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Rating: 
Summary: The Heart is a Hunter...
Review: A lone hunter accompanied only by his faithful dog, Aesop, Thomas Glahn roams Norway's northernmost wilds. Living out of a rude hut at the edge of a vast forest, Glahn pursues his solitary existence, hunting and fishing, until the strange girl Edvarda comes into his life. In his 1894 breakthrough novel, Pan, Knut Hamsun provides a lyrical, yet disturbing analysis of love and the dark recesses of the human psyche. Sverre Lyngstad's superb new translation restores the power and virtuosity of Hamsun's original.
Rating:
Summary: The Heart is a Hunter...
Review: A lone hunter accompanied only by his faithful dog, Aesop, Thomas Glahn roams Norway's northernmost wilds. Living out of a rude hut at the edge of a vast forest, Glahn pursues his solitary existence, hunting and fishing, until the strange girl Edvarda comes into his life. In his 1894 breakthrough novel, Pan, Knut Hamsun provides a lyrical, yet disturbing analysis of love and the dark recesses of the human psyche. Sverre Lyngstad's superb new translation restores the power and virtuosity of Hamsun's original.
Rating: 
Summary: Hence the phrase, "It was panned in reviews."
Review: I never would have come across this book except that I took a course on mythology and symbolism in my last year at University. From that level, "Pan" is enjoyable: there's a rich field between the covers in which one can harvest many references to notions both mythological and symbolic.And that's about it. From a narrative point of view, I have rarely been this bored. The "hero" (and I use the term lightly) is near unlikable - worse, next to impossible to empathize with - the "heroine" (again, note the quotes) is so over-the-top stereotypical that she comes off like cardboard, and the plot itself reads like a soap-opera. The soap-opera style, however, might well explain the proliferation and popularity of this work. When I wasn't bored, I was disgusted, the characters acted like a house full of children bored on a rainy day, and the only redeemable traits of this book were the wonderful tangental references to mythology, and the vivid descriptions of nature. Pass on this, folks, unless you like soaps.
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Summary: Bronte Meets Woolf And It Works Well
Review: I sat up all night, reading the whole story. This tale about a lonely, self-destructive man in Norway, who happens to meet a young girl and starts to love her, looks like "Wuthering Heights" written by Virginia Woolf. Introspective, but not too much "stream of consciousness" that might make you bored. Basically a love story and tradegy, it is an absorbing story; sometimes very violent, but surely it touches the innermost recess of most unaccountable aspects of humans' heart: passion of love and hate. Still, beware; sometimes its violence sounds like "Takeshi" films and sexual nuance is always there, though much less than DH Lawrence.
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Summary: A true masterpiece!
Review: Knut Hamsun has been called the father of modern fiction. First published in 1894, Pan is a perfect, beautifully written novel. The words, the construction, the atmosphere, like a long poem, where not a line nor punctuation could have been done differently. As thousands of readers before me and surely thousands that will come after me, I totally admire this wonderful little book, and I don`t know how many times I have read and re-read it, both in Norwegian and in English. This is a book not to be missed by anyone with a desire to read good literature.
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Summary: and what is human nature? the wild? the cultured?
Review: Pan begins as a nature story - detailed, lush, knowledgeable descriptions of nature, of living a solitary existence, of feeding off the forest and sea. Phrases such as "there was a sweet sulphurous smell from the old leaves rotting in the woods" lull the reader into an expectation of a pastoral romance novel. This is anything but. It is, rather, an exploration of the relationship of the solitary Lt. Glahn with two women in particular and society in general. Lt. Glahn is socially inept and impulsive. The two women? One is servile and unavailable; the other, more interested in the power of the chase than the capture. The resulting story is an intriguing study of human emotions, of motivation and of the honesty of self-revelation. An excellent book by an excellent author.
Rating:
Summary: and what is human nature? the wild? the cultured?
Review: Pan begins as a nature story - detailed, lush, knowledgeable descriptions of nature, of living a solitary existence, of feeding off the forest and sea. Phrases such as "there was a sweet sulphurous smell from the old leaves rotting in the woods" lull the reader into an expectation of a pastoral romance novel. This is anything but. It is, rather, an exploration of the relationship of the solitary Lt. Glahn with two women in particular and society in general. Lt. Glahn is socially inept and impulsive. The two women? One is servile and unavailable; the other, more interested in the power of the chase than the capture. The resulting story is an intriguing study of human emotions, of motivation and of the honesty of self-revelation. An excellent book by an excellent author.
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Summary: Hamsun Skewers Noble Savage Myth
Review: Pan is a short, terse, novel about a reclusive "wild" man, Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, gifted with sexual charisma who idealizes nature and himself but is blind to his arrested development, his cruelty, and his enslavement to his own compulsive actions, which, as the novel progresses, have tragic consequences. By showing the disparity between Glahn's perception of himself, which is rather romantic and lofty, with the "other" Glahn, the uncouth, abrasive one who clashes with other people, Knut Hamsun succeeds in writing an ambiguous, mysteirous fable about the conflict between solitude and civilization, and how the "self" cannot be defined in its isolated state.
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Summary: I keep spare copies of his novels to dole out to friends...
Review: The beauty and uniqueness of Hamsun's work is often overlooked as a consequence of his Nazi sympathizing. Although I don't dismiss the significance of his support for the Third Reich, dismissing his writing is a tragedy, for he is one of the most gifted writers I have ever come across. I debated which Hamsun novel to recommend, as I'm a fan of many (including "Hunger", "Victoria", "Mysteries" and "Women at the Pump" among others), but chose "Pan" if only to offer the added recommendation that you seek out the recent movie "Two Green Feathers" based on the novel. "Pan" is a beautiful, brilliant, eccentric little novel...I suspect that many readers who pick up a Hamsun novel will end up (like myself) with a shelf full of multiple editions of his work, much loved and oft-read.
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Summary: Prose for the overwrought...
Review: This is a lyrical, beautiful novella in the most hated sense of the word. It is absolutely overwrought, emotive, undone and adolescent, and that is what makes this story and the lieutenant at its center wonderful. If you can't accept a marriage of 19th century pomp and the truly modern -- if [stated another way] you really must put on airs, steer cleer of Hamsun. If on the other hand you can lower your brow and smile, secure in your own intellectual prowess and unthreatened by self-consciously exquisite prose and a manipulative story... then read on. You'll find no better. I certainly enjoyed it.
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