Hunger

So it should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I'm now reading Hunger for the third or fifth time. It's a novel that has found its way to this blog several times before, including this early entry. Like several other great writers of the period, late in his life Knut Hamsun was on the wrong side of fascism, but, regardless, he was indisputably on the right side of literature (in the sense that he wrote it).

Here are a couple early quotations I've appreciated:

"I was beginning to be drawn in. The plot ran away with me, and one lie after the other popped into my head." p.27

"Despite my alienation from myself that moment, and even though I was nothing but a battleground for invisible forces, I was aware of every detail of what was going on around me." p.15

(Both are from the Noonday edition, Robert Bly trans. with an intro from Isaac Bashevis Singer.)

If by chance Hamsun's Hunger is one you've missed, please do grab a copy and read it right away.