Fante's Hunger

"From the bookcase behind his writing table, I pulled down a copy of Hunger by Knut Hamsun. This book, my father used to say, caused him to become a writer. I held it in my hand and flipped through the old pages. Somewhere in the middle, I discovered a sheet of typing bond that had been folded in quarters. It looked to have been used as a bookmark. It was yellow from age at the top where it had been exposed to the air.

"I unfolded the make-shift bookmark and immediately recognized the handwriting as my father's. But over and over, the signature written was Knut Hamsun. Knut Hamsun. Knut Hamsun. A paper was filled to the bottom of the page. The eccentricity jolted me because I'd done the same thing a hundred times, filling legal tablets with E. E. Cummings' signatures. The old man and I had things in common after all."

~~ from Chump Change by Dan Fante