After a rather long affair with The Master and Margarita. (I read this one aloud to Saran -- even by the end, the name “Azazello” would NOT roll off my tongue!). Currently, I am simultaneously reading: ( books!! )
Hunger is my favoritest novel ever! I've read it at least once a year for the past 3 years and it keeps getting better and better... If you like it, find Mysteries as well.
I found it on a list of things that interest me, I always keep lists, on notepads, scraps of paper, palm of my hand, wherever. When I was 20 I had a Nobel Prize winning author agenda. Lame - maybe, anyway my notation of the book maybe came from that era.
It has been loosely compared to Demian (Hesse)…(one I really enjoyed) but so far I’m not seeing the root of this comparison. Also I think I read something about the author as a fascist sympathiser. Could this be true?
Hamsun was a pioneer of modernist literature, so pretty much anyone who wrote similar novels (Hemingway purposely tried to imitate him, Hesse, Thomas Mann, Isaac Bashevis Singer, etc all admired his early work) is inevitably compared with him. His best novels came in the 1890s: Hunger, Pan, Victoria, Mysteries, though he won the Nobel Prize for Growth of the Soil in 1920. He's one of my favorites.
And yes, he was a Nazi sympathizer during the Second World War, but it's a very complicated story. Not that this complexity excuses him, but it's a long and detailed one. I've actually written an essay on it and there's a wonderfully moving film, called Hamsun, directed by Jan Troell with Max Von Sydow. I don't know how available this film still is, but it's worth watching.... If you're really interested, I could send you the essay.
Hells yes I want to read your essay! I get very obsessive about authors I need to learn all about the ones I like. Sometimes I can’t sleep unless I see a picture, or something.
Which class did you write it for? What did you study at Uni.? Here is my address:
kab89@cornell.edu
Also is it true that authors win the Nobel Prize for a single work? I always thought it was a body of work.
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And I hope you like Gould's. It's pretty wild.
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It has been loosely compared to Demian (Hesse)…(one I really enjoyed) but so far I’m not seeing the root of this comparison. Also I think I read something about the author as a fascist sympathiser. Could this be true?
Reply
And yes, he was a Nazi sympathizer during the Second World War, but it's a very complicated story. Not that this complexity excuses him, but it's a long and detailed one. I've actually written an essay on it and there's a wonderfully moving film, called Hamsun, directed by Jan Troell with Max Von Sydow. I don't know how available this film still is, but it's worth watching.... If you're really interested, I could send you the essay.
Reply
Which class did you write it for? What did you study at Uni.?
Here is my address:
kab89@cornell.edu
Also is it true that authors win the Nobel Prize for a single work? I always thought it was a body of work.
Reply
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