On Hamsun and Walter

This week I’ve been thinking about Knut Hamsun and Jess Walter, two of my favorite writers. I continue to learn by reading Hamsun’s work, especially the incredible, strange, offputting little novel called Hunger; Walter is alive and well, his output growing stronger with every effort. For the purposes of this entry, I’ll focus on the most recent piece of advice he offered me.

So what’s the connection between a long-deceased, politically abhorent Nobel Lauriet from Norway and a living American writer who lives and works in Spokane, Washington? Mistakes, flubs, broken promises, and reversals. Not on the part of the writers themselves. No. It’s in the characters.

This may sound exceedingly obvious at first. And in a way, I agree. Of course characters in a novel need to screw up and go against their nature. And as a reader, I possess an innate hunger for that quality in a book. But as a writer I’ve had more difficulty 1) recognizing the need for my characters to possess a quality of going against their best interest or goals and 2) injecting that quality into the book.

And after my conversation with Jess, I realize why. For so long I’ve written and thought about my novel as if it were a mathematical proof. I have ideas about the characters, what they desire, how they want to navigate the trials I toss their way, and the writing itself becomes a way to make good on those characteristics. For example, if Anson thinks of himself as an academic, he’ll find a way into the basement reading room of the library. If he wants to be kind to his brother, he’ll be kind to his brother. Proof. Wham! See my characters? They’re just as promised.

It’s clear where this is going, so I’ll skip ahead one step: isn’t the intentional interjection of error, &c. just as mathematical and calculated as the opposite problem, which I’m trying to overcome? I don’t believe so, and I’ll tell you why (since you’ve asked so nicely): When the writer proves his characters motivations through action, there’s a limited scope of what can come to pass in the novel, and the reader can see what’s coming from a chapter away. If the character’s flaws drive much of the action, both the writer and the reader can remain surprised. Anson is headed to Marcus’s house to reconcile their recent fight, but he doesn’t make it there. Where does he end up instead? The error smacks of variation whereas the proof (Anson shows up and begs forgiveness) is flat, expected, preconceived.

Hamsun is a master at harnassing the vicissitudes of his characters. Take the scene in the third part of Hunger, in which the desperate, starving narrator receives a handful of money from the clerk of a grocery store who mistakenly (?) gives him change for a bill that wasn’t his. The entire novel up to this point is consumed with the narrator’s search for money and food, and here he’s given exactly what he’s wanted? And what does he do? Immediately purchases a steak his body can’t handle (“The food began to take effect, it gave me great pain and I wasn’t allowed to keep it for very long. I emptied my mouth in every dark corner I passed, struggling to suppress the nausea that was hollowing me out afresh…”)[1]. And after a series of episodes in which the money becomes an increasing burden, he finally smacks the remaining sum into the hand of a cake vendor with whom he’d previously had an unpleasant encounter. And to bring the series to fullness, the narrator finally revisits the kind grocer and absolutely lays into him, furiously berating him for what the reader could be excused for calling a kindness. Hunger is arresting and unforgettable work.

And here I am trying to write a book that proves its own thesis. Bleh.

I’ll close this entry by saying that my new efforts are very much guided by these two types of advice: one from a talented and generous living author, one from the work of a celebrated master. Here’s to the persistent disasters our fine characters must face.

[1] Hunger. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Sverre Lyngstad translation. 1998. Page 114.