Knut Hamsun

'Mysteries' is superior to both of them imho

>>8794235
Please elaborate. What is it about, and how does it stand apart from the rest of Hamsun's novels?

>>8794242
It's just very eerie and uncomfortable and about suicide

>>8794110
>it was nothing special.
kys desu senpai

>>8794110
must suck being so retarded
>>8794264
this surface level reading

File: 1457962334992.jpg (37KB, 640x437px) Image search: [Google]

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>>8794264
this

>>8794110
i too didn't think it was anything special. Growth of the soil, however, is a masterpiece in my opinion. everytime i finish reading it i wish it would go on for another 400 pages

>>8794311
what makes Hunger so good?

>>8794235
Johan Nagel is the most relateable character I've come across in literature so far. The future really doesn't look very bright for me.

>>8794319
I was eating, i actually wanted to post

>>8794334
I was eating and having a phone call, i meant to quote this
>>8794311
and post a different image

>>8794110

I don't think so, no. Hunger, Pan and especially Mysteries are his best works, I think. If you didn't like Hunger, you're probably not going to enjoy his other youth works, since they're similar.

>>8794242

He takes the manic rootlessness that characterized the protagonist from Hunger and goes further with it. Nagel is an extremely interesting character study. Growth of the Soil marks a reversion from the rootlessness of the modern and atomized individual to the primordial man connected to the natural world. You can definitely read some of his later nazism into Growth of the Soil, but it's not unambiguous.

>>8794311

Hit us up with your exegesis fampatchi.

>>8794356
Hamsun's nazism came from the fact that he hated englishmen, and didnt want them all over norway when the second world war hit, therefore he wanted the german on his side.
He was also not aware of how things turned out late in the war, and the nazies hatred for jews, in one of his letters he states that he has never supported antisemitism. His meeting with Hitler was also a disaster, Hamsun was so old, deaf and secluded by the end of the war, he really did not know what was going on.

>>8794110
Growth of the Soil's characters are not as spergy as early Hamsun characters. They're more borderline retarded though

>>8794110
Yes. Pan aswell.
I Have not read Mysteries but I can vouch for Victoria too

>>8794110
this book sucked. It was just a vagrant whining about how he coldn't get paid for being the misunderstood artist. Would it have killed this guy to take some sort of menial labour job? The prose was decent but it was literally my diary desu.

>>8794386
I didn't say I had a problem with his naziism family

>>8794972
some of them are extreme but none is retarded. they are wonderful representations of different attitudes to life, each with causes and consecuences

seriously, can somebody explain why Hunger is so good and special? i enjoyed it but it didn't leave a big impression on me, don't understand how people even compare it to growth

>>8795379
It was published in 1890. I think a lot of the praise comes from the fact that it was just so goddamn innovative at the time. The whole novel practically reads like a stream of consciousness decades before "modernism" was even a thing. As far as characterization and character psychology goes, Hamsun pushed the medium forward and opened the way (along with others) for Kafka, Mann, Joyce, Woolf and the rest.

I love Hamsun and, while I liked Hunger, I do not consider it one of his best works. I prefer his more lyrical and subtle ones, even when he is still trying to capture "the secret movements which happen unnoticed in the remote places of the soul". But one can not deny the importance that Hunger has had on XXth century literature.

>>8795154
Youre just retarded. It was written in a comical sense. Read it in norg atleast you pleb

>>8795467
OP here, this is my opinion too. I can see how Kafka, Joyce and others were influenced by this, but it wasn't particularly interesting. I'll give Pan and Growth of the Soil a try, though.

>>8794110
Pretty much all his books are variations on the same whiny, self-defeating protagonist I want to climb into the pages and throttle for his lack of perspective. Pan is the only one I can claim to have "enjoyed" in any sense, given that it had some nice bits about trees and such.

>>8795479
The problem with Scandinavian comedy is that it isn't funny, even to Scandinavians.

>>8796021
I enjoyed every word of Hunger, and found it both humorous, intense and wonderful, norwegian reporting in

Here is a great article on both Hunger, and Hamsun himself:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n23/james-wood/addicted-to-unpredictability

Does a good job explaining why Hunger is both great and innovative as mentioned earlier in this thread

Bump for papa knut

>>8794278
>>8794311
>>8796278
smart

>>8794110
>>8794322
>>8795154
stupid


just ordered Mysteries. im pumped baybee