This is a wilful return to naïve novel-writing, where you simply describe the protagonist’s exploits minute by minute. It’s very easy-going, and doesn’t linger long enough on one scene for things to get boring. One of the blurbs describes Dyer’s writing as similar to being in the company of a new friend who is just as silly but a bit more clever than you. He gets to Venice and runs into several journalist friends. Everything is on a surface level. I don’t want to use the word ‘superficial’, because the word carries connotations that a deeper level exists. Jeff’s wanderings from party to party and on to gallery feels like the lead-in to an art-world thriller. But this is not that kind of novel. In fact it’s a love story of sorts, but – as suggested – above all it’s a couple of days wandering around in the company of Jeff. He is lightly ironic about some of the art, he meets a very attractive woman, there’s plenty of name-dropping of (real) artists and curators, a few trips by vaporetto, more galleries, and a cocaine party.

Jeff describes the trip thus in his thoughts:
“You came to Venice, you went to parties, you drank up a storm, you talked bollocks for hours on end and went back to London with a hangover …”

And when thinking about the greater importance of ambition over talent:
“The work may have been puerile, but the hunger to succeed of which it was the product and symbol was ravenous. In different historical circumstances any number of these artists could have seized control of the Reichstag or ruled Cambodia with unprecedented ruthlessness.”

To me it feels like watching a seventies TV serial, where you catch a glimpse into life in the fast lane, where everyone is beautiful, there is casual sex with no fear of AIDS, everyone offers a drink at any time of the day, and every time a character turns a corner he’ll by chance run into someone he knows. I suppose this sounds a bit dismissive, but I fact it’s a pleasure to read this account which is not trying to hide things, but, in keeping so close to Jeff’s moment by moment experiences may well prompt the reader to pose the questions which don’t occur to Jeff himself.

At one point, when the narrative builds up tension about whether there will be free risotto, Jeff voices some thoughts that sound harshly critical of such shallowness. But a few pages later the story of the free risotto, and whether there was any at all, crops up again as a source of much wit and fun. I kept feeling that new depths would be revealed. Jeff is in his mid-forties, the reader might suspect the constant partying and hob-nobbing is beginning to jade him. And it does jade him, but not to any great existential level.

He describes a party on board a boat:
“all the people aboard were part of the international art crowd, intellectuals, artists, connoisseurs and appreciators of the fine things in life – which meant basically that everyone wanted to drink champagne and snort coke.”

And so it goes. In the second half you travel with Jeff to Varanasi, and see the funeral pyres and ghats and have narrow escapes from pickpockets. I kept waiting for Laura to re-enter the story and the plot to resume. After dozens of pages I realised the narrator of this trip remains unnamed and seems to be older than Jeff in Venice. Presumably it’s Jeff a few years later. I was a bit annoyed at this ambiguity, which sent me searching back through the text to see if I had missed some obvious pointer.

(Incidentally Jeff vividly describes the Ganges View hotel where he is staying. The real author Geoff has an article in The Guardian where he also describes this hotel. I came across it be chance when I googled the name.) Jeff is an affable travel companion, it’s hard to dislike him. Some readers however will get bored with the journey and check out early.

But what to make of the blurbs by some famous literary writers? I’m genuinely confused. It’s not a bad novel, it’s fun and a kind of male equivalent of chick lit. But chick lit novels don’t usually have accolades such as “rare voices in contemporary literature” “this is serious fiction” “a post-modern Kingsley Amis” “a national treasure”.

The novel + blurb combo poses questions about the literary world and how it operates. What are these writers doing lavishing such high praise? Very few novels have such a battery of support. Maybe Geoff has written weightier novels and they are throwing in their support of this new work.

If Jeff took a three-day visit to the literary world he would no doubt poke fun at it, but without getting seriously annoyed.

The account plunges deeper and deeper into the subjectivity of the moment. Each individual reader will draw on their own concepts to make sense of what is happening to the narrator. I myself might put it: He loses grasp of any socially-constructed understanding of the self. He becomes a man with no history and no name. He is like an engine which has become disengaged from the vehicle, and spins making much noise and vibration. Any engagement with the world will be arbitrary – he might become a grocer’s assistant or might starve or might get thrown in jail.

He gets physically weaker and his thoughts are out of kilter. Pages are spent delineating the narrator’s sleepless nights and manias and vomiting and delirium.

A couple of incidental notes: Nobody seems to be afraid of the narrator, even though his behaviour borders on frenzied. The girl he meets, the stallholders, the man on the bench – none seemed to feel physically threatened by this young man so clearly “off his head”. In the city where I am now, daily life in public is circumscribed by fear. People are aware of dangerous areas, there is a frisson of fear each time a beggar is a little too obtrusive, security guards stand at the doors of every Centra. I have no idea whether modern Dublin has a higher violent crime rate than 1890s Oslo, but the fear level is certainly higher.

Another point is the narrator’s annoyance with disrespect from a servant. She has figured out he is poverty-stricken and cheekily asks if it was him she saw picking his teeth on the steps of the Grand Hotel. Although the narrator loses most of his sense of self, he knows he is definitely not a servant.

Such concepts as fairness, nobility, and pride still animate the narrator. He himself does not question the existence of values and ideals and a background notion of nobility. This text is far far distant from the naturalism of his USA contemporary Stephen Crane.

One possible reading is that pride, art, awe and joy are irreducible. But these abstractions find expression in the pulse and pain of every second of daily life. We live out these ideas.

Whatever else he may be, Knut’s hungry man is not the product of circumstance.

Knut’s Hunger had to wait over a hundred years until 1996 for a proper, generally-praised translation. In an appendix, the translator of the depicted edition, Sverre Lyngstad, discusses the two previous translations. There is a bowdlerised rendering from 1899, and a 1967 translation by Robert Bly.
Lyngstad pours such contempt on the latter that Robert Bly must have gone out back and chopped through a few dozen logs: “It looks as though the translator was either unaware of these difficulties or decided to produce his own text, using Hamsun’s original as a mere pretext for undertaking an independent creation.”

The Victorian era translation is avilable here:

http://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/Hunger-by-Knut-Hamsun.pdf?utm_content=buffer7a120&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

We get the background on Patrick before he moved into the boarding house. He left his home town because of a failed relationship with his girlfriend. When his mother comes to visit she is full of chat and gets on well with the landlady and boarders. But Patrick resents every second of her presence. He hides in his room to have a few minutes away from her. The reader is suspended in ambiguity and searches in vain for some hint that Patrick’s resentment is justified. By all appearances she seems an ordinary mother.

And so it goes: we witness even Patrick’s own actions without knowing what emotion underlies them. Most likely none. He kills his fellow boarder in an impulsive action and afterwards feels sure that others will recognise the act as an accident. An accident in the way one might absent-mindedly pick at a scab and suddenly realise there’s blood.

But we are deeply embedded in Patrick’s world, and it is possible that this is the real one, and that motives and guilt are just a load of talk. Patrick has no explanation for what happened, and doesn’t dwell on it apart from thinking how stupid he has been. But he seems to comprehend with his whole body the significance of the killing: he gets short of breath and vomits. He loses weight. And as is typical for this narrative, it is not clear whether this stems from unexpressed guilt or whether it is dread of the future.

Like Hume’s project of introspection which failed to discover any necessary connection between cause and effect, the whole novel is a close observation which fails to find a necessary connection between motive and act. The motivation is constructed after the act. This is a pared-down world. On a critical note, it is consistent that the narrative conforms to Patrick’s narrowed-down awareness of the world about him. But occasionally other characters speak in a limited way, lacking light-heartedness or spontaneity. It could be argued that Patrick’s account omits any such vividness/irony/insight on the part of others because he simply would fail to notice it. For me however these were moments when I felt in an artificial world.

Patrick certainly is not at home in his body or comfortable with touch. He comes across as malformed. His instincts are askew. The usual concepts of psychology cannot be easily applied to him. Yet he is human for all that.

The novel is breath-taking in its consistency as a project. It’s hard to discern authorial motive – the author’s purpose in subjecting the reader to this experience. Though the narrative forces the reader to keep turning the pages, this is far from entertainment.

The novel seems to be destined to trail off as a day-by-day account of prison life, but then opens out to new perspectives at the end.