Will Ball For Work

Knut Hamsun’s Under the Autumn Star is a brief, startling read. It concerns a wanderer named Knut who is on the lam from internal demons. Idling about his rented cottage to regain his senses he meets a former mate who intends to paint the house and procure work around the countryside. Knut joins him and becomes a hired hand, oddjobbing around and apparently – Hamsun is cryptic here – balling a few of the maidens he assists.

We know little of the character Knut’s background at the novel’s start; only later are clues to some unknown wealth and privilege brought to the fore. He tags along with another man to fell trees and the madam of the household takes a shine to Knut and he starts pining for her. He enjoys the role of servant to the people who don’t know he is of some stature. He tries to forget about her by taking another job but then seeks her out again. She is off to the city, and Knut returns to find her, smarting up the wardrobe and encountering known faces in cafes and other haunts of his past.

This is my second go around with Hamsun. Under the Autumn Star is the book I should have started with last time, because the frankness and pure modernity of a writer straddling the 19^th and 20^th centuries who didn’t give a fuck about balls or other regal nonsense. The scenes describing work, want, lust, and nature in Under the Autumn Star are the opposite of the 19^th century book, and the insight into the complicated and harmed mind of the narrator is something DH Lawrence approached in minor characters only – I’m thinking of the city crowd the Brangwen girl ran with in Women in Love. This book is first rate – will do my best to round out some more Hamsun soon.