Powerful words Hilary. Your review of the book challenges me. Which translation did you read?
I am not as pessimistic about the social media threat to humanity. The pendulum swings to the extreme just before it slows, pauses and heads back on the arc it had traveled.
I really hope you're right! I read Robert Bly's translation. (Although I was a little confused by his introduction in which he seemed to have forgotten the details of the very book he translated...)
Thanks. I am looking for that translation now. (Note: on one of the book sites, they reference Paul Auster as penning the "Introduction" to the Bly translation. ...and Paul Auster was a 'space cadet' in those days... I wonder what he was smoking when he drafted that intro... :).)
My version has an Introduction by Isaac Singer and then an "introduction by the translator". Although I can only imagine what Auster would have had to add. Space cadet is indeed an apt description.
This is a really insightful gloss. Hamsun certainly invites readings of alienation and nihilism, but does Hamsun actually argue/endorse that the narrator’s suffering was worth it? Or rather, I suppose my real question is, was that what Hamsun intended is to take away from the ending
I think you can't approach the topic of alienation without looking at what it was that he felt alienated from. That holds the key to whether or not it invites nihilism (which I certainly believe it does not). I can't read his mind, I can only read his book. And given the ending, I think the takeaway is fairly straightforward.
I don't know if it's so much a question of whether or not the narrator's suffering was worth it. I think he tried to survive and met resistance he didn't anticipate and against which he had very little defense. I think it wasn't so much a question of being worth it or not, as it is a question of whether or not he survived and retained his humanity. And I believe he did.
Powerful words Hilary. Your review of the book challenges me. Which translation did you read?
I am not as pessimistic about the social media threat to humanity. The pendulum swings to the extreme just before it slows, pauses and heads back on the arc it had traveled.
I really hope you're right! I read Robert Bly's translation. (Although I was a little confused by his introduction in which he seemed to have forgotten the details of the very book he translated...)
Thanks. I am looking for that translation now. (Note: on one of the book sites, they reference Paul Auster as penning the "Introduction" to the Bly translation. ...and Paul Auster was a 'space cadet' in those days... I wonder what he was smoking when he drafted that intro... :).)
My version has an Introduction by Isaac Singer and then an "introduction by the translator". Although I can only imagine what Auster would have had to add. Space cadet is indeed an apt description.
What would you say people on social media are starving for?
sounds like a profoundly gnostic novel
This is a really insightful gloss. Hamsun certainly invites readings of alienation and nihilism, but does Hamsun actually argue/endorse that the narrator’s suffering was worth it? Or rather, I suppose my real question is, was that what Hamsun intended is to take away from the ending
I think you can't approach the topic of alienation without looking at what it was that he felt alienated from. That holds the key to whether or not it invites nihilism (which I certainly believe it does not). I can't read his mind, I can only read his book. And given the ending, I think the takeaway is fairly straightforward.
I don't know if it's so much a question of whether or not the narrator's suffering was worth it. I think he tried to survive and met resistance he didn't anticipate and against which he had very little defense. I think it wasn't so much a question of being worth it or not, as it is a question of whether or not he survived and retained his humanity. And I believe he did.
That makes sense. I was probably less precise than I ought to have been when I said Hamsun was nihilistic.