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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
A story of a writer who is so poor he's starving and it is making him insane. I could imagine this man being a tramp imagining he is a writer. Maybe he is. Set in the nineteenth century in Norway. Quite labouring in parts but the bit where he starts to eat his shoe leather was priceless.
challenging
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I understand the appeal, though I don't think this style is for me.
A Kafka theme told in a Dostoevsky voice.
This novel reminds me again how thankful I am that I've never had to go to bed hungry once in my life. In the whole of human history, what small percentage of people are able to make that claim?
This novel reminds me again how thankful I am that I've never had to go to bed hungry once in my life. In the whole of human history, what small percentage of people are able to make that claim?
Med denne romanen knuste Knut Hamsun mine ubegrunnede fordommer mot eldre norsk litteratur som satt igjen fra barneskolen, og gav meg lyst* til å utforske andre gamle nasjonalskatter. Er også lenge siden jeg har ledd så mye av en bok. Ylajali! *hopper over det åpenbare ordspillet, thankyouverymuch
I was not invested in the story and put it down. May revisit in the future.
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
My brain grew clearer, I understood that I was close to total collapse. I put my hands against the wall and shoved to push myself away from it. The street was still dancing around. I began to hiccup from fury, and struggled with every bit of energy against my collapse, fought a really stout battle not to fall down. I didn’t want to fall, I wanted to die standing.
Today we are looking at Hunger by Knut Hamsun. Considered a masterpiece by many, and a huge inspiration for other writers including Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Hesse, Woolf and many others, it’s reputation carries the immense stain of its author’s love for fascism.
Despite this gigantic elephant in the room, this is an absolutely incredible book and a must read.
The story starts with the unnamed protagonist lodged in Kirstiana and it opens with, apparently, one of the best known openings of any Scandinavian novel. “It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark on him”
This sets the tone perfectly. “Wandering about hungry” He is indeed hungry; mentally, spiritually, romantically, socially and, above all, physically.
The main content of each of the four parts of the story has the protagonist trying to get from day to day, his actions utterly dominated by impulse and happenstance. Being accosted by policemen, himself accosting other people in the street, making up ridiculous lies just to outrage an old man, sleeping outside in woods or rain. At the end of each part he receives some money, allowing him to survive a little longer. The story stops there and picks up after all that money has gone again.
He has little control mentally, and the amount of impulsiveness is hilarious, maddening, and pitiful, in my opinion. He sees a beggar and then pawns his waistcoat to get money to give to the beggar. He then spends a good part of the novel ruing the lack of that waistcoat as he is left much colder as the winter draws in. His impulsiveness helps to destroy him.
He curses and argues with God frequently, and at the end of the novel he attempts to write a play satirising the medieval church, only to give up and rip it to shreds and throw it away.
Romantically, he has a brief and doomed encounter with a woman who he originally harasses in the street for no clear reason, but he reads way too much into her every word and action and ends up basically running away from her as his impulsiveness doesn’t allow his thoughts to slow down for even a moment.
The city he lives in, Kristiana, seems to be fairly prosperous. Statues are being put up, it is well policed and seems very safe, most people always eating or busy at work and their own advancement. He is offered help several times through the novel and either rejects it or consumes himself with self loathing at having accepted it. When a shop clerk accidentally gives him a few dollars, he gives it away then returns to the shop and shouts at the clerk about it. His self destruction here seems performative.
The main driving part of the book is his actual hunger: he loses his hair, he is reduced to chewing on bark and gravel to allay the hunger then convincing himself he doesn’t actually need food. Almost every time he gets food, he throws it up again.
He gets a bone – pg 150
I found the inner monologue of this character absolutely compelling. I loved his descent into madness, and how as his hunger consumes him his thoughts tumble over each other into absolute nonsense. We often only discover he has been verbalising this chain of nonsensical thought only after a paragraph or two of drivel, to quite good comic effect.
Quote from page 197 – argue with the landlady
My edition has a wonderful afterword by Paul Auster in which he compares this book to ‘the Hunger Artist’ by Kafka. I would like to draw a different comparison, however, to another of Kafka;s works, ‘The Castle’.
In some ways The Castle is the almost exact opposite of Hunger.
The protagonist of the Castle forms close relationships almost instantly upon his arrival, his stubbornness and persistence end up with him getting further and further sucked into the town while doing his best to meet the labyrinthine expectations of everyone who lives there and doing his best to repair the damage he does, even though this is often impossible. The novel ends with him still striving to access the castle, despite its impossibility. He always sees a glimmer of hope for advancing his cause but these are always frustrated and quashed by outside forces beyond his control. A little aside: Kafka died before finishing the Castle which is why I love the plot and the fate of the main character even more; he can never leave, he will never progress. The literal death of the author has closed that possibility.
The protagonist of Hunger, on the other hand, is frustrated in all his endeavours mainly though his own impulsiveness, lack of persistence and self-destructive attitude. He could leave Kristiana at almost any time but he doesn’t. He could use the money he gets at various times for purposeful ends but doesn’t, he forms no strong relationships with anyone in the town and destroys those he does have, and the book ends with an impulsive desire to leave on a ship to England. He is a well educated young man from a seemingly well to do background and cannot take advantage of this, apart from to secure a slightly better prison cell for a night. Almost all of his travails come from within.
Returning to Auster’s afterword, he says that pity has no place in this story and that Hamsun wants us to see this character as purely self-destructive. Call me an over-educated bleeding heart liberal but my reading of this was that a person who is deprived of a consistent meal and a roof over his head will likely not amount to much. This, for me, made the character very relatable.
Therefore we need a universal basic income. But hey, different folks for different strokes, right?
This book was one of the first modernist, stream of consciousness style novels and it is one of the best I have ever read. I strongly recommend you read this, it is one to remember.
My brain grew clearer, I understood that I was close to total collapse. I put my hands against the wall and shoved to push myself away from it. The street was still dancing around. I began to hiccup from fury, and struggled with every bit of energy against my collapse, fought a really stout battle not to fall down. I didn’t want to fall, I wanted to die standing.
Today we are looking at Hunger by Knut Hamsun. Considered a masterpiece by many, and a huge inspiration for other writers including Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Hesse, Woolf and many others, it’s reputation carries the immense stain of its author’s love for fascism.
Despite this gigantic elephant in the room, this is an absolutely incredible book and a must read.
The story starts with the unnamed protagonist lodged in Kirstiana and it opens with, apparently, one of the best known openings of any Scandinavian novel. “It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark on him”
This sets the tone perfectly. “Wandering about hungry” He is indeed hungry; mentally, spiritually, romantically, socially and, above all, physically.
The main content of each of the four parts of the story has the protagonist trying to get from day to day, his actions utterly dominated by impulse and happenstance. Being accosted by policemen, himself accosting other people in the street, making up ridiculous lies just to outrage an old man, sleeping outside in woods or rain. At the end of each part he receives some money, allowing him to survive a little longer. The story stops there and picks up after all that money has gone again.
He has little control mentally, and the amount of impulsiveness is hilarious, maddening, and pitiful, in my opinion. He sees a beggar and then pawns his waistcoat to get money to give to the beggar. He then spends a good part of the novel ruing the lack of that waistcoat as he is left much colder as the winter draws in. His impulsiveness helps to destroy him.
He curses and argues with God frequently, and at the end of the novel he attempts to write a play satirising the medieval church, only to give up and rip it to shreds and throw it away.
Romantically, he has a brief and doomed encounter with a woman who he originally harasses in the street for no clear reason, but he reads way too much into her every word and action and ends up basically running away from her as his impulsiveness doesn’t allow his thoughts to slow down for even a moment.
The city he lives in, Kristiana, seems to be fairly prosperous. Statues are being put up, it is well policed and seems very safe, most people always eating or busy at work and their own advancement. He is offered help several times through the novel and either rejects it or consumes himself with self loathing at having accepted it. When a shop clerk accidentally gives him a few dollars, he gives it away then returns to the shop and shouts at the clerk about it. His self destruction here seems performative.
The main driving part of the book is his actual hunger: he loses his hair, he is reduced to chewing on bark and gravel to allay the hunger then convincing himself he doesn’t actually need food. Almost every time he gets food, he throws it up again.
He gets a bone – pg 150
I found the inner monologue of this character absolutely compelling. I loved his descent into madness, and how as his hunger consumes him his thoughts tumble over each other into absolute nonsense. We often only discover he has been verbalising this chain of nonsensical thought only after a paragraph or two of drivel, to quite good comic effect.
Quote from page 197 – argue with the landlady
My edition has a wonderful afterword by Paul Auster in which he compares this book to ‘the Hunger Artist’ by Kafka. I would like to draw a different comparison, however, to another of Kafka;s works, ‘The Castle’.
In some ways The Castle is the almost exact opposite of Hunger.
The protagonist of the Castle forms close relationships almost instantly upon his arrival, his stubbornness and persistence end up with him getting further and further sucked into the town while doing his best to meet the labyrinthine expectations of everyone who lives there and doing his best to repair the damage he does, even though this is often impossible. The novel ends with him still striving to access the castle, despite its impossibility. He always sees a glimmer of hope for advancing his cause but these are always frustrated and quashed by outside forces beyond his control. A little aside: Kafka died before finishing the Castle which is why I love the plot and the fate of the main character even more; he can never leave, he will never progress. The literal death of the author has closed that possibility.
The protagonist of Hunger, on the other hand, is frustrated in all his endeavours mainly though his own impulsiveness, lack of persistence and self-destructive attitude. He could leave Kristiana at almost any time but he doesn’t. He could use the money he gets at various times for purposeful ends but doesn’t, he forms no strong relationships with anyone in the town and destroys those he does have, and the book ends with an impulsive desire to leave on a ship to England. He is a well educated young man from a seemingly well to do background and cannot take advantage of this, apart from to secure a slightly better prison cell for a night. Almost all of his travails come from within.
Returning to Auster’s afterword, he says that pity has no place in this story and that Hamsun wants us to see this character as purely self-destructive. Call me an over-educated bleeding heart liberal but my reading of this was that a person who is deprived of a consistent meal and a roof over his head will likely not amount to much. This, for me, made the character very relatable.
Therefore we need a universal basic income. But hey, different folks for different strokes, right?
This book was one of the first modernist, stream of consciousness style novels and it is one of the best I have ever read. I strongly recommend you read this, it is one to remember.
"What in the hell is going on that a man has to turn himself into a living freak out of sheer hunger?"
Imagine being so desperate for food that chewing on pieces of wood or a piece of pocket seems like a sane decision. Now try, if you might, after your stomach and every part of your inner body has gnawed every bit of fat and cellular nutrition available that the only course of action left to take is to bite your finger for sustenance. Whether you can or can't imagine this, Knut Hamsun does describe the unnamed protagonist's descent into insanity and depravity with perfectly balanced fervor and humanity mixed with the grim reality of living on the streets in the mid-19th century Christiania (which is now Oslo).
"I snapped my pencil off between my teeth, leaped up, tore my manuscript in two, ripped every page of it in shreds, threw my hat down on the street and jumped on it. "I am a lost man!" I whispered to myself. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am a lost man!" And I repeated that over and over as I went on jumping on my hat."
Hunger is the story of a writer who struggles both as an artist and more importantly, as a human being. Scouring the streets of Christiania for measly scraps and monies, he is starving for a spiritual connection, gainful employment and love. As in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, these pursuits cannot fulfill him as long as he cannot sustain regular meals and sleep in steady housing. All along the ups and downs, he is both prideful and charitable. When at his lowest points he is seemingly unable to accept any kind of charity. And yet when he has anything beyond his basic needs, he persists that others take what he has. What develops is a skewed kind of logic that begs the reader to question, is this man mentally ill or has he just not the basic necessities of life to face the harsh reality of life on life's terms?
"It was humiliating, certainly, I admitted it myself, degrading in fact, yes, positively degrading: but that didn't help either. Pride was not one of my faults; if I might make such a large generalization, I would say that I was one of the least arrogant creatures that had ever existed to date. I kept on walking."
The themes covered Hunger are ones that are universally applicable to our present times. Hamsun asks the reader many questions: How do you view society's need to take care of the most vulnerable? What do you hunger for? How far are you willing to go? Are we accepting or just ignorant of these issues in our society? Yes I know Hamsun ended up being a Nazi sympathizer later in life, and yes this book doesn't exempt him from the horrible ideas he came to share later in life. As a young man, Hunger was written and it's visceral prowess can be felt in my bones today. I don't know if I've read a book with quite the psychological depth of Hunger. Don't be fooled by its simplicity, for it is that deceit that makes Hunger by Knut Hamsun all the more intriguing and integral to understanding many writings that came afterward such as Dostoevsky, Nabokov and Nietzsche.
"Enough is enough, a man can die, you know, from too much pride..."
"I had become intoxicated with starvation, my hunger made me drunk."
"What odd things the feelings stuck to when one was hungry!"
Imagine being so desperate for food that chewing on pieces of wood or a piece of pocket seems like a sane decision. Now try, if you might, after your stomach and every part of your inner body has gnawed every bit of fat and cellular nutrition available that the only course of action left to take is to bite your finger for sustenance. Whether you can or can't imagine this, Knut Hamsun does describe the unnamed protagonist's descent into insanity and depravity with perfectly balanced fervor and humanity mixed with the grim reality of living on the streets in the mid-19th century Christiania (which is now Oslo).
"I snapped my pencil off between my teeth, leaped up, tore my manuscript in two, ripped every page of it in shreds, threw my hat down on the street and jumped on it. "I am a lost man!" I whispered to myself. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am a lost man!" And I repeated that over and over as I went on jumping on my hat."
Hunger is the story of a writer who struggles both as an artist and more importantly, as a human being. Scouring the streets of Christiania for measly scraps and monies, he is starving for a spiritual connection, gainful employment and love. As in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, these pursuits cannot fulfill him as long as he cannot sustain regular meals and sleep in steady housing. All along the ups and downs, he is both prideful and charitable. When at his lowest points he is seemingly unable to accept any kind of charity. And yet when he has anything beyond his basic needs, he persists that others take what he has. What develops is a skewed kind of logic that begs the reader to question, is this man mentally ill or has he just not the basic necessities of life to face the harsh reality of life on life's terms?
"It was humiliating, certainly, I admitted it myself, degrading in fact, yes, positively degrading: but that didn't help either. Pride was not one of my faults; if I might make such a large generalization, I would say that I was one of the least arrogant creatures that had ever existed to date. I kept on walking."
The themes covered Hunger are ones that are universally applicable to our present times. Hamsun asks the reader many questions: How do you view society's need to take care of the most vulnerable? What do you hunger for? How far are you willing to go? Are we accepting or just ignorant of these issues in our society? Yes I know Hamsun ended up being a Nazi sympathizer later in life, and yes this book doesn't exempt him from the horrible ideas he came to share later in life. As a young man, Hunger was written and it's visceral prowess can be felt in my bones today. I don't know if I've read a book with quite the psychological depth of Hunger. Don't be fooled by its simplicity, for it is that deceit that makes Hunger by Knut Hamsun all the more intriguing and integral to understanding many writings that came afterward such as Dostoevsky, Nabokov and Nietzsche.
"Enough is enough, a man can die, you know, from too much pride..."
"I had become intoxicated with starvation, my hunger made me drunk."
"What odd things the feelings stuck to when one was hungry!"
