The Tramp at Piraeus (1971), in: V.S. Naipaul, In A Free State (1971), p. 7-20

A short story by Eugenides in the New Yorker called Great Experiment, March 31, 2008. Eugenides wrote his second novel Middlesex, which won the Pullitzer Prize in 2002. Great Experiment starts horrendously with a mater of fact description of Kendall, who complains in common phrases about his job, introducing Piasecki with a dialog about contemporary politics, and thereby the literary tone of the story is immediately, imminently adulterated, raped, ruined. The second half of the short story elevates the story a little bit off the ground, but the story is of such mediocre quality that I am shocked to see it published in the New Yorker. I was about to pick up Middlesex, was demoralized for a few moments, but have regained some discipline and self-induced motivation to give the book a try, hoping it will be much better than a rushed short story.

Anais Nin, House of Incest (1958) 54p.

Knut Hamsun, The Wanderer (Translated 1975) 252p.

Knut Hamsun, Mysteries (1892) 348p.

Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) 164p.

Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn (1939) 348p.

Knut Hamsun, Hunger (1890) 243p.

I read this book as a literary heritage leading via Strindberg’s Inferno and Alone, Andre Breton’s Nadja, to Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, placed in a context of thought of Nietzsche and Stirner’s The Ego and His Own, and this line of autobiographical fiction is the zenith of the 19th century’s romantic hero turned inward genius, which is one of my favorite genres. But Hunger certainly stands out for its early expression of this type. Where Miller rejects society, the antagonist of Hunger is rejected. The same type of character can be seen in Beckett’s First Love, but never as original and authentic as in Hamsun.

There’s a foreword of Paul Auster in the edition I read from 1970. Auster later wrote Brooklyn Follies in which the antagonist seeks an escape from the anxieties of bourgeois life, ending in Hotel X, but Auster’s escape is a false dreamy rejection of a middle class product to escape his own boredom, Hunger’s rejection is driven by bitterness and pride by experience, and the torture of an artist who is spit out by that middle class, that Auster returns to. There’s nothing soothing about Hunger, but instead is resigned to the artist’s last resort, one self, and the hunger to write.