A lot of people like to court controversy by implying that a character, a story, and everything between the pages of a book shares the same values of the author. That is nothing more than hooha and baloney though without the tasty meat texture. While I know of the Nobel Prize winning author, Knut Hamsun, and his agreement with Nazi ideology that doesn’t mean that the unnamed narrator/character of his novel Hunger shares them.
Rather, the fact that the entire book is set well before such a period in history occurs means that few of the ideas of the Nazis have been expressed, though that doesn’t mean the hatred and xenophobia isn’t felt. In this book, though, none of that comes through. There simply isn’t space for any thing like it. The unnamed narrator spends his time to concerned with something very dear to me – writing, but at the same time as he is trying to write he is starving.
Thus he quickly falls into the trap where he must write to get food, and get food in order to write. A similar situation that I continually find myself in, though I certainly don’t lack for food. This drives him mad, as one would only expect, but at the same time it drives him around Christiana (Oslo) into a number of interesting situations. Most of which could quite easily be remedied if the narrator would actually put his pride aside.
Sadly, he fails to put it aside when he needs to the most - much as many of us do, only to bring about our only downfall. Of course, this continues to drive him on as it puts him right back in the same situation. At the same time, his arguments for his behavior, his thoughts become only that much more delusional and convoluted.
Pretty much all of that, without the mention of the Nazis can be found on the back of the book or in any blurb about it. I just wasted a post repeating it, when all I had to say is that it was an enjoyable read .
Oh yeah, Knut Hamsun is like an early Kafka but Norwegian – also on the back of the book.
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