.

The book starts show more with Nagel who| arrives unannounced at a Norwegian coastal town knowing no one, wearing a yellow suit and carrying a fur coat and a violin-less violin case. He takes a room at the local hotel and proceeds to embark upon some very unpredictable acts whose purposes are at odds with conventional society.

He takes pleasure in persuading people to act contravention to their own dispositions. He orders a new coat for the town jester, a cripple who ignorant villagers laugh at, calling him as “the midget”. He insists on buying an old worn-out chair from a poor widow for a price that exceeds her annual income. These people don’t want his money but Nagel wants them to go against their virtue of poverty to satisfy himself.

To Nigel money is no object and he throws it around hosting a “stag party” for the towns local dignitaries.

The dinner party scene was the highlight of the book. The town’s pastor, doctor, deputy and Negal sit around a table discussing world políticas. When thoroughly inebriated the move on to literature. Negal is contemptuous of Tolstoy, and Ibsen, calling them mediocre. He despises Marx, socialists and liberals, claiming the latter are makers of bureaucracies whose height of legislation is the setting up of a committee to improve the footwear of mailmen.

As the book progresses Nagel becomes manic, contradictory and irrational in his thought patterns. He confuses himself as his opposing desires clash. He proclaims his useless passion for the pastor’s blond-haired daughter and proposes to a poor gray-haired widow. When he falls down in his manic dementia the novel veers from the third person narrative to the stream of consciousness of Nagel’s mind.

Mysteries is a very intriguing book. I had to keep reminding myself that it was written in the 19th century. I had to google this writer, Knut Hamsun - I’d chanced upon the novel by accident. I needed to know more. This was when I was halfway through the book. I discovers he had, much later in life, praised Hitler. I almost stopped reading but continued to the end because I felt there must be some obscure reason. How could this be?

I ended up going with the Guardian reviewer in The Nazi novelist you should read -
“I will not defend Hamsun's politics. He betrayed both his country and more importantly humanity in general and deserves every bit of the scorn that's been heaped upon him. Hamsun's writing, however, is another matter. Whether we like the man or not, it seems to me both foolish and pointless to continue ignoring the significance of Hamsun's work - if for no other reason than it's an important part of our literary evolution and denying this can do nothing but cloud our understanding of our ourselves as readers and writers.”

I am both glad and ashamed that I finished this novel. Like the book’s main character, I’m holding two competing thoughts in my head. I can’t unread it. I thought the book was brilliant. show less

With its rambling, stream-of-consciousness style and plotless structure, Knut Hamsun's influential Hunger is a difficult book to grapple with. But when you consider the story begins with a line that describes Christiania (modern-day Oslo) as a "strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him" and ends with the protagonist leaving the city on a ship, defeated and demoralised, you can begin to identify a framework that allows you to assess the novel.

An aspiring writer, show more poverty-stricken, hungers after bread to fill his belly, a few coins to put a roof over his head for a night, and for inspiration to feed the pieces he writes, which he hopes will allow him to pursue a financially-secure life as a writer. Undergoing an increasingly severe asceticism and anti-social madness in order to preserve his creative and moral purity, our protagonist manages to scrabble together enough coins and consecutive lines of prose to feel like he is heading in the right direction. A series of events in which he sees people behave crudely – including a lead-on and then rejection from a desirable woman (who, in an inadvertent act of cruelty, then deigns to give him charity in a way he cannot refuse) – cause him to lose whatever shred of fibre remained that was keeping him together, and he takes a crappy job aboard a ship leaving the city. The strange city has left its mark on him.

It is a powerful concept and it works well enough, even if you really have to think and scrutinize before the novel's lights become apparent. The relentless sequence of mundane conversations and day-to-day activities began to wear on me, and I yearned for a bit of plot, or even some abstract insight or philosophising to frame some of the novel's themes and intentions. The book burrows deep, but rather than a clear-sighted lance that strikes deep with purpose, it is like a blind worm that has dug itself in circles and is only wallowing in the depths because it does not know the way back to the surface. Tragic and fascinating, but quite a bit of hard work. show less

Hunger by Norwegian author Knut Hamsun is a novel originally published in 1890. It is a story driven by the author’s interior commentary, at times angry, at times frustrated, full of despair, exasperation and, of course, hunger. We follow the author as he wanders around the city, living in extreme poverty. At times homeless, we remain firmly planted in the author’s head and learn what happens to the mind when living on the edge, fighting for survival.

He writes of the merciless gnawing in show more his chest which to me, meant that he knows what it is really like to starve which made for an uncomfortable read. I was disappointed when he would turn down food or money through his pride, and heartbroken, after going without for awhile, he gets a proper meal but can’t keep it down. This living on the edge of survival seemed to awaken dark forces and strange thoughts which was disturbing. The main character is in constant conflict with himself as his thoughts bounce from the rational to the irrational.

Basically a work of psychological self-study written in a stream-of-consciousness style in sharp and colorful prose. Hunger was a strong and creative read. show less