This is a beautiful book. It was a pleasure meandering through.The poor fella was starving. And then it was done.

This is a beautiful book. It was a pleasure meandering through.The poor fella was starving. And then it was done.

This is a beautiful book. It was a pleasure meandering through.The poor fella was starving. And then it was done.

I am drawn to novels of the Dostoevskian kind, which delve into the psychology of their characters. When I happened to learn that Knut Hamsun was a pioneer of this style, and a Nobel Prize winner to boot, I got hold of this famous (though previously I'd never hard of it!) novel of his. It indeed fit the bill. So much so, in fact, that I soon found it practically unbearable. The depiction of what it is like to be starving is so intense that I had to ask myself why I was submitting myself to it. Normally one reads for pleasure or enlightenment. There was no pleasure here, and I already knew that starvation is no fun, right?But then something happened, that's to say, in my own consciousness. I made a breakthrough of insight: The literal starvation in this book could be reckoned as a metaphor. While the vivid depiction of literal hunger could indeed serve a useful purpose in opening up our hearts to the many real and not just fictional persons in the world who are so impoverished that they cannot obtain food or shelter, being able to identify with hunger as a metaphor for whatever one needs as something essential, whether nutritionally or emotionally, but simply cannot obtain no matter how hard one tries, or at least without fatally compromising one's dignity or integrity, and then induces every sort of mental and behavioral aberration as a result, enables one to experience the book as a compelling read that transcends mere description.It was in this way that I was then eager to keep reading, and was amazed at how the author was able to hold my keen attention even though the subject remained pretty much monotonic throughout. A masterpiece by a brilliant writer.

I am drawn to novels of the Dostoevskian kind, which delve into the psychology of their characters. When I happened to learn that Knut Hamsun was a pioneer of this style, and a Nobel Prize winner to boot, I got hold of this famous (though previously I'd never hard of it!) novel of his. It indeed fit the bill. So much so, in fact, that I soon found it practically unbearable. The depiction of what it is like to be starving is so intense that I had to ask myself why I was submitting myself to it. Normally one reads for pleasure or enlightenment. There was no pleasure here, and I already knew that starvation is no fun, right?But then something happened, that's to say, in my own consciousness. I made a breakthrough of insight: The literal starvation in this book could be reckoned as a metaphor. While the vivid depiction of literal hunger could indeed serve a useful purpose in opening up our hearts to the many real and not just fictional persons in the world who are so impoverished that they cannot obtain food or shelter, being able to identify with hunger as a metaphor for whatever one needs as something essential, whether nutritionally or emotionally, but simply cannot obtain no matter how hard one tries, or at least without fatally compromising one's dignity or integrity, and then induces every sort of mental and behavioral aberration as a result, enables one to experience the book as a compelling read that transcends mere description.It was in this way that I was then eager to keep reading, and was amazed at how the author was able to hold my keen attention even though the subject remained pretty much monotonic throughout. A masterpiece by a brilliant writer.