Hello everyone, welcome to another post! 💖
Today’s post is all about my last book of February. I have never read everything from Norwegian literature before and this is the first book that I have decided to give a try. One of my closest friends has read a couple of Hamsun’s books, and after long consideration, I have decided to give it a try as well. The background of the author and the political thoughts on him didn’t really alter my thoughts about the book because I’m very used to reading a piece of literature that has a different background than what I am used to or support as a human. You see, in literature departments, they prepare you to read everything regardless of the opinions of the author or the things that they symbolised in the literature itself. Though knowing that this human being supported one of the most terrifying personas on planet earth, reading the book and seeing how personal the human mind; was didn’t really make me feel weird about the author. The book itself was filled with personal issues and demons to the point which I didn’t really have time to think about the author himself in any way.
The book starts off by saying that this different person who is our main character and so comes into a smaller region town and decides to stay there for a while. Our main character is Johan Nagel, he appears out of nowhere and settles down in this very small town with so few people. It is impossible to take your eyes off him; With his bright yellow suit to the way he speaks to himself very often when he’s alone, Johan is a weird character in every possible way. Of course, I believe him being this weird had a lot of meaning throughout the book because he is a man who is incapable of controlling his emotions. His highs and lows are very distinct. The way he changes his actions in seconds made me think that he had some kind of mental disorder. After I finished reading the book, I ended up checking out a couple of reviews on it and in every review that I read everyone mentioned that he had the signs of a possible bipolar disorder. I am in no way an educated person or someone who has enough knowledge to decide whether a person has bipolar disorder or not, however, I think that it was very clear at points since his emotions and his thoughts varied from the most positive to the most negative in the shortest periods of time. It made me feel like he was having a constant battle with himself. The way he thought and the way he talked to himself until the others were incredibly chaotic and this way of conversation goes throughout the entire book. The characters change, and the responses change however, the way he acts never changes.
It is impossible for me to tell you that there is a solid storyline where you have the characters, the introductions to the parts of the story etc. There is no solid line of actions happening in the book, everything that happens around Johan ends up being tied to his chaotic way of thinking, and the thoughts on suicide, thoughts on violence, thoughts on love and expressing love. To be frank with you I still can’t understand whether he really fell in love with this beautiful blonde woman, or he felt any remorse for Midget, who is one of the main characters that he spends the most time with. He acts like he cares for one second and decides to help this person’s vulnerabilities, however, one second later we see his thoughts separating from being out of goodwill and the goodness of his heart to the sick need to prove himself, then again in the immediate moment, it goes from despising himself and telling bad things about himself to the person in front of him or to himself. While reading this book I felt like I didn’t know enough to understand Norwegian culture or understand the theme of violence and suicide and love or living in a small, secluded town. In the book, it is very clear that the author wanted the show even the kindest hearts carry around some form of darkness whether it is jealousy or disgrace. It was very clear that whoever he talked to ended up showing some form of inkiness, staining their soul.
He acts like some sort of liar-detecting test because even the most innocent character I saw in the book had something disturbing going on with them and Johan somehow managed to pull them out from the depths of their hearts and shoved it up to my face. I feel embarrassed to admit that I didn’t understand the political mentions in the book, and I had to check them every time I saw them because it was hard for me to understand what was going on during that time in Europe in general. but again, does this change a lot of things or enhance your course of reading this book? Not really. They only mention or mainly show the author’s thoughts on these political events that have been going on.
On the back cover of the book, it says that this book somehow manages to show the darkness of human nature. I can agree with this sentence at one point since I have already mentioned that our main character somehow manages to manipulate the characters around him to make them show their darkness to the outside, However, I cannot say that this book was mainly focused on the depths of human nature or the way of human thinking. I think this was more about the possibility of manipulation being done by a somewhat intelligent human. Johan manages to use his outspoken ways to either trash himself or the people around him, saying that this is for them. As if it was something that could benefit these people. If you ask my opinion, I will say that our main character is a great manipulator who likes to belittle the most famous people on earth who had done some actual change. Whenever he talks about these political or literary figures, he often starts talking by saying that he doesn’t think that these people are bad but after this, he starts talking about how much he despises them and how much he disagrees with what they have done. But now thinking that I believe he was just destroying other people’s thoughts under the name of “freedom of expression”.
He is trying to justify his obsessive and wrong actions by saying that they come from love or the good feelings that blossom in one’s heart. I believe this is a very manipulative move and if this is what the author wanted to show us, he outdid himself. Like, good job sir. You do have a very, VERY annoying character here.
Overall, the language of the book was very messy, and it was all around however while it did slow me down a little bit, it didn’t cause me to lose my sense of understanding of the book. I believe I need to read this book once again when I am older because I must admit that I am far beyond understanding some of the themes of this book mainly because they are something that I have never had to understand, like manipulation. The theme itself is very far from me since I have never actually seen a form of manipulation this far going in my entire life, I am incapable of understanding the outcomes of this behaviour. Nevertheless, I believe this book showed me a few things that I’m not very comfortable sharing here but I believe it deserved all four stars that I gave and at one point in my life I am sure that I will take this to my hand again and I will start reading it again and I will somehow understand something completely else than what I have understood right now.
I am still very curious about Norwegian literature and if you have a less intimidating book recommendation, please leave something in the comments. Until I see you in my next post friends! 📖🌸
Luster of Books 