Hunger by Knut Hamsun Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Hunger
Book Review: starvation and dignity
Summary: 5 Stars
Desperation, starvation and madness are sometimes the only food a man can stomach when faced with the aloof insensitivity and disguised savagery of civilized life. To feel honest. To feel honestly. To feel fully.
This is the internal path. You cannot break and remake the world, so you break yourself. That's not for everyone. Neither is this book.
In Hunger, everything is lost at one time or another as the artist's constellation circulates the universe . . . the streets he wanders. Except one thing. A tiny shred of human pride and hope, which he is unable to destroy within himself. A fundamental dignity. A fundamental innocence. And it is that which sustains him.
Despite the apparent slide downhill in Hunger, I believe he finally discovers what he needs, and is delivered. I believe he chooses life in the end. He steps aboard a ship. He leaves his old existence, and it's a moment's decision. A break.
This is a beautiful and powerful book. The struggle is the allegory of the artist. Alienation at war with the need for acceptance. Pride and anonymity. The music it is set to is the voice of Knut Hamsun, who starved, and wrote as a young man, and survived as well.
There is a movie of Hunger, a rare and sensitive performance by Per Oscarson, that captures the indestructible dignity of the character (and the work itself) perfectly.
The value of this symphony of penitence and inner strength cannot be overrated.