Hunger is literally the story of the starving artist! An unsuccessful writer (yup, that tired trope of a writer making their main character a writer like them), he’s a hungry boy because he’s got no money for food. He writes, he sometimes gets money, and occasionally something mildly interesting happens, but mostly he staggers around hungry.
Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun’s 1890 novel Hunger is a holdover from the time, years ago, when I was enamoured with Charles Bukowski’s work and he said he was a fan of Hamsun’s. I tried reading it then but gave up for some reason and this time I was able to get through it for some reason. I’m glad I finally ticked it off the list but I wouldn’t say Hunger is much good.
It really is very one note. He’s hungry, he writes, he struggles to survive, repeat. There isn’t much insight into the sensation of hunger/starvation. Our nameless narrator (basically old Ka-newt - which is how you pronounce “Knut” if you were wondering) acts whacky when he’s hungry, saying weird stuff to people in a daze as he knocks around the Danish town of Christiana (modern day Oslo). Except he behaves that way even on a full stomach so he’s just a nutbag.
Some scenes are fun. We get to see what 19th century Scandinavian flirting is: you go up to random women and say “You are losing your book, madam!” over and over until they reach their home and then you stand under a street light for the rest of the day, waiting for them to stare at you from the darkness of their unlit room. Saucy!
It’s well-written but very unmemorable as almost nothing happens and what does is quite mundane. I suspect if Hamsun hadn’t won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920 and/or written (probably) better books later on, Hunger would be even more obscure than it currently is. As it is, it’s not a good novel and I got very little out of it - the book’s as empty of entertainment as the narrator’s stomach is of food!
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