Will work for food

Knut Hamsun's Hunger is the first modern novel. The nameless narrator starves and pawns and vomits and goes berserk throughout latter day Oslo (then Kristiania). The novel is broken up into four parts equally disturbing. When he catches a break - sells a story to a newspaper editor - he is right for a few days, but Hamsun picks up the action when the man is on the downswing, and he never lets up; he shows a man at frayed ends and pulls each strand of dignity and sanity until the chap comes undone.

Hunger is a difficult book in that the reader feels for the man while he internalizes and displays his frustration, rage, and hunger. He has no one, save a few acquaintances left over from his flush days, and his encounters with people he meets on the fly degrade into immediate conflict. After he bullshits an old man in the park into thinking he's a man of means, he turns on the fool and berates him for swallowing his lies. When he makes a pretty girl he can't keep his insane tirades from ripping her to shreds, and this after she shows him her tits.

I'm reading Hamsun out of order, and I think Pan is his best book. It's the uber-Hamsun, a perfect record of all he wanted to do with his early books, and what he hinted toward in his latter work. I don't know why he's not read by more people; perhaps they're afraid, perhaps the oft-cited Nazi affection Hamsun bestowed on Hitler and Goebbels marks him as a tool. I don't care about that shit: he's got the goods. I'll get to either Mysteries (again), Victoria, or Editor Lynge soon enough.