Rating: 
Summary: Gripping and Unique!
Review: This book was originally published in 1890. It has a starkness of content that will put off many readers. The nameless narrator endures much frustration and humiliation as he tries to survive. He seeks success as an author but finds failure and rejection throughout. He must scrape for change just to get bread to eat.
There is an autobiographical strain in this novel. Hamsun went through great poverty and struggle in the ten years that precede publication of this book. Some of the experiences in the novel run parallel to Hamsun's own sufferings.
The narrator finds himself pawning clothes or anything of the slightest value. He puts off paying his rent when he can. He even feigns losing his keys to catch a night's sleep in the local jail cell. Several nights are spent sleeping in the woods outside of town.
The book focuses largely on the unconscious instincts and conscious movements of the narrator. He avoids actual work in hopes of literary success. He exists in the society of Christiana but is on the lower fringes. He is a very marginalized figure. He is anti-social--virtually a foreigner in his own land. He is very aware of his intellect and ability but seems almost helpless to do anything about it. He endures his hunger and need with great nonchalance.
But one odd quality of the book is that is not a depressing book. Rarely does the narrator resort to self-pity or whining. He has a shocking acceptance of his marginalization even as he attempts to achieve success. He is grateful when he receives chump change for articles he has written. There is little in the way of hostility toward society or culture.
Hamsun also wrote with a very swift style of prose. He is very direct in his writing. It is said that a trip to America and exposure to American slang helped influence that style. He writes in short sentences and paragraphs. This economy of style is similar to the writings produced by Hemmingway.
"Hunger" proved to be a very rewarding read. Hamsun will not please every reader. Some will be dismayed by the content and the harshness of circumstance. Hamsun will displease liberals because he does not attack society or blame society for his woes. He will also displease conservatives who do not want a 'bum' turned into a hero. Hamsun was very apolitical in his approach to writing.
Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski were right. I was enthralled by most of the book. I found that this now often overlooked masterpiece was worth the effort to track down and read. Anyone seriously interested in literature and its history should read this book. Another recent novel that reminds me of Hunger -- one I strongly recommend -- is The Losers' Club by Richard Perez.
Rating:
Summary: Portrait of the Artist as a Hungry Man
Review: This is my second reading of this groundbreaking psychonovel, in the new (and highly commendable) Lyngstad translation. Penguin has published "Hunger" in its Twentieth Century Classics line even though it dates from 1890. I hope this was deliberate, since Hamsun was definitely ahead of his time."Hunger" shows a man reduced by his condition to a point where physiological and mental impulses blow him around like a paper in the wind. He entertains grandiose ideas but can't sustain them for more than a few moments. He engages in pointless antics and gives way to spur-of-the-moment impulses. Though he wails and cries, it's clear he enjoys his degradation. He may be the genius he thinks he is, but could equally well be a charlatan. His contacts with other people are minimal and glancing, and only add to his degraded state. You see life as lived from the bottom, in an atmosphere where desperation acts as a kind of drug. The book is essentially plotless, and is structured almost symphonically, in four parts (or "movements"). I can imagine a bunch of modern creative-writing types, with their Perfectly Plausible Plots and insistence on the Show-Don't-Tell rule, tearing "Hunger" to pieces. No matter: the rambling, the violent mood swings, and the violation of fictional protocols actually give it strength. Next to most of the novels of its time, "Hunger" must have felt like a blow to the face. A sometimes painful but often exhilarating blow.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece of Introspection
Review: What makes HUNGER so memorable? Quite simply, it is the fact that little action occurs in the novel outside of the mind of the main character. This nameless, starving young writer wanders the city of Christiana rarely digressing from his thoughts, observing everything around him while experiencing some brief and poignant moments of clarity mingled between even more moments of paranoid and pessimistic disillusionment. Very little occurs in this novel in comparison with most of the 19th century's plot-driven works, and perhaps it is that one particular reason readers remembered this work above all other novels by Hamsun.
The "hero" is unlike any protagonist at the time, being erudite, unsure, and constantly at the whim of every strange thought his lack of food induces. The book was hailed as disturbing in its sharp and straight-out envisioning of the starving artist at the time of its publication, but standing here in the 21st Century, readers find the work impossibly modern.
Hamsun's HUNGER is a work with extreme literary merit. In many ways, its a kind of literary character study on par with such classic '70s films as Taxi Driver -- an anti-hero who has lost touch with his surroundings -- and himself. Along with HUNGER, I'd like to recommend another Amazon quick pick: THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez, another odd novel that I enjoyed.
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