Knut

So there is a whole world of free e-books out there by authors whose copywrites have expired. Most of it, I won't have much to do with, but I stumbled across Knut Hamsun, Norwegian writer, the other other night. He wrote from the late 18th centuryh to the mid-19th century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920 for Growth of the Soil.

I only know of the fellow from reading Henry Miller in my early 20s. I seemed to remember that he had an enormous, perhaps unmatched, respect for Hamsun as an artist. I filed this away but had no time or inclination to read many artists. This would have taken time and mental application, of which I had little of either. Now, though, I have a Kindle. Suddenly, almost as readily as breathing, I can download a classic novel. So yesterday I decided to find out what Miller and these Nobel guys found so interesting. I downloaded Growth of the Soil from the free e-book site, moved it into a folder on my Kindle, and I was off. I assumed I'd read a bit of the dry book, realize there was no way I'd read an entire epic Scandanavian novel, and put it down never to finish. That was around 8 p.m. I went to bed last night at about 4 a.m. having read about a third of it. What tremendous stuff this is. (And I hate, absolutely loathe books about homesteading. I find them boring to the point of deadness.) I don't want to reveal much of it, but we follow a rough man as he builds a farm from the point of breaking virgin ground in the Norwegian Highlands. He takes a wife, has children. His farm slowly bears fruit. He suffers reversals quietly, life continues.

There is not so much a plot as there is an impressionistic tableau unreeling before us like the paper music of a player piano. The book makes me highly uncomfortable because I keep wanting to turn away as Isac patiently endures life. Death of children, encroachment of others, infidelity, being taken advantage of by people who know more than him. But so far, he keeps progressing without complaint. Breaking and tilling his land, moving with the seasons, never showing greed or sloth, enduring foibles of others without hate.

It's this last that makes me so uncomfortable while reading. How Isac is so able to suffer others without lashing out is beyond me. I find myself mentally dancing on the sidelines wishing I could step in as his agent to help him avoid the wrong people who would take advantage of his hard work. I am at once tempted to turn away and to skip ahead to see what happened. I'm no longer as enamoured of Henry Miller, and I think I would now find his fictional self irritating and shallow. Fun but basically a no account. Maybe I will enjoy him again later. I don't know.