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Hamsun, World's Greatest Writer
Posted by Francois Meursault on 30/11/2001, 23:22:49
For those of you who have never read anything by Knut Hamsun, he is a powerful, substantial writer that is virtually ignored nowdays. His best work is "Hunger", "Pan", and "Mysteries", they are absolutely wonderful books...
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Re: Hamsun, World's Greatest Writer
Posted by Michael Sympson on 1/12/2001, 0:04:20, in reply to "Hamsun, World's Greatest Writer"
He's good, but not that good - pleeese.
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Posted by Lale on 1/12/2001, 16:15:42, in reply to "Re: Hamsun, World's Greatest Writer"
I read Hunger when I was still in the university, about 20 years ago. I still remember some scenes very vividly. How he waited anxiously to see the impression on the face of the child when he put a piece of cake at her door. How he miraculously received money as the landlady was yelling at him and threw the money to her face. And at the end, how he went to the pawn shop to pawn the buttons of his vest.
I will read it again one of these days. I think it is a great book and deserves to be re-read once every twenty years.
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Posted by Michael Sympson on 1/12/2001, 20:02:14, in reply to "Re: Hamsun, World's Greatest Writer"
I think Hamsun is an excellent example for a good writer who deserved his Nobel award and did himself in by his political opinions. (Mind you he had the audacity, to write a panegyrical obituary on Hitler, after it was all over.) But one shouldn't take him too seriously. There was something sweet and goofy in him. Benn once stated, that his entire generation was willing to define itself after Hamsun. Thomas Mann did call him "the greatest man alive," and: "never was an author more deserving of the Nobel award."
I remember countless scenes in the little town shops - the salesperson flaunting a whole knuckle duster array of rings and bragging about the big transactions forthcoming. "Pan," "Mysteries," and "Hunger" made his reputation, the "Town Selgelfoss" is assigned to his "ripe period," but the social aspect is not so interesting, "Wayfarers" reveals more of Hamsun's idealized persona (the person the writer would have liked to be.)
In 1929, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, Maxim Gorkij, John Galsworthy and H.G. Wells, among others, payed homage to his 70th birthday. Writers as different as Franz Kafka, Bertholt Brecht, and Henry Miller have all expressed their admiration. Isaac Bashevis Singer states that Hamsun "is the father of the modern school of literature in every aspect- the subjective element, the fragmentation, the use of flashbacks, its lyricism. The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun." (Well - this would be true, if English and American writers of the period had cared taking notice of Hamsun. They did eventually - but much later. Sometimes it helps simply to check out the data of publishing.)
To get things in perspective: Hamsun belongs to the generation of Conrad, Kippling, and Chekhov. In outlook and attitude he has much in common with Kippling (when he loosened up); and Chekhov shared Hamsun's universal interest in human minutes. Conrad's approach is lacking in broadness if compared to the other three, but he shares Hamsun's concern for language and expression - something Kippling, self-assured in his own linguistic prowess tended to take for granted.
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