Harsh and uncomfortable, a really painful depiction of suffering ( )

What a fine book! One of the good things about having had a crappy education is discovering classics like this as a grown-up. Also, it's great that my daughter is taking a literature course this summer, so she has accumulated a big pile of great books and recommended this one for me (thanks a million Lily!). Anyway, about the book - I loved the writing and the understated humor of the deeper than usual introspection of a starving, proud nutcase who is a greatly talented writer. ( )

Básicamente, el protagonista, cuyo nombre real nunca sabremos, se dedica a vagar por las calles de Christiania (hoy Oslo) buscando unas monedas que le permitan comer y no dormir al raso. Parece que es escritor o periodista, porque de lo que nunca se desprende es de sus lápices y sus papeles. De vez en cuando consigue dinero: le pagan bien un artículo, algún conocido le da algo, roba pequeñas cantidades a tenderos que ni siquiera lo advierten. Pero, a la vez, es incapaz de gestionarlo medio correctamente: entrega el dinero al primero que ve porque le da pena, devuelve lo robado, no acierta a escribir otro artículo publicable. Incluso tiene una inverosímil aventura erótica que él mismo echa a perder por su torpeza monumental. A veces tiene uno la impresión de que el auténtico protagonista de esta novela es la autocompasión, mezclada con ráfagas de breve euforia. No sé si podremos buscar simbolismos a la historia: la prologuista y co-traductora, con inteligencia, lo sugiere pero sin mucha convicción. El caso es que este libro se reduce a un tipo muerto de hambre (en todos los sentidos de la expresión) dando vueltas por la ciudad sin saber qué hacer. Sin embargo, algo debe hacer bien el autor cuando millones de lectores, incluyendo a un servidor, se han quedado atrapados en esta historia. ( )

Ich habe das von Uwe Friedrichsen gelesene Hörbuch gehört und bin begeistert von der Lesung.
Der Text selbst beschreibt einen arbeitslosen Schriftsteller, der 1890 von Hunger geplagt in Kristiania (Oslo) lebt. Das Buch ist rein im Bewusstseinsstrom verfasst und gibt Einblick in die Scham, den Stolz und die Verzweiflung des Mannes. Immer wieder schöpft er Hoffnung, immer wieder scheitert er, verfällt Wahnzuständen und Einbildungen, hofft, kämpft, verbirgt seinen Zustand. Das ist auch aufgrund der ausdrucksvollen Lesung so eindringlich, dass es fast unerträglich ist und wahrlich kein angenehmer Stoff.
Literarisch war es zu seiner Zeit sicherlich ungewöhnlich und neuartig, sowohl vom radikalen Realismus her als auch vom Stil des Bewusstseinsstroms. ( )

This is a story of a man who lives in the Norwegian town of Christiana. He can barely make a living, although he tries to do so by writing and selling his pieces one at a time to an editor of a paper. He barely has enough to eat...and often has nothing to eat. He barely has a place to stay because he cannot aford lodging...and often he has no place to stay.

The story is written like a soliloquy in which the main character tells from moment to moment how he feels and what is happening to him. His moods go up and down, often suddenly in either direction.

I found reading this novel fascinating and have not read anything else quite like it. The writing was so excellent that this story could have gone on for much longer and still have kept me transfixed.

Now here is where the conundrum comes in. In the midst of reading this book, I read about the author. I learned that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. I also read that not only was he later a Nazi sympathizer, but that he had written the obituaries for both of the Nazis Goebbels and Hitler. What do I do with this knowledge now? My maternal grandparents died in the death chambers of Auschwitz. How do I reconcile reading this amazing piece of literature by a man I would have despised had I ever known him alive?

The other strange thing is that I never would have read this book had it not been for a great niece of my husband who chose this book at random for members of her book club to read. I had great difficulty obtaining a hard copy of this book. The copy I got was copyright 1920 and published in June, 1924. It was an interlibrary loan from the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. I no longer live in that city. I grew up in that city, and usually every weekend my mother used to take me as a child to by bus to that Library in downtown Baltimore. It was her parents who had been put to death by the Nazis.

I don't know what to think. I will just say the story was mesmerizing, and the facts I later learned about its author horrifying. ( )