Hunger: A Novel (FSG Classics)

‘Andreas Tangen’ is the fictitious name our nameless protagonist gives to the Officer on Duty the night he finds himself cold, wet, famished, keyless (not to say clueless, and consequently without even a room to go home to) and nearing delirium. His solution? To seek room and board in the city jail whence he can contemplate the rain falling on the outside.

I only recently (July 17) read and reviewed Jack London’s MARTIN EDEN. Knut Hamsun’s semiautobiographical HUNGER could well serve as a companion piece to London’s equally semiautobiographical novel. And neither would be out of place sitting alongside Dostoyevsky’s NOTES FROM (THE) UNDERGROUND.

“‘I will read it,’ he (the editor of a city paper in Christiania) said, taking it. ‘Of course everything you write will cost you labor; the only trouble with your work perhaps is excitability. If you could only be a little more composed! There is too much fever all the time. Anyway, I’ll read it.’ Then he turned to his desk work” (p. 95).

Our anonymous protagonist’s “excitability” is quite understandable given his uncertain living conditions and constant state of hunger. And Robert Bly has done an excellent job (I assume) of translating and injecting (I don't assume) that same excitability into Hamsun’s Norwegian prose. For anyone who’s ever been homeless and felt prolonged hunger pangs for the sake of his art (or through the sheer absence of work), Hamsun’s words and Bly’s translation of those words may ring truer than any of us would care to remember. The only thing worse? I can still recall Luis Alberto Urrea’s description (in THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY) of what occurs when people emerge in the Arizona desert after having walked up from Mexico (or from points even further south) … and are out of water. (What happens to the human animal as it passes through the several stages of extreme dehydration is something you may be tempted to read about, but never want to actually witness.)

In any case, our protagonist’s problem is the title of this book — and it never disappears. With hunger, comes a slow insanity. It’s not easy to read about, but both Hamsun and Bly do a superb job of portraying it in all of its insidious glory. This is indeed a case of afflictio gratia artis (suffering for the sake of art).

RRB
09/10/14
Brooklyn, NY

This novel by Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian author Knut Hamsun relates the thoughts and actions of an unnamed, unemployed, and starving narrator who ekes out a meagre existence in the city of Kristiania (known today as Oslo). Besides selling an occasional philosophical article to the local newspapers, this man has no means of reliable income and does not put forth much effort into acquiring any. Though apparently well-educated, he exhibits obvious signs of mental illness. It's unclear, however, whether his psychological problems are the result of his hunger and unemployment, or vice versa. He considers himself to be singled out for persecution by God, and curses the Almighty defiantly. While he recognizes his own wretchedness, his preoccupation with personal dignity and civilized propriety often results in him turning down money or food that may be of valuable use in prolonging his life. Through this first-person account of a troubled and delusional mind, Hamsun provides a sometimes bleak, sometimes comical vision of the frustrating insignificance of an individual lost within the framework of modern civilization.

Hunger was first published in 1890, but in style and substance it is decades ahead of its time. It demonstrates one of the first uses of the stream of consciousness narrative mode, and in its preoccupation with internal human psychology as opposed to concrete plot events, it is a precursor to much of the modernist literature of the early 20th century.

Unfortunately, one of the characteristics of modernism evident in this book is the lack of a satisfying plot. Hamsun's primary concern is providing a psychological profile of his character, and little attention is paid to the structure of the story. The narrator wanders the streets, running into friends, acquaintances, and strangers, pathologically lying to them about his wretched condition. Sometimes he lucks into money which he self-destructively squanders. There's no progression forward towards a finality. The scenes of this novel could be shuffled like a deck of cards with little consequence to its overall effect. A few paragraphs of conclusion are tacked onto the back end of the book, but the ending is such a convenient resolution that it seems a little silly in its disregard for the preceding tone of the overall narrative.

Hunger is an important novel, but that doesn't necessarily make it an enjoyable read. While I appreciate its influence on the history of world literature, the book itself is good but not great. It did produce a profound enough effect on me, however, that I hope to read more of Hamsun's work in the future.

In Knut Hamsun's Hunger, the narrator and protagonist roams the streets of Kristiania (Oslo) and searches for food and later lodging. A writer of questionable success, he submits his writings to a journal but rarely gets the story accepted. Without money, he often doesn't eat for days.

As we read the novel, we dwell into the mind occasionally delusion of a man trying to maintain his dignity in poverty. Though he had no food, he gives money to children and vagrants. And though he fancies a girl, he feels unworthy of her. His unstable state of mind reminds us of Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. And indeed, Hunger is as much a psychological novel as Dostoyevsky's classic work but it dwells into the unstable mind in greater details.

Through the novel, Hamsun comments on Oslo's coming of age and on civilization crossing into the twentieth century. The narrator's interactions with others reveal the alienation in a modern city. His plight and despair, and his suffering and struggles are those of modern men and women. In the end, he leaves Kristiania, a symbol of his escaping from the modern life.

Hunger is a powerful tale of the currents of history sweeping individuals off their grounds of existence and tossing them into an ocean of despair. Even now, more than a hundred years later, we confront similar challenges and the novel remains relevant. The question was and is: how shall we respond to such challenges?

In Knut Hamsun's Hunger, the narrator and protagonist roams the streets of Kristiania (Oslo) and searches for food and later lodging. A writer of questionable success, he submits his writings to a journal but rarely gets the story accepted. Without money, he often doesn't eat for days.

As we read the novel, we dwell into the mind occasionally delusion of a man trying to maintain his dignity in poverty. Though he had no food, he gives money to children and vagrants. And though he fancies a girl, he feels unworthy of her. His unstable state of mind reminds us of Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. And indeed, Hunger is as much a psychological novel as Dostoyevsky's classic work but it dwells into the unstable mind in greater details.

Through the novel, Hamsun comments on Oslo's coming of age and on civilization crossing into the twentieth century. The narrator's interactions with others reveal the alienation in a modern city. His plight and despair, and his suffering and struggles are those of modern men and women. In the end, he leaves Kristiania, a symbol of his escaping from the modern life.

Hunger is a powerful tale of the currents of history sweeping individuals off their grounds of existence and tossing them into an ocean of despair. Even now, more than a hundred years later, we confront similar challenges and the novel remains relevant. The question was and is: how shall we respond to such challenges?

This intense portrayal of a destitute writer suffering extreme hunger evokes empathy for the human condition of destitution, and demonstrates the psychosomatic reality that our mentality depends crucially on our physicality.

Hunger is a physical condition, but it drives mental intensity and anguish. It accentuates some mental functions and capabilities. Pain has a similar psychosomatic effect. Our rationalities are therefore not as objective or absolute as Enlightenment thought pretends. But human society is neither understanding of the connection between behaviour and condition, nor compassionate to the person.

It's very strange that with this literary realisation, Hamsun became and remained a Nazi. Did his own writing not evoke empathy for destitute people within himself? Was his portrait of a society which excluded unfortunate people in fact prescriptive? Or was `Hunger' a technical intellectual exercise rather than a novel with moral intent? Canongate has not addressed these issues in publishing Hamsun.

Geoff Crocker Editor Atheist Spirituality web site

Hunger is an extremely compelling novel, and powerful psychological portrait. Our unnamed protagonist is a freelance writer living in Oslo (Christiana). When we first meet him he is in dire straits; penniless, late on the rent, and nearly out of possessions to pawn. Things will only get worse for him. We follow him as his situation degrades even further; forced to leave his apartment and pawn articles of clothing, he literally begins to starve. All the while his behavior becomes more and more erratic. He picks fights with strangers, revels in outrageous lies, battles himself over his sense of honor, and rages against god and society. What makes Hunger such a profound novel is the realization that our protagonist is doing all this to himself. For unknown, and unknowable reasons he is putting himself through the crucible. He dreams of the great (and valuable) articles he will write, and yet he will not allow himself to write them. He moans about his poor luck, but when on the few occasions luck drops some money is his hands he finds some reason to give it away. We don't know why he does this to himself, and neither does he. What we do know is that if he doesn't figure it out soon he'll die.

First published in 1890, Hunger is the story of an impoverished writer starving in the streets of Christiania (Oslo). Predating 20th Century stories of homelessness, alienation, and despair, at a time when the prolix, mannered stories of the Victorian writers held sway, Hansun's writing must have been a bit of a shock to first encounter, not that a lot of readers would have encountered it since it was written in Norwegian. Humsun's writing is clear, spare, honest, intimate and punishing. He has a story to tell and he actually wants to tell it, which sets him apart from many very successful modern writers, who seem to have little to say but wish to impress by saying it at length and with a studied obscurity. There isn't much ennui, angst, or navel-gazing in this story either. The protagonist knows what he wants to do (write), knows that he is good at it, but just cannot earn enough money to keep himself fed, clothed, or housed. He is willing to work at anything but cannot find a job. He does sell the odd article to newspapers, but this just gives him enough money to stave off dereliction for a week or so. He gradually spirals down to the nether regions of society, having pawned everything of value, including his winter clothing. The uncompromising, unsentimental depiction of grinding poverty and what it does to individuals, families, and, ultimately, society, is timeless. Hamsun, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920, lived the bleak, frustrating life of his protagonist, not for the three or four months depicted in the novel, but for ten years, finally breaking through with the publication of Hunger. Other brilliant novels (Pan, Mysteries, Growth of the Soil), plays, and essays were to follow. Despite the gruelling trials experienced by the protagonist, this is not a depressing book. On the contrary, it is peppered with offbeat, improbable humour. One can't help liking this self-destructive yet admirable and intriguing character, and hoping that he will succeed. And the writing; it doesn't get any better than this. (Note. This review refers to the Robert Bly translation.)

Hunger is a remarkable first-person account of a poor writer in Oslo who is starving. Knut Hamsun was able to paint a vivid and breathtaking portrait of the psychology of nihilism and self-contempt in this novel, a work for which he will always be remembered. It was obvious to me upon reading this that Hunger is extremely influential, it seemed to have a lasting impact on the more existential writing of the early 20th century, most clearly with Franz Kafka's story, "The Hunger Artist." For all its disturbing strangeness, Hunger is amazingly a work of fiction that is also wittily funny. It begins and ends quite arbitrarily, and is filled with wickedly funny anecdotes, such as the protagonist's inexplicable following of a young girl, for whom he repeats, "you've dropped your book." I think Hunger will always be studied because it's extremely hard to understand. The book is filled with contradictions as exemplified by the addition's conflicting forward and afterward. In the forward, the writer argues that the protagonist's plight is suicidal that his hunger is avoidable and his behavior is deliberately self-destructive, whereas the afterward writer maintains that his hunger is merely a product of poverty and social injustice. In any case, the book is extremely compelling and vivid. Unfortunately, Knut Hamsun is a man whose life is not at all beyond reproach; he did eventually support the Nazi Party and ended up sending his Nobel Prize to Goebbels, which is utterly deplorable, although many have maintained that Hamsun was fully insane at the time. Never the less, despite Hamsun's character and political dumbness, Hunger is an excellent book and should be read by all lovers of literature.

"Hunger" (1890) is decades ahead of its time, in its precise attention to narrative construction and its superbly wrought psychological realism. The central character is a famished writer struggling to remain alive, wandering from place to place in a forbidding Norwegian city, writing monographs and pawning his few possessions in the hope of sustaining himself. Perhaps the term "psychological novel" may be too out-of-date even when applied to this novel of Hamsun's, though it cannot be denied that it substantially anticipates the work of Kafka, Camus, Joyce and Kelman, particularly in its use of interior monologue, or "stream of consciousness", whereby the roving thoughts of the distraught protagonist are painstakingly recorded. In a way that, it could be said, rivals even Dostoevsky, Hamsun explores the deepest and remotest corners of his protagonist's thought, which verges on the uncanny and the irrational, revealing his character's bizarre responses to his circumstances, his frenzies, his caprices and his unpredictable switches from euphoria and despair. It must be admitted that the episode in which the chief character begins a liason with a demi-mondaine is no less great than the scene in "Crime and Punishment" during which Raskolnikov supplicates the prostitute for her prayers. This book is a Modernist classic on all counts, and an ambitious experiment with emotions and feelings that few writers have dared to express or recognise.

"Hunger" is one of those books that most young men probably dream of writing, and which they occasionally manage to pull off. The unnamed narrator stumbles about Christiania (now Oslo), a penniless man of letters, pawning his waistcoat (vest) for a kroner and a half, munching the odd bit of bread, but basically hovering in half-starvation and scheming about brilliant articles that he'll write which will not only enable him to buy food and pay the rent but which will also make his name as one of the best young writers of, etc. etc.
It probably sounds awful. It isn't. It's a masterpiece, if only because there's a curious gap between the experience and the telling of it. The narrator is entirely without self-pity. He never whinges - he curses, he daydreams, he fantasises, but he is always aware of his folly even when he's in the midst of it. This is what gives the book its incredible readability. Everything is portrayed in a crisp, early-morning light, everything is vividly _there_, there's no Holden Caulfield-type nostalgia or sentimental reverie. (During the 1960s, it was made into an incredible film - remarkable for a book which is mostly interior monologue.)
"Hunger" remains a classic not because it was influential or important in the history of the novel, but because it still seems so readable and so true. Hamsun wrote some other books that I'm told are equally good, then declined into mistiness and didacticism, and ended up as a Nazi sympathiser. No matter. This was written in the late 1800s, and is still painfully fresh today, like a shaving cut.
I assume this is Sverre Lyngstad's translation, since he wrote the introduction. I first read the Robert Bly version, but Lyngstad is careful to point out that Bly made hundreds of errors, both great and small. Lyngstad's will be the definitive English version for some time to come.

Knut Hamsun's intensely introspective novel "Hunger" is a magnificently written semi-autobiographical account of the author's life as a starving artist. The abject poverty, struggle for inspiration and gnawing, ever-present hunger are bleakly translated in Hamsun's groundbreaking narrative.
The composition is an unfiltered glimpse into the thoughts and whims of a young man desperate to practice his craft but unable to support himself. It progresses not by plot but like thinking itself. Though deeply intelligent and passionate, not everyone will like the narrator - he is prideful, a bit of a nihilist and seems to insist on suffering. But he exposes his soul in a way few people are even capable of, much less willing to do; if for that alone he's more than worthy of our attention.
"Hunger" has been acclaimed as the genesis behind 20th century long-form fiction, specifically novels that use realistic internal dialogue to tell a story. This is a remarkable claim for sure, but as I see it, also a dubious one. "Hunger" was published in 1890, 26 years after Fyodor Dostoyevsky's seminal "Notes From Underground", which I believe is the earliest example of such a novel. To me, it seems that Dostoyevsky had an obvious influence on Hamsun, and on this novel in particular. Nevertheless, Hamsun was one of the first, if not the very first, to write with such graphic realism.
My favorite author, Henry Miller, has always been a vocal supporter of Knut Hamsun. I reached for "Hunger", as others of you probably have, based on Miller's unbound admiration for the book. The link is important to those of us who consider Miller to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Miller felt a profound connection to Hamsun and his struggles as an artist, which he identified with. I suspect "Hunger" was pivotal in inspiring Miller to completely devote his life to art at all costs, including living in poverty.
There's no question that "Hunger" a very significant novel. Perhaps more importantly, this masterfully told account of a young artist's life in late-19th century Scandinavia is captivating, thought provoking and devastatingly real. Fans of Miller and Dostoyevsky: "Hunger" is a must. All others, if you enjoy and respect great literature and the type of writing that makes you weep with passionate admiration then you're bound to fall in love with this book.

The narrator begins the story with almost nothing to his name. He is behind in rent, has pawned most of his possessions, has virtually not furniture and clothing. He is mad at the world, at his fortune, at a snaggle-toothed old lady in a butcher's shop who passes him by. He considers that the world has rejected him, cast him down, declared him to be no good. And yet, when walking later on that same day as the encounter with the old woman, he spies an old man, who begs for money for milk, and he pawns a piece of the clothing he is wearing to help him out.

He does have a few possibilities, however. On occasion, he is able to earn some money writing articles for newspapers, small things, of little value, but they feed him. He has the idea of an essay, 'Crimes of Futurity', which he considers will earn him a nice sum. But then, as the day grows, he discards this idea, 'I could no longer be satisfied with writing an article about anything so simple and straight-ahead as the 'crimes of Futurity'', and decides to work on a treatise, a 'Philosophical Cognition', which would, 'give me an opportunity of crushing pitiably some of Kant's sophistries'. But, he has lost his pencil, and cannot write this opus.

The narrator is a man who is happy that he is unhappy. He considers that the Creator is against him, but then finds himself humming and in good spirits. He teases a poor young girl for no reason whatsoever, and is glad while recollecting the sensations he felt. He is certainly a strange character, as the following shows: 'I half rise and look down at my feet, and I experience at this moment a fantastic and singular feeling that I have never felt before--a delicate, wonderful shock through my nerves, as if sparks of cold light quivered through them--it was as if catching sight of my shoes I had met with a kind old acquaintance, or got back a part of myself that had been riven loose.' Often, he wants to give random people something, and is upset that he cannot. He is, for the most part, a positive narrator, enjoying the sights and sounds, the flora and fauna. However, with what seems to be for no reason whatsoever, he will fly into a mental rage at something or someone, spewing out venomous thoughts - or even words and deeds, if he is worked up enough. But tis feeling passes quickly, and then, it is almost as though the narrator is uncertain as to why the person attacked would feel offended or put out. An interesting character, indeed.

As the story progresses, and his lack of money continues, a burning hunger - both physical and mental - grows. He becomes weak through lack of food, and this has the affect of causing his oddities to expand, become more random, intricate, strange. One night, when so hungry he can hardly stand, he checks himself in as homeless at the local police station, then spends the night worrying about a hole in the wall, 'a downright intricate and mysterious hole, which I must guard against!'. He descends into a hungry madness, sucking on woodchips for sustenance, and speaking to God: 'Yes, you should say, I have invoked God my Father! and you must set your words to the most piteous tune you have ever heard in your life. So--o! Once again! Come, that was better! But you must sigh like a horse down with the colic. So--o! that's right.'

The narrator's madness is certainly interesting to observe. He experience dizzying highs - such as when sitting on a bench, or deciding to cut off his buttons to sell at the pawnshop - and terrible lows, whenever he thinks about food. He dashes between exuberance and despondency, up and down like a yo-yo, his reactions all the more bizarre, absurd and exaggerated as his hunger grows. Within all this, there is sympathy for the character. He is by no means a bad man, just a victim of unfortunate circumstances. The novel begins with the narrator focusing upon describing places and sights, but as it progresses, everything becomes internalised. He talks to himself, arguing, haranguing, pleading, cajoling. His thoughts are punctuated with exclamation marks quite often, giving them an added urgency or absurdity, depending on the sentence: 'The green blanket!'. It is interesting that, even though the character is thinking wrong thoughts and performing bad deeds, he is still an exuberant, jolly fellow, and that is what makes him such a joy to read.

The ending is expected, but does not suffer because of this. We witness the massive fall into madness, then brief spurts of lucidity followed by further plunges. Inexplicably, a young girl falls in love with him, which allows the narrator a madness of a different sort, but only for a short time. He does not overcome his 'hunger' as such, but this is unnecessary. The hunger within him is something that is not fully sated by food, it is more of a spiritual, mental hunger that can only be assuaged by thoughts, by feelings, by writing.

Hamsun’s greatest novels, Hunger, Mysteries and Pan were all written in the 1890s. Hunger was the very first modernist novel, which influenced Kafka, Musil, Camus and Beckett .They have a common theme of existential alienation. He had learned from Strindberg and Dostoevsky, that the self had no consistency and the soul is a storm of interruptions. In Hunger all encounters are engineered on a whim and annulled as quickly. The lonely hero invents his world, his self, writes the novel,but leaves no trace, with no continuous memory. The fiction Hamsun creates is very real to his unnamed narrator/ hero, with the pathos that his hero is not in control of his unpredictability. The use of stream of consciousness relates it to the soul, through a chain of moods from euphoria to depression; the random flux of conscious and sub-conscious thoughts and impressions in the mind. He attacked Ibsen for only creating ‘types’, characters with a single pressing element.” I dream of a literature with characters in which their very lack of consistency is their basic characteristic.” Hamsun was interested in the soul, the very life of the mind, and the mysteries of the nerves in a starving body. He wanted to write a book never done before.

Hunger is a struggle with, and perversion of traditional Christian pieties. Hamsun had grown up in a poor household and suffered from the scars and bigotries of small town pieties. He’d become Nietzschean in spirit. He’d been twice to America , worked his way through poverty, writing some journalism in between jobs of an irreligious nature. The novel opens with power: “It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiana (Oslo), that strange city that no one leaves before it has set its mark on him.” The young writer is struggling to survive; he is desperately poor and hungry, feverish and grandiloquent. He informs the reader he is preparing a 3-part work on consciousness to demolish Kant. He never does. He writes and submits the odd article to a newspaper office, never earning enough to keep his head above water,find or keep shelter, or feed himself. At times it goes well, the hero writes in a trance,but is often disturbed by nervous sensitivity:’ Flies and gnats stuck to the paper and disturbed me, I blew on them to make them go away, then blew harder and harder, but it was no use. The little pests lean back and make themselves heavy, putting up such a struggle that their legs bend.’

He wanders around town on the lookout for food, or some kind of regular work. But it’s clear he’s plotting his own demise. He destroys every opportunity. He keeps up a constant muttering dialogue with himself as he walks around town. He chides himself for his moral shabbiness: ‘As time went on I was getting more and more hollowed out, spiritually and physically, and I stooped to less and less honorable actions everyday. I lied without blushing to get my way, cheated poor people out of their rent…all without remorse, without a bad conscience.’ He invents falsehoods, and then makes them real in his mind. He lies to the blindman on the bench, and then explodes with anger because the man believes his lies. He rings the bell of a strange door asking about a job that doesn’t exist, and is told she's ‘nothing to give himtoday’, which struck him like a cold shower. He goes up to a policeman and tells him its 10 o’clock, when its 2 o’clock, and is overcome by the policeman’s kindness to want to escorthim home. He attacks himself for his own self-induced poverty, yet when a newspaper editor (noticing his ragged clothes and emaciation) offers him a loan, in humiliation,his false pride rejects this offer.

Hunger is a perversion of the Christian system of reward and punishment, confession and absolution, pride and humility. With the old man he lied in order to be punished, he isn’t punished and proceeds to punish the old man for not punishing him. He mentally rewards himself for wholly fictitious acts of charity and mentally reviles himself for wholly fictitious acts of pride. He denounces God :You don’t exist, but if you did exist I would curse you.’ The hero tries to use the structure of sin and punishment to seize control (of his destiny) he can never possess, but such a structure cannot explain a human being’s motives or help us judge those motives. Religion is a fantasy to Hamsun, creating an imaginary relationship to God. The hero’s willed starvation can be seen as a mistaken Christian attempt to discipline the soul through denial. When driven mad with hunger he puts a stone in his mouth. This reminds us of Jesus’s refusal to accede to Satan’s temptation, and turn stones into bread. Jesus chose denial for mankind. Hamsun is soaked in religious imagery, but satire is prevalent too. Hamsun’s later disgrace to side with the Nazis when they invaded Norway, shows how his life was almost larger than his fiction: he’d won the Nobel prize in 1920 and had world renown. He did this more because he was pro-German and anti-English and had no knowledge of the concentration camps. He hadn’t gained wisdom with age. There is a mystery at the heart of his novels which is not explained away by this aberration. The souls of his heroes are created out of a bottomless unknown selfhood. Bly's translation is poetically superior to Lyngstad's.

"Hunger" is the opening novella and anchor for this collection of short stories. Chang is a graceful author with just the right touch of sensitivity and insight into the lives of Chinese immigrants in America. The special talent here is in the individual attention Chang gives to each family, each story. This is not a social history portrayal of the masses. While the family structures are seemingly uniform (husband and wife and one or two children) and the range of vocations unsurprising (restaurant workers, music prodigies, math and tech specialists), the characters are more emotionally dimensional than one would suspect.
*** The theme of hunger is the dramatic thread running through all the stories -- hunger for personal expression, parental acceptance or love, or independence. The immigrant experience is a poignant paradox of being closely tied to one's family or home and yet feeling the fierce need to pull away in order to succeed. The ultimate hunger becomes not one extreme or the other, but in wanting both polar opposites to work at once. It is an impossible hunger to satisfy and yet continually churning at the core of every character.

This book by Knut Hamsun makes my Top Five favorite books. I picked up this book only because I heard that he had influenced writers like Kafka and Camus which I admire greatly. I did not think that a book written before the 20th century outside of Dostoevsky could be so relevent today.
I was wrong, just like Dostoevsky, Camus and Kafka this book is very relevant today. It is indeed so relevant that I doubt it was accepted very eaisly when it was published in the late 19th century!
Though it came out decades earlier, this novel deals with the same ideas that Camus and Kafka deal with. Alienation from the world. The main character in this novel is not of this world, he is alone, isolated.
His struggle is to find his niche, a struggle that is faced by a lot of people today. Does is find is niche? His reason for living? Or is there one at all?
He is not hungry for food as much as he is hungry for answers to these questions. He does not find the answers, this should give nothing away to you. It is predictable that he does not find answers because that is the whole point to the book.
If you have not read Dostoevsky yet I reccomend reading, Notes From Underground before you read this book, it deals with similar ideas and it preceeds it. Also, if you are going to buy this book, buy it alongside The Stranger by Camus and The Metamorphosis or The Trial by Kafka. They are closely related. These books will change your lives.
Now I will rate the novel from a scale of A-F as I do in all of my reviews.
Character Devolpment: A
Plot: B
Thought Provoking: A++
Suspense: A
With an overall grade of an A this book is one of my favorite books, it is short, so it is one that I will read over and over again many times.

I once attended a lecture on the immigrant experience in America and one of the speakers posited that the type of experience an immigrant family would have depended on which type of immigrant they were: the sort who is running to something or the sort who is running away from something.
Both sorts populate Hunger: A Novella and Stories by Lan Samantha Chang. And, if these stories are any basis to go by, they refute the premise of the lecturer I heard that one day. The immigrant experience, as depicted by these stories, has little to do with what motivated the flight, and everything to do with the fact the immigrant is an island unto him/her self-a person who cannot be either a "citizen" of either whence they came or where they come to. This alienation and anomie is exemplified through various aspects of hunger throughout the text-hunger for love, for the past, far acceptance, for independence, for personal and/or professional "success".
These stories, like Chang's prose, are contained and spare yet rich in emotion, symbolism and emotional intensity. Through these few tales Chang is able to convey both a wide range of experience and attitude toward the immigrant experience as well as the psychological toll that such experience entails.
I have to admit that I have a predisposition towards appreciating oriental immigrant stories. I enjoy the primary players in the genre, such as Amy Tan and Gish Jen. Chang provides a nice counterpoint to their work as it is the polar opposite in terms of prose style and intensity-short, intense vignettes as opposed to richly textured, wide ranging more sedately paced prose. Both styles work and both are enjoyable. Chang may not be as accomplished as the others at this point, but this book provides strong evidence that she will be soon.
An excellent debut effort.

While considerably overlooked today, at one point in time Knut Hamsun was among the most widely read and highly respected authors in the world. Winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920, Hamsun is a mystical Fyodor Dostoevsky, telling stories that shock us with their insight into the human condition.
Hunger seems a simple book, but is really anything but. The tempo of the book moves quite rapidly, but there is an amazing amount of insight buried within the dialogue of the narrator. This is one of the first books ever written in the first person, so Hamsun did not feel restricted by any preexisting expectations on the part of the public. The narrative is a great deal like the internal monologue we all have: not always linear, sometimes contradictory, etc. To me, reading this book was as close as I've come to reading the mind of a real man (not to mention an endlessly intriguing and thought-provoking man).
This book will not be liked by everyone. Many people could find the absence of traditional plot vexing. Others may cultivate an intense disliking for the narrator (as is the case with a few of my friends who have read the book). But if you read for the insight that books provide, don't let this one pass you by.

Published in 1890, "Hunger" represents a breakthrough from traditional romantic European writing. Influenced by Dostoievsky and Nietszche, and anticipating Kafka, Joyce, and Camus, Hamsun creates a novel with intense personal (partially autobiographical) narration (using first and third person), developing on the theme of alienation and artistic obsession. It represents Hamsun'a masterpiece in his first literary production stage, in which social/political issues are of no concern, only the individual and his stream of consciousness.
It is a plot less novel, the setting is Christiana (now Oslo), and the main character is a starving, homeless young journalist, with a mercurial personality. His reactions have no middle term, he moves from extreme joy to acute depression, from arrogance to humility, on the verge of irrationality. It clearly reflects the author's early poverty, his pathological passion with aesthetical beauty, and an enormous driving force to perfect his concept that "language must resound with all the harmonies of music." "Hunger" anticipates Freud and Jung in their understanding of human nature, and creates a new literally hero, the alienated mind.
Of Norwegian nationality, Knut Hamsun won de the Nobel Price for Literature in 1920. In real life he was ostracized by his countrymen and the literary community as a result of his radical individualism, and political/social views. Yes, Hamsun was a convicted Nazi, friend of Hitler and Goebbels, an advocate of the "pure" race (Jews should be expelled from Europe, Blacks should be returned to Africa), and he applauded German invasion of Norway. Neddless to say, when WWII was over, he dearly paid the price: imprisonment, confiscation, and poverty. When he died at the age of 92 (1952) he showed no remorse and helf firmly to his beliefs.
The question arises: to what extent can we separate art from the artist, creation from the creator? Maybe another Nobel Laureate, Isaac Bashevis Singer, himself a Jew, can answer this question for us when he states: "the whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun."

I could not actually say whether this book is "good" or "bad". Furthermore, I am not able to discuss about the necessity of hunger and degradation to pursue art. What I can tell is that reading Hunger is a shocking experience in which the reader cannot avoid wondering why a person should be reduced to such a terrible stage of body and mind just for the sake of...art? Nevertheless, I find his book absolutely worth reading whether it may be upsetting or not.
It is like getting into a dark and narrow tunnel, which becomes narrower and darker with every farther step. It seems as if there's no way out. But sometimes it is: the main character own mind. It is in his mind where the action takes place. The rest of the characters and circumstances within the book are simple devices to stimulate his senses and sensitivity and keep the ball rolling.
Finally, I reached Hamsun through Miller's works. Now I can reach Miller through this disturbing and unforgettable book. It is clear that Hamsun was many years ahead his time. It struck me how modern his writing looks compared to that of other writers of the XX century.

This is the autobiographical writing how he suffered from starving. Hamsun was a master of self-portraying. He constantly introspected himself and depicted how hunger caused him to reach to insanity and desperation with a deep psychological touch. The hero of book is anonymous. He struggled to be a writer and was constantly starving. He tried to get a job to support himself, but it could not work. He had a chance to have a work at a grocery store as a book keeper, but his mental insatiability affected him to write his application with a wrong year. He was constantly worried about the rent. He tried to write articles to earn some money to keep him on going, but it could not work either. He could not afford to pay rent, so one day he spent at a jail. In the darkness of the cell, he invented the new word. He wanted to have some money to eat and tried to ask the editor chief to borrow some money, but the chief`s kindness made his mind change. He was ashamed of almost asking the money and felt exasperated how low he allowed himself being sunk. He ran the street as fast as he could carry his legs to punish himself. Starving made him commit a lot more mad things....
The first time I read Hunger, I was astonished by Hamsun's ability to perceive himself with deep physiological insight. Hunger gave a deep impact in my heart. I was indescribably moved by how he desperately wanted to be a writer. For me, Hunger is unshakably a masterpiece.

This is my second reading of this groundbreaking psychonovel, in the new (and highly commendable) Lyngstad translation. Penguin has published "Hunger" in its Twentieth Century Classics line even though it dates from 1890. I hope this was deliberate, since Hamsun was definitely ahead of his time.
"Hunger" shows a man reduced by his condition to a point where physiological and mental impulses blow him around like a paper in the wind. He entertains grandiose ideas but can't sustain them for more than a few moments. He engages in pointless antics and gives way to spur-of-the-moment impulses. Though he wails and cries, it's clear he enjoys his degradation. He may be the genius he thinks he is, but could equally well be a charlatan. His contacts with other people are minimal and glancing, and only add to his degraded state. You see life as lived from the bottom, in an atmosphere where desperation acts as a kind of drug.
The book is essentially plotless, and is structured almost symphonically, in four parts (or "movements"). I can imagine a bunch of modern creative-writing types, with their Perfectly Plausible Plots and insistence on the Show-Don't-Tell rule, tearing "Hunger" to pieces. No matter: the rambling, the violent mood swings, and the violation of fictional protocols actually give it strength. Next to most of the novels of its time, "Hunger" must have felt like a blow to the face. A sometimes painful but often exhilarating blow.

Hunger is, in my opinion, the most important work of "psychological realism" of all times. When I first read it, I fell in love with Hamsun's style, but it was the second and the third reading that pushed me over the edge, slipping into the realm of mind, walking the streets with Hamsun, shivering in the cold and hurting from the hunger. Hunger both for food and for a human touch, living outside the society both due to his situation and by choice to strive for the pure and unconditional self-discovery. Love, hate, shame and joy, the emotions portrayed in this work are so vivid that will leave their mark on you well after the last page is read and the book is closed, calling you to pick it up from the shelve and read it again. It was Hunger what gave me the courage to write in first-person, exploring the depths of mind, regardless of the external action the character may be involved in, and for this, I will forever be grateful. A must read for anyone who enjoys fine literature and is not afraid to go deep into the mind of the protagonist. A mind struggling to create, while seeing beauty and grandiose ideas in the most common of things.

Relating to "Hunger" on anything but a gut level would be to read a strange, perhaps sometimes repetitive novel indeed.
But it would be my assumption that most fans of this novel have experienced, at least to some degree, the agony of the narrator and the special brand of isolation he experiences.
If any of us have had periods in our lives where we actually knew *no one at all*--in a quite literal sense, by some quirk of fate or circumstance, we know precisely what the main character is experiencing. His seeming determination to drive himself insane is a facade: he is actually a lonely man seeing the world through the filmy, pessimistic lens of a COMPLETELY lonely man. When one is bereft of any contact beyond the slightest acquaintances, the most minute events become magnified to an absurd proportion and if anyone could get inside our heads for a matter of more than five minutes they would realize that something was grotesquely, horribly wrong. Obsessive thought patterns often result from this kind of loneliness which is not only oppressive but all encompassing: it usually starts with social anxiety and blows up into a cartoonish nightmare of the most paltry sensations become gargantuan. His joy over even the slightest contact with another human being is pathetic indeed, but revelatory of his complete isolation. I would not agree that this is manic depression or anything of the sort, but Hamsun's masterful articulation of the oscillating moods which occur when a human being becomes neurosis itself and fears everything. Hamsun has accomplished in this novel what centuries of literature have been unable to do: to articulate the inarticulate. For anyone who has actually felt like a ghost, a phantasm, this is the book for you. (Or not for you, if you would prefer to simply move on and forget the horrendous experience.) A masterpiece.

The Farrar Strauss and Giroux edition of this book, the Robert Bly translation, is extremely readable and very gripping. (It also has an afterword by Bly and a new and lucid introduction by Paul Auster.) Simply put, I was floored reading this book. The narrator's search for food and shelter through Oslo, his triumphs and defeats, were at turns heart-rending and hilarious (his observations). When he realizes, when he is near his lowest point, that he can sell the buttons off his coat for a few pennies and then becomes happy, serve as a reminder of the triumphant human spirit. Bascially, the novel has no plot and one could say that nothing happens, following around this hapless soul and his search for food, his desire to write a newspaper article. To me, his adventures were riveting.

If you're sitting there thinking of buying this wonderful novel, please do - but make sure you're buying Sverre Lyngstad's translation rather than Robert Bly's (or at least take the time to compare them). Bly's version is probably responsible for most of the interest Hamsun's work has generated among English-speaking readers, but, Lyngstad argues, it's also flawed to the extent of about five errors per page. For those interested in the arcane art of translation, these include: misreadings of idiomatic expressions; literal renderings of metaphors; misreadings of tone; misreadings of homophones; grammatical misconceptions; mistaken or arbitrary word meanings; not to mention a completely botched rendering of the urban geography of Oslo. Now I'm no speaker of Norwegian, but I know this: the more subtle and sophisticated a text is - and Hamsun's is both, to a considerable extent - the more tonal, metaphoric and idiomatic errors in translation will matter. Lyngstad argues that his new version corrects these errors and renders the text in an English much closer to Hamsun's nuanced Norwegian original. It's accompanied (in some editions) by a vehement introductory essay exploring the issue of translation in more detail - worth reading in its own right - and a convincing appendix of examples of where his and Bly's versions differ. Lyngstad's version is available through Penguin or Canongate. You can get the Penguin one here at the store - ISBN 0141180641 (if you're not already on that book's page). Paul Auster's engaging essay, "The Art of Hunger", sometimes reprinted in the Bly version, is available in Auster's book of the same name and, presumably, in his "Collected Prose" (available now in the UK and Australia, but not in the USA until March 2005). Auster also offers a nice meditation on translation in his novel "The Book of Illusions."

In this epic, semi-autobiographical novel of poverty and despair, Hamsun's narrator is a poor writer who depends upon the sale of articles and stories to the press for his living. He is usually destitute and often hungry, and during the long intervals when he is underfed, his mood swings wildly between euphoria and bleak, self-destructive hopelessness. Written with brutal candor and strong feeling, the story is deliberately anti-coherent; Hamsun said of his fiction, "I dream of a literature with characters in which their very lack of consistency is their basic characteristic." HUNGER created a sensation when it was published, and remains one of the great triumphs of modern naturalism.

This is one of the finest bits of storytelling without telling a story - true art of the highest echelon. This is the first Knut Hamsun book that I picked up, and was hooked right from the word go. A very powerful piece of psychoanalytic writing, Hamsun impressed me enough to immediately buy all of his other books that are available in English. I shall not delve into the plot here, for there is really no plot; the reader can only watch in fascination the various facets of a few days in the life of a struggling artist, a conceited vagabond, an honest egoist as he, or they, go about the difficult task of survival in an incomprehensible world.

Yes, more confusing than helpful, I know, but that is how I see and understand this book. Five stars, hands down.

Desperation, starvation and madness are sometimes the only food a man can stomach when faced with the aloof insensitivity and disguised savagery of civilized life. To feel honest. To feel honestly. To feel fully.

This is the internal path. You cannot break and remake the world, so you break yourself. That's not for everyone. Neither is this book.

In Hunger, everything is lost at one time or another as the artist's constellation circulates the universe . . . the streets he wanders. Except one thing. A tiny shred of human pride and hope, which he is unable to destroy within himself. A fundamental dignity. A fundamental innocence. And it is that which sustains him.

Despite the apparent slide downhill in Hunger, I believe he finally discovers what he needs, and is delivered. I believe he chooses life in the end. He steps aboard a ship. He leaves his old existence, and it's a moment's decision. A break.

This is a beautiful and powerful book. The struggle is the allegory of the artist. Alienation at war with the need for acceptance. Pride and anonymity. The music it is set to is the voice of Knut Hamsun, who starved, and wrote as a young man, and survived as well.

There is a movie of Hunger, a rare and sensitive performance by Per Oscarson, that captures the indestructible dignity of the character (and the work itself) perfectly.

The value of this symphony of penitence and inner strength cannot be overrated.

Now this is better. After reading "Growth of the Soil" (see my irreverant 1-star review of that travesty) and being very disappointed with Hamsun's nobel-prize winning reputation, I vowed not to form a final opinion of the man's works until I'd read "Hunger". I have to say, this is more in accord with "literary genius" than his later attempt at an "epic" novel. Apparently, while the store reviewers don't seem to agree with me, many knowledgable critics do.

There are many good reviews of this book here - more than of Growth of the Soil - which would seem to imply it's higher regard and accessibility to the general reading public. Written in 1890, it's comparable to Gogol's "Diary of a Madman" and to a lesser extent, Dostoevsky's "Crime & Punishment" or Hesse's "Steppenwolf". Hamsun has truly created a brutally honest portrait of a man starving; not primarily for food, but for inspiration and dignity. I like it. He roams the city of Christiania (Oslo), quite mad and irreverant. Hamsun shows us this man's (I don't recall if he has a name - it's not important) personal thoughts all the way through, and the reader is forced to live in the scary, black and chaotic border between "madness" & "insanity". The hero is too honest. He's full of pride and will not accept handouts, and all he wants is to become a respected author. We follow him on misadventures, conversations, and encounters with the public. Meanwhile he falls in love with a prostitute, struggles, imagines things, but also perceives fascinating truths. All the while we watch him starve. When he begins to eat slivers of wood and gnaw on his clothes (and even his finger!) we feel that he and we have reached new depths of deprivation and are rightly sickened. This novel gave me nightmares. Ironically, it also gave me inspiration on both an artistic and philosophical level.

As Robert Bly points out (in the 1967 Noonday Press edition) Hamsun's character, influenced perhaps by Kierkegaard, shows the subjective nature of truth. He follows his impulses to the core of his personality. And as Isaac Singer points out in the introduction, "To Hamsun, man was nothing but a chain of moods that kept constantly changing, often without a trace of consistency". From this perspective, Man is "as strong as his weakest mood". Hunger perfectly illustrates this concept, making it an influential artistic novel of the subjectivity of doubt and skepticism ahead of it's time.

[Spoiler Warning re: ending]

Bly sums up the ending perfectly: "When Hamsun's hero has lived through what he must, and has learned what he must, his unconscious loses interest in his hungering and allows him to take a job on the ship, and the book ends".

To me, this "moral" made the harrowing journey through another man's seemingly pointless starvation well worthwhile, and Hamsun, now re-established as a "great author" worthy of the Nobel Prize, in my view, warrants further reading. Next up, Pan.

Lan Samantha Chang touched me with her profound stories in Hunger. The characters in this collection are starving for love, success and respect and said hungers manifest themselves in thought-provoking, dark dilemmas and endless sorrow. My favorite stories are "Water Names," "Pipa's Story," and "The Unforgetting." But it is the novella and book title that touched me the most. The story of a struggling violinist and how his failure affects his family enthralled me from beginning to end. Their problems as Chinese immigrants made the novella all the more compelling. Chang writes with beautiful, flawless prose and hers is a talent that transcends all genders. Her work reminds me of Banana Yoshimoto in that she, too, transmits the characters' emotions flawlessly. If you're in the bargain for thought-provoking short stories and novellas, I recommend Hunger most highly.

In 1985, after starting to learn Norwegian and while preparing to live for a semester near Oslo, I asked a good friend what I should read (beyond Snorre, the sagas, folk tales, Peer Gynt, etc) to get a better feel for Norway. She recommended Sult (Hunger), Skipper Worse, and something else. Having spent many moons walking around in Oslo since that time, I can report that Sult describes very well the feeling of isolation that one can easily experience there, a Munchian existence that goes well with "Skreiken". That's only one side of the story, however. Sult does not describe the friendship offered by Norwegian people once one comes into a circle of friends! Still: required reading for anyone who wants to 'understand' Norway.

while reading this book, i stopped eating for fifty hours. i chewed on little pieces of wood only. the book drove me to that. now, i admit, that's not necessarily a good health strategy, but it felt like an appropriate measure. the narrator bears much resemblance to the narrator in dostoevsky's notes from underground and became a blueprint for much future literature, camus's the fall and kafka's the metamorphoses come to mind at present. hamsun presents quite an accurate representation of a man suffering from mental illness. the narrator, though much flawed, is very likable and the reader should have no problem attaching some part of himself to the character. a note on the translations. the sverre lyngstad translation captures the language of the original in a way the translation of robert bly fails to: lyngstad is a native speaker. overall, a very good book. i highly recommend it.

exciting, youthful, rebellious - these are the adjectives swimming around in my head when i think of Hunger. If you're a disaffected teenager, read this as a tonic - there is hope, others have been more disaffected before. If you're a disaffected parent, read this as a tonic too - there is hope, others have been more disaffected than your wayward kid.
Underneath the irresistible depression cycle of the hero here is a seriously unnerving compulsion to self-harm and mental instability. It is a novel that demonstrates an incredible ability on the part of the author to invent an (at the time)original literary device - the loner monologue in this case - and carry it through with utter confidence. Hunger is a very selfish book. It obsesses about its narrator. It is no great piece of literature-as-therapy. It offers no answers to big life questions for the hungry reader, in fact, it is more likely to make you ask questions: about the mind, the "system", capitalism, social boundaries and taboos and, lastly, creativity. This is a debut to be reckoned with.

Here we find the birth of the anti-hero -- Hamsun's protaganist of "Hunger" -- a brilliant and scarcely recognized book. But make no mistake, he is not the anti-hero proudly glorifying his underdog status in the world as we've seen repeatedly throughout the last two centuries. He is not a martyr for the misunderstood eccentric artists of the world. He does not suffer over the far reaching philosophical questions of existence itself. He simply exists in a world that we can relate to. I would contend that men like this really exist; men like Raskolnikov do not. While Dostoevsky feeds on the desire of his reader to project an answer, Hamsun merely mirrors his own experience with honesty and innocence. I am not debating the merit of Dost. at all (he is the superior writer), but expanding upon the hidden attachement we have to characters like these. It's just not an issue for the "Hunger's" protaganist. Here is a man with gifted intelligence for reasoning and the ability to fully comprehend the life he *must* live, but is too shy and bashful to dramatize and romanticize it. He is completely human, living in a world entirely of himself. It is clear that he could make friends and earn a good wage if he chose to. But he does not, not out of the vile contempt for man's vices, but on his own acceptance that this is the man he is. Guilt is the essential problem, not hunger. At over a century old, the novel is a refreshing pleasure to read. The prose is quick without being terse. It is essential reading for anyone interested in a segway into the modernist and avant-garde movement. Not for what Hamsun represents, but for what he doesn't.

Like Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche before him, Hamsun was a true pioneer in not just literature but also modern thought. At the time this book was first published in Norway (circa 1890) the 'first person' novel was not very common at all to say the least. 'Hunger' is a semi-autobiographical work, describing a young and egocentric writer and his descent into near madness as a result of hunger and poverty. The novel takes place in the Norweigan capital of Kristiana (modern day Oslo) about a decade before the end of the 19th century. Our hero struggles to survive as he wanders aimlessly about - unemployed and unable to find work, in poor and failing health, practically homeless, and completely without anything but the tattered clothes on his back - hungering not just for subsistence, but perhaps more importantly, hungering for inspiration, dignity, and self-discovery.

If this book sounds a tad depressing, let me be the first to tell you, it is. However, please don't let that restrain you from reading this amazing piece of literature.

There is no doubt about it, Knut Hamsun was way ahead of his time. I believe that if it were not for writers such as him (along w/ a handful of others like Dostoevsky, Kafka, Mann, etal...) there wouldn't have been a Fante, Kerouac, Bukowski, Toole, etal... This is the first novel (I am half way through his Nobel Prize winning "The Growth of Soil" which I love up to this point) I have read of Hamsun. I originally became inspired to read his novels after reading John Fante (a.k.a. Bukowski's God) and learning that this was his greatest influence as a writer (interesting to note, that Ernest Hemingway himself also once wrote 'Hamsun taught me how to write').

If you are a fan of Bukowski and Fante then more than likely you will love this book. It is amazing how much the three of them have in common. For one, all three writers suffered through very difficult childhoods full of abuse and poverty. Also Hamsun, like Buke and Fante, was completely self-made and self-taught. He received most of his informal education from the 'streets'. All three writers are also very simple and economical w/ their prose. However, Hamsun is much more serious overall than the latter two, and by far the most elegant (which isn't saying much when it comes to Fante & Buke).

One of the things I admire most about the man (our hero in the story) is that no matter how much suffering and hardship he endures, no matter how many times he fails, he never completely gives up hope and he NEVER lets this cruel, alien world we live in destroy him. Also, unlike Dostoevsky, Hamsun is able to endure it all and still keep his sense of humor in tact (ala Buke, Fante, Toole, etal...) This is what truly makes him unique in my opinion! Where as writers such as Dostoevsky, Kafka and Camus lament about it all, Hamsum is able to mix into his very dark, often times disturbing novel, quite a bit of humor. In fact, many times he uses humor as a way to protect what little dignity he had left while living the life of a starving artist. And thank God for the humor, because I don't think most of us could have made it passed the second part (the novel is divided up in four parts total) without it. In fact, there were many times in this somber novel in which Hamsun had me laughing out loud hysterically, particularly in last part of the book. I guess it is true what they say, laughter is the best medicine. Now speaking of medicine, those of you out there who are hungering for a great classic novel to read, well... hunger no more. This is it!

It is a wonderful work of art!

This is not an innocent boys adventure story! This is not set in some frosty outback of Macon County Norway, but in the capital Kristiania (now Oslo) late last century. The psychedelic stream of consciousness, the thoughts and actions of a man on the edge of despair is so vividly described that you feel hungry with the main character. A book som amazingly written, that the problems of the protagonist can only have been experienced by the author himself - - this is a document of first-hand knowledge, about what it means struggling for your art and being poor - I mean really poor!

I picked up this book on referance from Bukowski I believe. This is the tale of a writer as he struggles to make barely enough money to eat. Times when he goes hungry, we see the degradation of his mind. I think it is amazing how Hamsun shows his own mental decline in his work. How he gradually paints his own desperation so well is what makes him such a unique author. I see why Bukowski liked him. Hamsun's style is very straight up and honest. He writes what he sees and does not withold the truth of his animal insticts

Knut Hamsun's semi autobiographical account of his early years as an aspiring writer is the sine qua non of starving artist literature. It combines something of the manic intensity of Dostoevskey's portrayal of Raskalnikov, with the first person narrative and near hallucinatory vision of Charles Bukowski--the visions brought on by starvation rather than alcohol in this case--and is told in the spare, punchy prose that the author learned while working in America. The message of the book seems to be that the experience of poverty and hunger are a necessary fuel to stoke the author's artistic fires.
It remains for the reader to determine whether Hamsun has been blessed with a universal revelation, or merely a personal insight. The idea of suffering for art and of inspiration coming from hallucination have certainly been influential--we think of Faulkner, Hemingway, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Mailer, etc., as writers who sought the profound in a bottle, a needle or a bimbo. However, other than Bukowski and a little bit of Hunter Thompson, it is hard to think of many authors whose dissipation has helped produce much that's worth reading. Significantly, the good stuff that even they produced details their adventures while under the influence, not any revelations about the broader world that resulted from said mind altering. But the danger here is that such authors tend to risk self-indulgence--remarkably few writers can make their own debauchery into interesting prose--and often sacrifice coherence.
As for the specific value of hunger and suffering as muses, they obviously have none. Virtually all of the world's great literature has been the product of its fattest most self-satisfied cultures. If there truly were some association between a gnawing in the belly and significant writing, we'd be awash in the novels of Appalachia, North Korea, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, etc..
Hamsun's novel then, while it was obviously influential and remains an interesting document of one man's experiences without food, is ultimately too individualistic to offer us much insight on the human condition generally. The brevity, intensity and readability of the book recommend it; but it has fairly little to say. His Nobel Prize is sufficiently embarrassing in light of his subsequent adoration of Adolf Hitler and advocacy of the Third Reich, but it also seems an inappropriate honor for an author whose work lacks a universal message.
GRADE: C

Hamsun`s main character in the 1890 novel Hunger wakes up in his little attic in Kristiania, now Oslo. The walls are covered with newspapers, he owns nothing, he leaves his room - sneaking down the stairs.

We follow the man - can he be around 25-30? - as he walks the streets of the capital, sitting down on park benches desperately writing down notes on loose sheets, meeting odd characters, following after a woman. He`s heading off to be a writer, but that`s not easy, and especially not in 1890. While he starves and fights dog for bones, the actual concern of survival, mixed up with the enforced compromises ever human beein must make with life, thrills the reader and brings the external observator into the melting point of body, soul and faith.

Things get worse for every step he takes (or does it really?) and he meets himself at the dead end of his own hyper-concentrated ego/reality!

Don`t miss this one!

(The Copenhagen editor who accepted the manuscript in 1890 said about Hamsun, looking at him in his office: He had eyes like the wildest animal, those were eyes of a tortured soul.)

Knut's writing is as impetuous as his characters that populate his books. While he sacrifices plot for exploration of the human spirit, Hamsun in his own unruly way makes it impossible to ever sacrifice passion for logic or anything remotely practical or responsible again. Hamsun is a master at summoning up the great insanity of life and the necessity for jumping into the great thrumming rush of human emotion, whether that emotion be blind, battered or in a state of uber-ecstasy.

Knut's writing is as impetuous as his characters that populate his books. While he sacrifices plot for exploration of the human spirit, Hamsun in his own unruly way makes it impossible to ever sacrifice passion for logic or anything remotely practical or responsible again. Hamsun is a master at summoning up the great insanity of life and the necessity for jumping into the great thrumming rush of human emotion, whether that emotion be blind, battered or in a state of uber-ecstasy.

The unnamed narrator in HUNGER is isolated, impulsive, self-destructive, excessively self-critical, and nearly homeless. While his plight is surely pitiful and unnerving, this novel certainly offers special rewards to readers who believe that mighty books present compulsive narrators, viewing the world from their hidey-holes in garbage cans or the equivalent. No wonder the introduction to my edition was written by Paul Auster!

Fortunately, Hamsun guides his narrator into society. Here, we thank the women, who flirt with the narrator and accept him as a boarder despite his penury and borderline mental illness. Their influence and timely charity help him break his syndrome of perfectionism, self-mortification, arrogance, and remorse, placing him on the docks in Christiania where "... all the workaday life around me, the loading chants, the noise of the winches, the constant rattling of the iron chains, was incompatible with the moody, self absorbed..." As the Silhouettes sang in 1957, "GET A JOB shanna nah nahh shanna nanna nahh (bah-doop)...

For the record, I'd say other writers have presented the marginal and desperate lives of aspiring young writers with much greater complexity and reward than Hamsun. Charles Bukowski for example, allows his Henry Chinaski to risk just as much as this unnamed narrator. But in Factotum, Chinaski is funny while living a life with just as much sad integrity.

The afterword in my edition (Robert Bly) says the story of HUNGER is highly autobiographical. Surely, he knows. But this novel also strikes me as a brilliantly intuitive assemblage of weirdness, especially when you consider Hamsun wrote HUNGER in 1890. But this cluster of self-destructiveness has also become very familiar in our world, in part due to Psychology 101 classes. So, I ask: Is this a case where the clinician has actually surpassed the novelist?

Please note that this Lyngstad translation is far superior to the Bly version. Lyngstad gets the tenses right, and better understands additional details of Hamsun's text. Bly's 'reads' well, and it's the version I read first, but in fact it is inaccurate! Lyngstad is a native speaker -- with several English degrees to his name, too -- and has produced a beautiful translation of this amazing novel.

Please read this amazing novel by Knut Hamsun, but consider purchasing the Sverre Lyngstad translation instead. Robert Bly is a poet with strong opinions, and in many cases his translation of Hamsun's work has little or nothing to do with the orginial. By all means purchase and read Bly's original writings, but if you really want to gain insight into Hamsun's fascinating and idiosynchratic world view, you will be disappointed with this translation.

Hunger explores the madness wrought by isolation through the experiences of a lonely aspiring writer. Without friend or family, Hamsun's hero is driven to eccentric behavior, embracing starvation and pinning made-up names onto strange women. But even at his most depraved, when the hero has clearly lost all control over his erratic actions, he maintains a frighteningly lucid awareness of the absurdity of his situation. Hamsun's hero is not the first madman to strike an author's fancy, but in this case the hero knows he is mad, but his hands are tied, which gives the book an added sense of urgency. Hunger is a deeply evocative novel that will resonate with anyone who knows loneliness at its most profound, the sense of utter alienation from a world that has no time for madness.

-This book epitimizes the type of writing that I love. It deals with the vagaries of existence, the absurdity of life and the difficulty with relationships and the breakdown of personality. It also deals with the issues confronting someone who is not sure if he is insane or not. All coupled with a hunger that is never sated. Sounds good doesn't it?

Knut Hamsun's "Hunger" is one of those nearly perfect little masterpieces of Modernism that deserves to be as well-known as Kafka's "Metamorphosis" or Mann's "Death in Venice." The story of an unknown young writer living hand-to-mouth on the streets of a large Scandinavian city, it's a harsh antidote to the Romantic notion of the starving artist writing masterpieces in his garret. A brilliant, disturbing novel, written many years before the author became a fascist fool.

I won't repeat the mainstream review material because its covered in depth around this snippit. Hunger is a short book, you can read it in a few hours, and spend days with it on your mind. If you liked Hesse you'll love the early Hamsun. If you like Hunger you'll probably like Pan and Mysteries [there's a lot of connection between them).

Hamson, like Christiania, can't readily be left without it leaving a mark on you.

Others have made much more endearing comments on this wonderful book, but it should be noted that the Penguin Classics translation - the name of the translator escapes me at the moment - is far inferior to the Robert Bly translation. Seek out the Bly version - it's a much more rewarding read.

First you have to get past the fascist politics of the author who said and did some really creepy things...like allegedly sending Hitler's minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels his Nobel Prize medal as a gift. Yikes! As a writer though Hamsun creates empathy, passion, intimacy, and longing in his characters in a most humane way. Though he is no Dostoyevsky in my esteem (as Thomas Mann had likened him), Knut Hamsun is a master of character and pathos and this may be his best work.
(Of course I am no Thomas Mann so you should probably defer to him on that comment.)

Just finished Penguin's Sverre Lyngstad translation of Hunger which includes extensive notes and a thorough bio. Interesting to read from one of the other reviewers some concerns about the authenticity of the bio (See "Just a comment. from May 8, 2003).

More importantly, this is a tremendous read from over 100 years ago that feels surprisingly contemporary and is magnificent in its exploration of pride and deprivation.

Hamsun has a very unique writing style. This whole book is seen through a borderline psychotic manic writer in Oslo that is starving due to poverty. With the lack of food bringing him that much more into madness. Its very difficult to describe or review any of Hansuns work because of his unique style and way of telling stories but this is certainly worth reading.