Business of a modern type has arrived, and
much of the quiet humor displayed in these the latest and maturest of
Hamsun's works springs from the spectacle of its influence on the
natives, whose hands used always to be in their pockets, and whose
credulity in face of the improbable was only surpassed by their
unwillingness to believe anything reasonable. Still the life he
pictures is largely primitive, with nature as man's chief antagonist,
and to us of the crowded cities it brings a charm of novelty rarely
found in books today. With it goes an understanding of human nature
which is no less deep-reaching because it is apt to find expression in
whimsical or flagrantly paradoxical forms.
Hamsun has just celebrated his sixtieth birthday anniversary. He is as
strong and active as ever, burying himself most of the time on his
little estate in the heart of the country that has become to such a
peculiar extent his own. There is every reason to expect from him works
that may not only equal but surpass the best of his production so far.
But even if such expectations should prove false, the body of his work
already accomplished is such, both in quantity and quality, that he must
perforce be placed in the very front rank of the world's living writers.
To the English-speaking world he has so far been made known only through
the casual publication at long intervals of a few of his books:
"Hunger," "Fictoria" and "Shallow Soil" (rendered in the list above as
"New Earth").
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