Started reading the original Norwegian edition today. I'm fluent in Swedish but don't really know Norwegian, though I have read maybe half a dozen Norwegian books. Comparing with English, it's rather like reading something in broad Scots dialect that's been written down phonetically. Iain Banks fans will be able to relate.So far, it's pretty good, but I'm only 15 pages into it. *****************************************************I come down the main staircase of the hotel. At reception, Zenit, the lovely Indian-Swedish girl, is on duty again. I pause and talk with her. My train isn't until the afternoon. Will it be alright if I sit in the restaurant until it's time to leave? She says it's fine. I feel grateful, she is always very kind. She says that she and her boyfriend are looking for a skiing trip. Maybe they will go to Grenoble. I say I have been there, but only in the summer. It's a nice town. I don't understand why I am telling her this. She wants to know what the skiing is like. She says she won't keep me, I was on my way to get breakfast. She's clearly giving me the brush-off. It hasn't happened before.At breakfast, the waitress asks what I want. I only take the continental buffet. I think at first that all the bread has gone, but then I find some under a cloth. The toaster hardly even warms it up. As usual, the dial is turned to minimum. I don't dare change the setting, so I run the bread twice; it's still underdone. I sit down and eat it, together with a small bowl of muesli. The view from the window is beautiful, and I watch the tide flowing out in the bay. An elderly couple is walking along the beach, together with their dog. The dog is wearing a red coat. It scampers round them in the wet sand. I go back to my room and pack up my things, then come back down to reception. Zenit gives me the bill, and I hand her my Visa card. I fold up the bill and put it away. Then I notice that it is the hotel's copy. She doesn't want to embarrass me, so she keeps my copy instead without saying anything. I go back to the restaurant with my bags. I think I will take out my laptop and work until lunchtime.I have things I should be doing, but I log on to GoodReads instead. I'm spending far too much time there. No one has commented on my review of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. It wasn't really very funny. The mail I sent to the woman who recommended the Hamsun book has bounced. She has disconnected her account. I hardly knew her, but I feel disquieted by this. I am too restless to work, so I decide to post a review of Christer Kihlman's Dyre Prins. As soon as I have done so, I wonder whether it was a good idea. Maybe I shouldn't have said that I had been moved by the scene with the prostitute. People may think that I patronise prostitutes too. I tell myself that this is ridiculous, but I keep thinking about it. It seems even worse though to edit the review.I suddenly notice that it is nearly one o'clock. They are evidently not going to open the restaurant for lunch. I should have understood that. I consider going into Newquay and finding a place to eat, but it's too complicated. During the off season, nearly everything will be closed. I write a few mails and chat with some GoodReads friends. Then I go back to reception for the third time. Zenit is still there. She looks surprised, and asks if I have missed my train. I suddenly feel anxious. Maybe I got the time wrong? But no, it is not due for another three quarters of an hour. I ask if she can call a taxi. She does so. I say goodbye and go out to wait for it.The taxi driver explains why there are no RyanAir flights at the moment. The Newquay airport authorities refused to give the airline a guarantee that the repairs would be finished within three weeks, so RyanAir withdrew flights until the beginning of March. Now they are threatening to sue, since the airport was clearly at fault. I am grateful to the driver for explaining this, and give him a large tip. He doesn't understand why I have done it, but seems happy.On the train, I take out Hamsun again. I try to read, but I am unable to concentrate. The difference between Swedish and Norwegian is larger than I had remembered, and I often have to guess words. Sometimes there is a whole sentence that makes no sense. I would like to write a witty GoodReads review, but I can't come up with any ideas. I decide that I will just describe what happened to me today.*****************************************************Thank God! I've now changed trains, and this new one has food. The cheese, bacon and pickle sandwich I purchased from Café Express was a bit disgusting, but I wolfed it down, together with a mango smoothy. £4.70 well spent.Hm, Hamsun is, as everyone said, rather good, and it's pleasant to see that my Norwegian is coming back by leaps and bounds. Why was I feeling so negative earlier?*****************************************************Not really knowing Norwegian, the way I read the book is to imagine it being read aloud, then listen to it as though it were heavily accented Swedish. This is now working very well. In fact, almost too well... the virtually audible first-person account is quite painful, and I can't read more than a few pages without needing to take a pause. But I feel I'm getting the genuine Hamsun experience, at any rate.*****************************************************I am still wondering why I don't find it at all funny. Jessica T, whose opinion I respect, assures me that she finds black humor here. There are things that I see I could find amusing under slightly different circumstances, but I just don't experience them that way. Everything seems unutterably grim and painful. I was so relieved when the narrator got ten kronor for his newspaper piece!Either my Norwegian still hasn't come back enough (possible), or I am, for some reason, too close to the subject matter. There was indeed a period of two or three days when I was a student, and had somehow contrived through bad planning to run out of both food and money. It was unpleasant and somewhat Hamsunesque, but it didn't last very long, and happened more than 30 years ago. So I wouldn't have thought I'd still be scarred by this experience. Strange!*****************************************************Finally got back to this book after an extended vacation reading other stuff... now about two-thirds of the way through. OK, I agree with Jessica: it is quite funny. I think the tone has changed somewhat since the first part. Though my altered perspective may be due to the fact that my eye/ear is now pretty much attuned to the language, which it wasn't at the start. Will have to go back to the beginning when I've finished, and see if I view it differently.*****************************************************Finished. It's a pretty scary book. He spares himself, and the reader, nothing... try as I would, I couldn't detach myself from him, his humiliation and descent into madness. He is completely at the mercy of the world. Most of the time he's hungry and desperate, and that's pretty much all he's feeling. But when he gets drunk, that takes him over too, and during the episode with "Ylajali" he's equally overcome by her. I realized that, when I was about 15 and seriously into chess, I had in fact met someone rather a lot like him. He sometimes visited my chess club; he was the son of an English aristocrat, but was only interested in playing chess, and had been disinherited. He was in his late 20s, was painfully thin, and always wore exactly the same clothes, jeans and a check shirt. I thought he was kind of glamorous, because he'd played in international events (he hadn't done at all well). He said he couldn't concentrate properly in a chess club, because it was too noisy, and asked if I'd like to come back to his place. He told me he'd play without watching the board, and would kill me. I was intrigued.I turned up at the address he'd given me. He had a single room in a nasty part of town. The place was filthy and almost bare, except for an unmade bed, a table, and a chair or two. I vividly remember a half-empty bottle of milk standing in one corner; it was thick with mold, and looked as though it had been there at least a month. We played a game; he gave me the white pieces, as well as not looking at the board. I had read up a variation in the King's Indian Defense, and it became clear that he didn't know the theory at all. I won easily, but felt disappointed. I'd rather have been amazed by his erratic talent. I googled him just now, and find nothing at all after 1974, about a year or so after I played him. I fear the worst. But Knut Hamsun clearly survived, and went on to win the Nobel Prize. It's hard to see how, given that Hunger is supposed to be mostly based on true events, and it's even harder to see how he became a huge supporter of the Nazis. Life is very strange.
Last night the “fog” finally left me as effortlessly as it had arrived seven months ago. My mourning period was now officially over, although the good memories would be firmly entrenched forever in my mind, as well as the sad ones. I shed my widow’s weeds. Also the tears surprisingly enough poured for the first time in ages. I certainly do not have a weak character. I had been in the doldrums and was not progressing, nor “turning the page”. Knut showed me via “Hunger” (Norwegian: “Sult”) that one has to continue with life regardless; forget hunger, forget the dark shadows, the periods of feeling sorry for oneself, just survive, continue on regardless whatever happens, for life has given you another chance and another adventure to pursue. So grab it and forge with speed into the sunlight. I’m sure as I look down the valley to the backdrop of my beloved Pyrenean mountain range and the Pic d’Ani that they would agree wholeheartedly with me, as would my husband John.I do believe in serendipity, as well as destiny and I do believe that I was meant to read this book. I had read Steve’s and Rakhi’s reviews a while back but to me they were purely excellent reviews as so many are on Goodreads. But then suddenly another review appeared and it affected me for some singular reason. Perhaps I had to read it?Upon reading the first paragraph, I was hooked and ready for this wonderful literary journey: It was during the time I wondered about and starved in Christiania; Christiania, singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.And did that indeed prove to be the case.This book is such a mixed bag of philosophical and multi-faceted reveries, vagaries and ideas. Our unnamed narrator (why would an author want to leave a narrator without a name? I’ve never understood that) runs the gamut of every conceivable emotion: Anger, aversion, courage, dejection, desire, despair, fear, hate, hope, love, sadness. (M.B. Arnold 1996)The average individual with a good job will never know about hunger. Imagine going without food for two or three days because there’s no money to purchase even a loaf of bread and finally drinking water, which causes the individual to retch.Imagine, even when on your uppers as in the case of our author, you are so convinced of your literary aspirations that you persevere regardless, even though you have nowhere to live, as there’s no money to pay the rent; finally losing the one pencil you own and so thus being unable to write an article for “Commodore”, the narrator’s lifeline for survival.Imagine feeling desire and lust for a woman when your clothes are in rags but nevertheless wanting to pursue it through to the utter end.Imagine feeling so frustrated with yourself that you succumb to anger and hold inner conflicting arguments and discussions and even wonder if you are becoming insane.Imagine crawling back to a lodging house, even though the thought humiliates you, when the pregnant landlady has already thrown you out for not paying your rent.Imagine lying so that people will still think that you are working and finally, imagine being so convinced of your own writing ability that you continue and continue but when finally… Well that is for you the reader to find out.There are so many excellent sections in here in which to quote but if I did that I would indeed be quoting the entire book. However, I have to add the following:There is an amazing section when “Commodore”, who has accepted articles/essays from the narrator in the past, who upon seeing the latter staggering due to lack of food, gives him half-a sovereign. He’s certainly clever and that’s for sure as he knows that a good article will eventually be forthcoming from our narrator.The humility of our narrator upon this act:I was left standing on the pavement, gazing after him. I wept quietly and silently. “I never saw the like!” I said to myself. “He gave me half-a-sovereign.” I walked back and placed myself where he had stood, imitated all his movements, held the half-sovereign up to my moistened eyes, inspected it on both side, and began to swear – to swear at the top of my voice, that there was no manner of doubt that what I held in my hand was a half-sovereign. When I came across “Ylajali”, I assumed in ignorance this was the name of the woman who the narrator was facing and for whom he felt such desire:I stand and gaze into her eyes, and hit, on the spur of the moment, on a name which I have never heard before — a name with a gliding, nervous sound — Ylajali! I was fascinated by this name. It appeared to be so exotic but with a Yiddish ring to it. I researched into it and found: The name is not only a symbolic substitute for the desired woman. It is also a symbol of desire itself – considered in the Lacanian sense of a drive sustained by lack, sliding from element to element in the chain of symbolic substitutes, and which can never be fulfilled without losing its character of being desire: Y-la-ja-liAlthough “Hunger” proved to be a sensation upon publication, many individuals objected to him. Firstly Knut Hamsun was an unknown quantity and was: a true scion of the best old peasant stock. Through the impressions of his childhood and early youth he became affiliated with the volatile race of Nordland, a people as alien from the heavier inland peasant as if they lived on different continents. The fishermen who play with death for the wealth of the sea and depend for their livelihood on the caprices of nature do not easily harden into traditional moulds. Childish and improvident, witty and sentimental, often fond of the melodramatic, simple and yet shrewd, superstitious but brave beyond all praise, the native of Nordland is a type unlike every other Norwegian. Wherever he may roam, he will yearn for the wonderland of his youth…as from the nature of Nordland with its alternations of melting loveliness and stark gloom that he drew his poetic inspiration. During his second stay in America, between 1886 and 1888, he worked as a navvy and for nine months as a tramconductor in Chicago. He was known for his habit of reading Aristotle and Euripides between stops. He was very poor and weathered the deep winter of Chicago by wearing newspaper under his clothes; his colleagues liked to touch him to make him crackle..Our author was a true wanderer throughout his life and perhaps probably due to this, he learned humility and all those other good aspects that make up our lives as human beings.I really admire this author and am so delighted that I’ve read this remarkable book. For me there’s something special about Norwegian authors that manages to touch my psyche. Is it the weather that brings such incredible richness to these Norwegian works? I really don’t know. Purely one of the wonders of our life on this remarkable planet, Earth, I guess.And finally, my special thanks to Will for helping me out of the “fog”.
What do You think about Hunger (2003)?
He sure would like a meal, yes, but more so, why won’t anybody listen? What the hell is wrong with everyone? None of them are truly getting it. They don’t understand the urgency! Look at them in their warm clothes and their comfortable houses. Why do their eyes laugh at him? Is there nothing left but mockery? I wonder how he came to be in such circumstances. What led to this downward spiral? Even if I could ask him, could he even explain it? None of us can pinpoint the moment when it all started going south for us, can we? By the time we notice, it’s too late. Perhaps he was thriving once, confident, even maybe happy. But, maybe not. Maybe he was always fragile, too sensitive and just a little bit skewed. Was this madness always lurking? Those of us driven to the edge probably always had the capability of it all along, right? Or, not. Maybe things really can be wonderful and all it takes is some bad luck to start muddling the brain and before you know it everybody is slightly out of focus and faraway and days fall away quickly like little dreams and things become cold and small and there’s nothing left but darkness. Maybe we are all one bad day away from being lost. Or maybe when we become so emptied of nourishment and comfort and hope that we revert back to our simplest animalistic form, never to return. Or maybe the joke is on us. He turned up his nose at food, refused money. What was that about? Such senseless choices. Because he was already too far gone? Or did he know what he was doing all along?Maybe I better go eat something…
—Mary
Lynne wrote: "The translator is on the top with the book details Matt."oh duh. cool thanks! This one has been recommended to me by a few people and an algorithm. Looking forward to it.
—Kris
I often catch myself staring, rather lovingly in fact, at my bookshelves. Each shelf is swelling nearly to the point of overflowing with books, each authors collection seemingly positioned at random - yet, somehow, the location of each work holds some secret form of order that is beyond even me. I'll caress each spine with my eyes, occasionally running a finger down it to feel a spark of retrospection and for a moment recall the times when I held a particular book during the course of absorbing it. I can often relate any major event in my life to the particular novel I was reading at the time, and vice versa, making my bookshelf an eternal, tangled web of my past. Perhaps this is why I never got into the electronic readers. I can understand their versatility and convenience, but there is a strange power felt while just holding a nice edition of a novel in your hands, especially after time has passed and you pick it back up just to feel its weight in your palms. Plus, I greatly enjoy scavenging through used book stores for old hardcovers and often traverse several stores before reading a novel I know I'll love just to be sure I have the edition that best suits me. One day I hope to have my own personal library; in my mind it looks much like the one from Beauty and the Beast a la Disney, but less cartoonish. Maybe it is an obsession, but literature fills a special place in my heart. It should, seeing as I owe a large sum of money back for furthering my education of it.On the topic of obsession comes Hamsun's first novel, Hunger, published in 1890. As my eyes scanned each novel I had read in 2011, they stopped here and acknowledged this as my personal favorite novel I had read this past year. This book is a monumental achievement of psychological literature as it is a powerful examination of human consciousness. Hunger is a novel of a starving artist, meant in the most literal sense possible, who puts up with extreme hardship and hunger, suffering all for the pure sake of putting pen to paper. The reader is immersed in the nameless narrators consciousness, following him down the chilly streets of Christiana as he barely hangs on by a thread in pursuit of the next burst of genius to sell for small change in order to continue on. The reader is trapped in this unraveling mind, floating on his rantings and ravings that Hamsun details with eloquent precision, and watches as his moods shift and swing to and fro like a hinged door in a hellish hurricane. I read this novel in a matter of two days, it is one that simply cannot be put down. I would set it aside and feel its pull begging me to transport myself back into the narrator and suffer his trials and tribulations with him. Although I read it perched on the side of a pool, my feet in the clear water and basking in the exquisit Michigan summer sun, I could not feel at ease as Hamsun projected the mania onto me. I felt much as the narrator felt, being drawn inside of him. He writes: The dark had captured my brain and gave me not an instant of peace. What if I myself became dissolved into the dark, turned into it?The novel moves in several parts, each taking place a few weeks after the previous and pitting the narrator in his most extreme moments of desperation. It will become quickly apparent that this narrator is no fool however, and is in fact quite brilliant. This brilliant mind weaves pages of lustrous prose and cutting insight to the world, and people, around him, yet we see him loose control and throw into a fit of anger and delirium and experience the occasional aberration of reality. It proposed the dilema, has he gone mad from hunger, or is he hungry because he has gone mad? Hamsun offers evidence to either side, yet leaves it up to you to draw conclusions. Hamsun intentionally conceives him out of contradictions, much like his hero Johan Nagel of his excellent sophomore novel Mysteries, showing him as brash but tender, kind yet callous, pathetic yet brave. He often comes into money but gives it all away to someone else while overcome with manic passions and seems to care little about his own lamentable conditions as if it were all some sort of game to him. He prays and speaks to God, trusting in his design, yet doubts his existence at the same time. This attention to the psychology of a frenzied, contradictory lead role has brought many comparions of Hamsun to Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his character Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment. This is an apt comparison, although I felt Hamsun's narrator and the Underground man from Notes From Underground were more kindred spirits. This book could practically be a prequel to that novel of Dostoyevsky's. This novel is one of Hamsun's most personal, as it draws heavily from his own life experiences. As Robert Bly's afterword describes, Hamsun spent most of his young life working hard labor for menial pay, and became very much an introvert from the lack of his peers whom he could converse about 'higher ideas' with. He spend much of this time hungry and exceedingly poor, and would go into fits of writing lofty incantations, yet, in the yellow morning, would see these pages as nothing but stanzas of gibberish and tear them up and toss the scraps into the street (if you caught the lifting of Ginsberg there, one thousand cool points are awarded to you. That's my favorite part). Perhaps Hamsun felt he was loosing grip on reality, much like his narrator. I read an essay of Hamsun once that said he was a wanderer, often moving to new places to get inspiration for novels and write in seclusion, and that he was highly popular with the female folk. The narrator seems an extension of Hamsun in this regard, as it is hinted that he is not a native of Chrisiana and has all across the map, and that even in his wretched state of malnutrition causing his ragged clothes to hang off him and his hair to fall out, he is still able to attract the affections of a local lady. Hunger is not a novel you will ever forget. It sprouts deep roots within your heart and mind and will follow your thoughts wherever you go. If you are a first-time reader of the great Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun, this is a perfect introduction. Although I don't like to give such a one-sided depiction of a novel, this is one that I cannot find anything negative for to say. Upon completion, I declared that some day I will teach this novel, it is that good and there is enough material for countless discussions. This was my favorite novel that I read in 2011, and I hope you read it. It would be a damn shame not to.5/5How can you resist that mustache?
—s.penkevich
