One weekend later than I said, I am proceeding with this. This thread is for members to review and discuss miscellaneous books they have read. This should be an intellectually invigorating endeavor for all involved. I will get the ball rolling, and start things off with a review that has been sitting in my documents for a while now
Review
Chicago Style Citation: Hamsun, Knut. Growth of the Soil. Translated by Sverre Lyngstad. New York and London: Penguin Classics, 2007.
It must be stated that this work was first published in 1917, but this edition from Penguin Classics was published in 2007. I also recognize and acknowledge that a Chicago Style citation and a work of classic literature are an incongruous pairing, with MLA Style being typical for literature and Chicago Style being typical for history. I used MLA for my composition and literature elective courses, and Chicago for my history courses. Chicago is far more natural for me at this point. This is not an academic exercise and I ultimately see no wrong in using a Chicago Style citation for an informal review.
For the inaugural miscellaneous book review, I have chosen to focus on Growth of the Soil, a classic work of literature that won the Nobel Prize for its author, Norwegian Knut Hamsun (1859-1952). Much can be said about Hamsun the writer and Hamsun the man, and it is likely for the best to bifurcate any analysis of Hamsun into these two separate provinces. On Hamsun the man, I will say little. I prefer to, for the purpose of this review, confine my focus to Hamsun the writer and the specific work that is being reviewed. However, for the sake of a full review, I will briefly discuss Hamsun the man.
Specifically, I will focus on the controversy that marks Hamsun and his legacy. Owing to Hamsun’s year of birth, it should come as little surprise that Hamsun harbored racist views. Most historical figures certainly did, especially by today’s standards. Perhaps one’s mind may conjure up parallels to American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft in regards to Hamsun. But such a comparison would be insufficient, for Hamsun’s stature as a writer was as larger than Lovecraft’s as his rhetoric was more incendiary. For the sake of brevity, I will put it succinctly. Hamsun openly supported the Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II, going so far as to gift his Nobel Prize to Joseph Goebbels. For this betrayal of his country, he was forced to forfeit most of his assets after the war, dying an impoverished pariah at the age of 92 in 1952. But enough about Hamsun the man. If one wants more on this, the information is readily available elsewhere.
This review is about Hamsun the author and his work, not Hamsun the man. Granted, there will be glimpses of Hamsun the man, owing to the fact that some of his personal views will ineluctably be reflected in some of the book details that are being proffered for this review – parts that best capture the quintessence of the novel’s themes, which will of course allude to Hamsun’s views. For instance, the depiction of the city as an agent of corruption, and its deleterious effects on the morality and ethics of certain characters, certainly reflects Hamsun’s distaste for modernity and preference for the agrarian lifestyle.
Let us set the stage for this novel. It begins with a man named Isak journeying up from a village, through the tracts of wilderness. Eventually, he settles down in a plot of land he finds worthy and goes about establishing himself. It is difficult to live alone, but he manages. However, he continually asks any and every passerby if they know of any women that could join him, constantly asking them to make it known that he is searching. Unfortunately for him, the prospects simply aren’t great for farming with some outcast so far away from any civilization. But fortunately for him, word eventually reaches a woman by the name of Inger, who is an outcast in her own right due to a harelip (called a cleft palate nowadays). Isak himself recognizes that the deformity is essentially a blessing, owing to the fact that were it not for her limited prospects in life and marriage, she wouldn’t have settled out in such a remote location with him.
From this union of figurative lepers more life springs forth as time and seasons go by cyclically, like clockwork. This may sound dull - a novel dedicated to monotonous labor and the blossoming of the fruits of said labor. And the first three chapters are rather dull. But I must assure you that it gets better after that. And I will further assure you that the subject matter is anything but dull. For within these pages, one will find two infanticides, a stillbirth, and a man left to die in the snow by his covetous neighbor. Hamsun will make readers work through pages of dense prose for each literary treat, just as Isak and his family must work hard through each season to make the farm flourish, but for voracious readers it is a worthwhile effort. Indeed, there is a little something for many different tastes.
For readers who like emotion in their books, they will find touching moments in Hamsun’s descriptions of Inger finally having a chance at marriage and motherhood, having hitherto been passed over due to her disfigurement. For the outdoor enthusiast, one will enjoy the practical lessons imparted by Isak upon his sons – such as how to tell if the moon is waxing or waning. For lovers of elegant prose, one will very much appreciate the preternaturally vivid descriptions of the seasons by Hamsun. And for those who like conflict, they will find it in the battle between tradition and modernity. The wholesome and purifying countryside versus the corrupting city. This manifests itself in no better way than in the dichotomous contrast between the two sons, Eleseus and Sivert. The latter is a chip off the old block, while the former is all but emasculated by his stints in the city. Man and nature, old versus new, themes of faith and the law, the encroachment of industry, hard work versus efforts to lazily acquire wealth, frugality versus profligacy, utilitarian values versus the values of the ornate and vapid. All of this and more in one novel.
I will ultimately rate this novel 3.5 starts out of 5. Were I rating this on Goodreads, I would round it up to a 4. But this is not Goodreads, and I am free to do half stars.
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