Hamsun is widely credited as opening European literature to a new level of realism and impacting novelist such as Mann, Zweig, D’Annunzio and even Hemmingway. You will love this book if, 1) you enjoy the darkness of Ingmar Bergman’s films, 2) listen to Leonard Cohen while you are stoned or 3) have a burning desire to slit your wrists. While highly acclaimed during his career, his main charter (based on 10 years of his life before his success) is the type that would make you hang garlic around your house in order to keep him away.
A more depressing, self-centered, immature and weird individual has seldom been created and I wondered through the book in vain hope that he would realize his problems were all of his own making. I shall probably read one other novel by Hamsun to see if he has any redeeming qualities. What is really disturbing however, is that he is credited with mirroring the European image (he wrote from 1890-1950) and if that is the case, it is clear to see that the European “intellectuals” have a long and difficult journey to pull themselves out of the muck and into the sun. Think I liked the book? Must be the masochist in me to read another of his novels or the extreme optimist.
