Hunger
(Knut Hamsun)
This is a book about a personality in distillation, everything unrelated being ripped away from it. He - I say ?he? because that is his only name - is the anti-average man, a condition externalized by his pitiful, homeless, hungry situation. There is no society in him; nameless and desolate; he is pure individuality. Pure individuality? It is undeniable that he desires to communicate, but his message is incommunicable. He euphorically, unabashedly invents the most unfettered lies - and then becomes upset and retaliatory when the response to them is different than he had hoped. This is communication which has nothing to do with truth, only a purity of spirit and sincerity that exists, bleakly and fog drenched, in a place arrived at through perfectionism, where the self-honest person is the least believable. He is pure individuality in that he is, and must be, alienated from anyone who is not a reflection of himself. It is sometimes said that his poverty is self-inflicted. It?s not. He makes many efforts to acquire a job. Once all these efforts fail, and persist in failing, he writes articles for newspapers, for which he receives almost nothing. To the hero, however, he receives almost everything; Hamsun has a marvelous way of making it seem like a few dollars is a lot of money. These infrequent payments are among the handful of lighter moments, among the few instances where his shame decreases. In only a couple instances does he beg, and even then he insists on giving something in return. When he accepts a handout you sense that he?s motivated more by a desire to seem appreciative of the friend?s good intentions. He blames God, he blames his bad luck, but mostly he blames himself, even though he probably shouldn?t. There are few characters in literature so respectable and hungry for life.
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