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| Hunger by Knut Hamson, Translated by Robert Bly Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 (reprint), 243 pages, $16 |
Serendipitously, having just read Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground, it's easy to see the inspiration the former work lends to Hamsun's novel. One might suspect Hunger's narrator could've written material not dissimilar from Notes From Underground. However, I would argue unlike Bly that our narrator's no "genius" unless perhaps we were to gullibly buy his self-declared delusions of intellectual grander. Hints of this not only emerge in the editor's behavior toward the narrator & his writing but also the paltry sums they yield. In one way, reading Hunger could be likened to reading "The Emperor's New Clothes" if we experienced the story exclusively through the Emperor's point of view. In fact, such an event takes place when the organ grinder's daughter asks our narrator for an øre and quickly realizes just how emaciated & destitute he is. This scene inevitably results in a crowd of curious onlookers laughing at our man "Waldemar Atterdag" and a policeman (as is the novel's custom) shuffling him away (92). Hunger's replete with scenes like this that expose the narrator's delusions. Probably the most evident in the subtle back-biting jibes of the editor, the landlady, & the hired woman. In most cases, the characters humor this impecunious waif--if only to avoid confrontation but usually as a way of pandering to his arrogant delusions.
Formal/stylistically, Bly notes: "In Norwegian, the sentences are abrupt, swift, and graceful, curiously like the best of Hemingway", which seems strange since Bly's translation is quite frequently the opposite--loquacious & lengthy tied together by preposition chains. I, personally (b/c I don't know 19th Century Norwegian), didn't have a problem with Bly's translational choices; but then again, this always raises the inevitable, obvious, and sometimes tedious questions of altered authorial intent. Questions I'll avoid if only because they're generally fruitless among those outside the small scholarship community dedicated such work.
As has been long-noted, Hamson's Hunger--in some ways--distills the psychological interiority generated from Hamson's decade-long life of austerity. Too, there's a purposeful externalization of aesthetic principles & moralization--concepts of social or communal solidarity critiqued by the pervasive presence of religious iconography, the frequent quasi-desperate yet unanswered prayers, the subtly imbedded bible verses, the bi-polar renunciation of faith & hyperbolic blasphemy, the protagonist's moral speciousness (lying, theft, etc.), the one-act play: The Sign of the Cross, the failed interaction with religious town's folk; hell, we might as well invoke the city's name while we're at it--a glaring prod to the failure of "established" religion's practice of charity. Think of that comedic moment when the unnamed starving man arrives at the pastor's office only to be swept aside due to inopportune office hours (reminds me of that pitch-perfect scene from A Serious Man where the rabbi's "busy, thinking").
Ultimately, the immediate end--the ship departure--only retained a modicum of interest to me mainly b/c it echoed an earlier metaphor of dying:
"And I started again to think about the harbor, the ships, the dark monsters who lay waiting for me. They wanted to pull me to themselves and hold me fast and sail with me over land and sea, through dark kingdoms no man had ever seen. I felt myself on board ship, drawn on through waters, floating in clouds, going down, down… I gave a hoarse shriek of fear, and hugged the bed; I had been on such a perilous journey, fallen down through the sky like a shot. How good and saved I felt when I grabbed the hard sides of the cot! That is what it is like to die, I said to myself, now I will die."This citation lends an extra dimension to those inclined toward interpretive angst. And while I wanted to make a few comments about--what I perceive to be the linchpin for plumbing deeper into Hunger's "meaning"--the sparse yet poignant writings of the main character: the allegory of fire in the bookstore, the metaphorical possibilities rife in the lecherous monk, and the treaties titles; I'll leave them for someone else to comment on...or will get back to it when I'm not distracted by the two-dozen other tabs vying for my attention. While you're formulating your own thoughts or waiting for me to revise these, you might enjoy the often insightful Auster's intro-essay on Hunger titled "The Art of Hunger".
Appendix:
Here are a few white-rabbits to chase:
Oh, and for those interested, here's the Egerton Audio edition
A couple mini-bios of Hamsun:
1. The Occidental Quarterly
2. The Guardian
3. Kirjasto
A brief overview of Hunger:
DigPlanet Summary
Hamsun's renewed popularity (a debate):
1. NYTs http://tinyurl.com/kegbg25
2. The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/nyk2wrb
3. N+1: http://tinyurl.com/k9bynum
Tin House's "Lost & Found" blog
James Wood reveiw of Hunger in the LRB: "Addicted to Unpredictability"
A little more "in-depth": "SULT: Psychological Deep Structures and Metapoetic Plot"
And since there are two filmic versions of Hunger (Carlsen 1966 & Giese 2001), I thought I'd throw in a random essay on the ties between the novel and film: "The Art of Hunger – Hamsun, Film and Modernity"
Harper's Review of Kolloen's bio on Hamun by William H. Gass: "A Kink in his Crock: Norway's Nobel Nazi"
HTMLGIANT: 25 Points
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