"The Smoker"

Tribute to Ol Dirty Bastard

 I have wanted to write something in tribute to Ol Dirty for a while now. There is much that can be said, but my typical scholarly essay seems like an ill fitting tribute to such a man; it would probably be much better to get as drunk as possible and try to live more fearlessly for a night in his honour. But in my usual fashion, I will multiply absurdity by trying to capture some of the qualities of this great man in cumbersome, orderly prose, and through this strange dialectic of the free and the constrained hopefully arrive at something not quite worthless. I must write mostly about the art that Ol Dirty gave to us, and the Ol Dirty who we came to know through this art, which cannot possibly express the whole truth about such a complex man. Though he seemed to share so much of himself with the public, we can be sure that behind such a great comic force there was also great tragedy and depth, which we will never fully appreciate or understand. We must also talk about his drug use and troubles with the law, for his madness and excesses became a part of his music, his persona, and the lessons he taught us. Everything is written in the spirit of tribute, to honour someone full of life and laughter who shared a lot with us, but a man's dark side must also be considered and honoured in its turn, so we will not shy away from the destructive or nihilistic aspects of his music and life.

We first hear Ol Dirty on the Wu Tang Clan's first album, Enter the Wu: 36 Chambers. He only appears on 4 songs, but immediately stands out for his unorthodox delivery, occasional singing or screaming, and strange lyrics. Anyone who has listened to the album will remember “First things first man your fucking with the worst I be sticking pins in your head like a fucking nurse”, “ do you wanna get your teeth knocked the fuck out??” and of course his verse on “Da mystery of Chessboxin” where he adds sound effects and introduces Ghostface Killah with a lengthy, melodic scream. Where other members were aggressive and lyrical, Ol Dirty was half comic half insane, with “no father to his style”. It was obvious that he could rap as skillfully as any of the other members, but chose to joke, to play around, to sing if he felt like it. From the beginning he personified a sort of reckless freedom, a rare ability to “be himself” when he rapped and not attempt to impress or imitate anyone. While many of the other Wu members' rap styles evolved over the years as they became more comfortable as poets, Ol Dirty never did and never needed to. His style was already fully formed, he naturally embodied the trickster, ready to unleash the unpredictable, the bizarre, the comic. When he was given the chance to record his own album, it must have been obvious that the product would be one of the funniest ever recorded.

Return to the 36 Chambers: the Dirty version, has a cover featuring a bewildered looking ODB staring out from the ID photo on an “Identification card for food coupons and/or public assistance”. No angry pose, no pen and pixel cars and money, just a welfare ID card with his picture. The album begins with Russel Jones introducing Ol Dirty Bastard, who proceeds to tearfully recount being burnt by gonorrhoea twice, breaks into singsong poetry, and then says he was “just kidding y'all, listen to the album cause its bangin!”. The next track is the classic “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”, where Ol Dirty states “Give me the mic so I can take it away, off on a natural charge, bon voyage”, and he does take us on a journey, to unknown territory left uncovered by any rapper or musician before him. His “chamber” of music is a kind of experimental vocal jazz, where what seem like crude or inappropriate forms of expression are used to share real feelings and explore new realms. Naturally RZA provides the perfect musical backdrop for Ol Dirty's inspired flow, which ranges from deranged battle rap to all out screaming and singing. The combination of his voice, flow and lyrics adds up to a strong creativity, a crazy drunken style that allows for the same honest and comedic expression that anyone who drinks knows well. Easily excited, unpredictable, quick to tell a dirty story or rap to the ladies, the Ol Dirty Bastard of this first album really does seem drunk. Highlights include his experiments with breath control at the beginning of “Goin' Down”, when he goes from croaking to full powerful song in the span of one breath, his unique take on a classic soul song “Sweet Sugar Pie”, and his verse on “Snakes”, where after several inspired verses by others, Dirty opens with “Bad bad Leroy Brown, baddest man in the whole damn town” and still somehow steals the show. By the albums end we are laughing at Ol Dirty's lyrical games, but also come away with the feeling that we ourselves are living in a limited, fearful way, unable to really express ourselves in the way that ODB does effortlessly. The album inspires a certain restless feeling, a wish to let go of fears and start living spontaneously whatever the cost. It has a certain manic, dark quality, but I always feel like in the end it is an uplifting album, for it inspires laughter and transmits a feeling of freedom.

From the success of his first album, and of course the success of Wu Tang as a whole, came fame and fortune for Dirty. He appeared sparingly on other Wu Tang solo projects and on the groups second album “Wu Tang Forever”, often absent from recording sessions because of an increasingly hectic life. If we really know anything about the man through his music, it can be assumed that he ventured unafraid into the land of excess, chasing drugs and women and following his every whim. The most telling incident from this time period was when Ol Dirty jumped on stage at the Grammy's, snatched the mic, and made a speech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENQ9qbUVdg4

It is this sort of unscripted comedy that made Ol Dirty somewhat of a genius. Reckless but still somehow charming, his declaration that "Wu Tang is for the children" still rings true. His second studio album was recorded in a more haphazard fashion than his first, and expresses a more mature debauchery, a chaotic and spirited attempt to express the highs and lows of life as Ol Dirty Bastard. There is an interesting religious theme to the album, indeed Ol Dirty claimed he was changing his name to “Big Baby Jesus” shortly before it was released. The album cover shows a ridiculously dressed, bearded Dirty looking skyward with a wistful expression.

The chorus of the second track goes

“Big Baby Jesus

I Cant Wait

Nigga Fuck That

I Cant Wait”

repeated in frantic fashion, and the effect is jarring. Is ODB unable to wait for the salvation of the return or resurrection, extorting us to live for the moment instead? Is he labelling himself a Jesus like figure, ecstatic to take in the sins of the world and express the result artistically? Or is he laughing at us? Even by the end of the song, when ODB issues some strange shoutouts, we can't be sure.

“I want to give a shoutout to um,um, what's them niggas, Outkast
I want to give a shoutout to them crazy niggas in parts of the world that I never been to. I want to give a shoutout to the Eskimos. I want to give a shoutout to the submarines, I want to give a shoutout to the army, navy, air force marines, know what I'm saying? Y'all playing my music in the submarines, in the boats. Play that shit know what I'm saying? It's called travelling music, busting ya ass style”

The album has a more upbeat, poppy sound than his first, probably due to the influence of the Neptunes, who provide much of the production. Dirty is still as entertaining as ever, screaming out his lyrics, filling his verses with ridiculous statements that encompass the insane, the hilarious, and the ingenious. While his first album seemed inspired by drunkenness, this album feels like the peak of a powerful drug high; bursting with irrational confidence, exuberant, and utterly out of control. As ODB screams on the track "Nigga Please"

"I'm Immune to all viruses

I get the cocaine, it cleans out my sinuses!"

and later states

"I kill all the government microchips in my body

I'm the paranoid nigga

At your party"

The energy and irrepressible spirit of his first album is only magnified on his second, but there are hints of trouble to come. The album is far more uneven that his first, with a few lacklustre tracks. There are many references to cocaine and paranoia, mostly in jest, but still suggestive. It appears that Russell Jones had become Ol Dirty Bastard, joining his life and his music into a lived art. He simply expresses himself to the beat and a song is formed, raw and unpolished but perfect in its own way. One gets a sense of effortlessness from many of the tracks, as if they were recorded in very few takes. There is a brutal honesty in Ol Dirty's lyrics and flow. On "I Want Pussy" he repeats "I want pussy, for free", yelling it louder and louder before he begins rhyming. He appears to have no shame, no fear of sanction or judgement, and seems to completely embrace his way of living. There is no sense of an attempt to be something or to create something. Ol Dirty is Ol Dirty and this is what he does. In an existential sense, he chose his path and never looked backwards in regret or to the side in imitation of others. We listen to this album and laugh at its recklessness and disregard for convention, but it can be an uncomfortable sort of laughter. Are we taking pleasure in another man's madness? Are we chuckling at a tragic clown, doomed to express the sins of the world to the sound of our dignified applause? Ol Dirty laughs back at us, living our lives in fear of judgement, unable to express our true feelings, too scared to take the risks that bring freedom. We play this album through our headphones as we walk the streets, trying not to bump into our fellow men, laughing quietly as we try to understand exactly what Ol Dirty is trying to tell us. Is it mere entertainment? Obscure scriptures of the modern age? A tragic tale of excess and the confusion of a noble spirit lost in a stupid world? We may become lost in questioning if we do not listen to what Dirty tells us. "If I got a problem, a problem got a problem till its gone, I'm the only Unique Ason". (Rollin' wit You). There can be no questioning and no answers, only moving forward, only expression, at all costs, regardless of judgement and consequences. Like all the best kinds of comedy, the album multiplies mirth in all directions, taking on problems of confusion, misunderstanding, and our compulsion towards self destruction and giving these problems their own problem, namely spitting in their face, embracing them with a laugh and a performance that will reverberate in the hearts of others. In the tumultuous period after the release of Nigga Please, Dirty was somehow able to record an interpretation of "Sussudio" that appeared on a Phil Collins tribute album. It is a strange song, featuring use of auto-tune before the auto-tune era, but I have come to consider it one of Ol Dirty's finest works. His rhymes on this track seem carefree, almost lazy, but become uplifting in their union with the synth violins and piano. If you have never heard it before, give it a listen!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3BHZkgck2s

The next few years were cruel to Ol Dirty Bastard. He began to have more and more trouble with the law, spending time in jail for everything from drug offences to wearing a bulletproof vest (apparently illegal for felons). He was unable to contribute more than a single track to Wu Tang's next album "the W". His solo career was put on hold because of his legal troubles. Although at first he seemed undaunted by the courts and jail, even escaping one rehab facility and joining Wu Tang on stage at a concert while on the run, longer and longer prison sentences eventually took their toll. When he was released from jail for the last time he seemed changed. He still received a million dollar deal from Rocafella records and began to work on a new album. Before it could be finished Ol Dirty died of a drug overdose. Most of the tracks he recorded for the album have come to light over the years, and although they never quite capture the energy of his first albums, some of them are quite compelling. I stumbled upon the track "Wasting Time" only recently, and was amazed. Over a haunting sample of Billy Joel's "The Stranger", Dirty raps in an unfamiliar melancholy, reflective way. The chorus is particularly telling

"No more will you spit in my drink

No more will you poison me

Imma climb real high

Feel free with the thug inside

No more will I run and hide

Wasting time

No more will I chase the drugs

No more will I dodge the slugs

Imma Climb real high

feel free with the thug inside

No more will I run and hide

Wasting time"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ0HiZ5LEQw

The gentle piano and mournful whistling of the beat only make Dirty's words more powerful. This was perhaps a rare admission of weakness, an assessing of the costs of freedom. All our greatest moments of drug induced recklessness, all the laughter and jokes that come when we ignore the past and future and live fearlessly, all of this slips into nothingness as time passes. Such moments can be the greatest and rarest treasures, but they can never become the equivalent of time spent industriously working to build something lasting. There will always be a cost for every pleasure, the highest price being wasted time. Ol Dirty never seemed like he could live in moderation, neatly sampling all pleasures while also hoarding carefully for the future. He gave himself up fully to passion and expression, and was thus doomed to experience the harshest pains to balance out what must have been incredible joys. It is a testament to his artistry that he was able to express this musically, and leave us with a warning to go along with all of his encouragement to live in a fearlessly absurd manner in this absurd world. Can we even strive to emulate his way of life, a cheerful acceptance of the old, the dirty, the unwanted and the impure, a transfiguring energy that transformed ugly into beautiful and carelessness into effortless creation? Or are we already irredeemably lost here, in the midst of carefully crafted paragraphs that are too timid to express real currents of impulsive thought? Ol Dirty would not try to imitate anyone. So we should not try to imitate Ol Dirty. In Egyptian mythology Osirus was the god of the afterlife and underworld but was also a symbol of rebirth and fertility. It was from underground that new life energed, like crops bursting out of the black soil. Osirus presides over the cycle of existence, and though he was murdered and can never return to the land of the living he has eternal life. Ol Dirty was never afraid to preside over the underground of the psyche, indeed within dead darkness he found life affirming sparks of joy, laughter and freedom. He lived his life as a dead man, reckless and unafraid, and so was able to truly live, and find his measure of eternal life as a symbol of hope for all of us in the land of the living who are really dead under the weight of our fears and logical obligations. 

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Thoughts on "Against Nature" or "A rebours"

I am back again. I wish to write about Against Nature, which stands in interesting contrast to Hunger. This book deals not with the suffering of poverty, of many unfulfilled wishes, but its opposite, the pain of satiety, of a man sick of all the possible pleasures the world can offer. While Hunger is a semi autobiographical work, Against Nature, which describes in detail the strange solitary pursuits of the reclusive French nobleman Des Esseintes, was written by Joris-Karl Huysmans, a humble civil servant, in 1874. In Hunger dreams and creative thinking are born out of physical suffering and serve as a distraction and tool for survival. In Against Nature they arise out of a desperate wish for escape from the mundane realities of life and ordinary pleasures. Both books demonstrate for us the cycle of attempted escape from the world through new schemes and fantasies, and the cruel fall back down to the confusion and baseness of reality.

The plot of Against Nature is extremely straightforward. The young Des Esseintes, a sickly, dreamy boy educated at a Jesuit school, marked by their religion but too much of an independent spirit to accept it, inherits his parents fortune and attempts to squander it in the usual manner among his contemporaries. He can find nothing in common with anyone around him, finds their pleasures dull and pale. The old nobility, “endlessly repeating insipid monologues and immemorial phrases. The fleur de lis, which you find if you cut the stalk of a fern, was apparently also the only thing that remained impressed on the softening pulp inside these ancient skulls”. Other students of religious schools "docile, good-looking ninnies, congenital dunces who had worn their masters patience thin, but had none the less satisfied their desire to send pious, obedient creatures out into the world”. Students of pubic schools, “less hypocritical and more adventurous, but no more interesting....their debauchery struck him as being base and facile, entered into without discrimination or desire, indeed without any real stirring of the blood or stimulation of the nerves” He comes to realize that there is no hope “of linking up with a mind which, like his own, took pleasure in a life of studious decrepitude”. I guess this “studious decrepitude” is one of the guiding themes of the book, for after giving up on the society around him, Des Esseintes sells his ancestral home, buys a small manor on the outskirts of Paris, and begins to furnish it in such a way that he can retreat from the world to pursue his strange passions.

From here the book becomes a sort of guidebook for the perverse, misanthropic intellectual. Some of Des Esseintes' pleasures are eccentricities reserved for the wealthy, such as a short lived diamond encrusted tortoise, collections of exotic perfumes and liqueurs that he uses to compose symphonies of smell and taste, and a collection of tropical plants. But he takes most of his enjoyment from novels, poems, and paintings, which inspire strange fancies in his sickly mind and send him off on secret reveries. The novel describes these works in great detail and it becomes a sort of hymn to the dreamy, sinister, obscure masterpieces through the ages. Though we are the very bourgeoisie boors that he detests, we can, as is our class custom, steal his cultured selections for our own muted enjoyment. Anyone who reads this far might be assumed to harbour some of Des Esseintes' secret diseases in their heart, and will find some escape and new realms of dream and nightmare in these works

Petronious' Satryricon: The antidote to all the high flown philosophy and epic poems we usually read from the ancients. “This realistic novel, this slice cut from Roman life in the raw, with no thought, whatever people may say, of reforming or satirizing society, and no need to fake a conclusion or point a moral; this story with no plot or action in it, simply relating the erotic adventures of certain sons of Sodom....without any comment whatever, without a word of approval or condemnation of his characters' thoughts and actions, the vices of a decrepit civilization, a crumbling empire” In this novel “the society of the day has its fling- depraved ruffians, out for what they can get, unnatural old men with their gowns tucked up and their cheeks plastered with rouge, catamites of sixteen, plump and curly headed, women having hysterics, legacy hunters offering their boys and girls to gratify the lust of the rich testators, all of these and more scurry across the pages of the Satyricon, squabbling in the streets, fingering one another in the baths, beating one another up like characters in a pantomime”

I have read this on Des Esseintes' recommendation and can assure you that it deserves his high praise.

Find it here:

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=5611

Gustave Moreau: “This mystical pagan, this illuminee who could shut out the modern world so completely as to behold, in the heart of present day Paris, the awful visions and magical apotheoses of other ages....downcast and sorrowful, haunted by the symbols of superhuman passions and superhuman perversities, of divine debauches perpetrated without enthusiasm and without hope...his sad and scholarly works breathed a strange magic”

Salome: 

The Apparition: 

Bresdin: Comedy of Death

Jean Luyken: 

Goya: 

Odilon Redon: 

Mallarme “A wonderfully condensed style, an essence of literature, a sublimate of art”

Verlaine “his originality lay above all in his ability to communicate deliciously vague confidences in a whisper in the twilight. He alone had posessed the secret of hinting at certain strange spiritual aspirations, of whispering certain thoughts...so softly, so quietly, so haltingly that the ear that caught them was left hesitating, and passed on to the soul a languor made more pronounced by the vagueness of these words that were guessed at rather than heard.”

Edmond de Goncourt “dream inducing suggestiveness...beneath the printed line lurked another line visible only to the soul, indicated by an epithet that opened up vast vistas of passion, by a reticence that hinted at spiritual infinities no other idiom could compass”

Baudelaire,”He had descended to the bottom of the inexhaustible mine, had picked his way along abandoned or unexplored galleries, and had finally reached those districts of the soul where the monstrous vegetation of the sick mind flourish.”

Poe “with awful fascination he dwelt on the effects of terror, on the failures of will power, and discussed them with clinical objectivity, making the readers flesh creep...at the recital of these mechanically devised nightmares of a fevered brain”

He sleeps all day, rises at dusk, and spends his waking hours in art induced dreams, re reading his favourite works, studying his paintings, spraying perfumes or sipping drinks that also serve to draw him into strange worlds of fantasy. The art and literature that Huysmans' exhaustively catalogues is all worth investigating. We can make ourselves subtle and misunderstood with the help of a few handy paintings and books. All seem to contain “feverish desire for the unknown, the unsatisfied longing for an ideal, the craving to escape from the horrible realities of life, to cross the frontiers of thought, to grope after a certainty, albeit without finding one, in the misty upper regions of art”. All of them allow some escape from the banalities of life, find some black humour in pointing out its absurdities, and all of them ultimately reflect the brooding, melancholy character of anyone who tries to think too deeply about existence. Yet all these works of art are spoken about with a reverence that is not often found, and this reverence elevates the novel from a character portrait into something more. Of course our hero is also in turmoil, trying to find peace in solitude but only becoming entangled in his own riddles. Des Esseintes turns away from the world with an almost religious resignation, collects religious writing and artifacts, but is far too jaded to simply allow grace to shine into his heart. He interprets and twists everything according to his sick disposition.

“The belief that man is an irresolute creature pulled this way and that by two forces of equal strength, alternately winning and losing the battle for his soul, the conviction that human life is nothing more than an uncertain struggle between heaven and hell; the faith in two opposed entities, Satan and Christ- all this was bound to engender those internal discords in which the soul, excited by the incessant fighting, stimulated as it were by the constant promises and threats, ends up by giving in and prostitutes itself to whichever of the two combatants has been the more obstinate in its pursuit” (161)

As the novel goes on, Des Esseintes becomes physically ill, quickly weakens, and is told by his doctor that the only cure is to give up his solitary life and pleasures for a return to the city. Near death, he gives in to the doctors wishes, and begins to rage against the society that he must return to.

“After the aristocracy of birth, it was now the turn of the aristocracy of wealth, the caliphate of the counting house...the tyranny of commerce with its narrow minded, venal ideas, its selfish, rascally instincts.

More cunning and contemptible than the impoverished aristocracy and the discredited clergy, the bourgeoisie borrowed their frivolous love of show and their old world arrogance, which it cheapened through its own lack of taste, and stole their natural defects, which it turned into hypocritical vices. Overbearing and underhand in behaviour, base and cowardly in character, it ruthlessly shot down its perennial dupe, the mob, which it had previously unmuzzled and sent flying at the throats of the old castes.

Now it was all over. Once it had done its job, the plebs had been bled white in the interests of public hygiene, while the jovial bourgeois lorded it over the country, putting his trust in the power of his money and the contagiousness of his stupidity. The result of his rise to power had been the supression of all intelligence, the negation of all honesty, the destruction of all art; in fact, artists and writers in all their degradation had fallen on their knees and were covering with ardent kisses the stinking feet of the high placed jobbers and low bred satraps on whose charity they depended for a living. ....The bourgeois were guzzling like picnickers from paper bags among the imposing ruins of the Church- ruins which had become a place of assignation, a pile of debris defiled by unspeakable jokes and scandalous jests...could it be that this slime would go on spreading until it covered with its pestilential filth this old world where now only seeds of iniquity sprang up and only harvests of shame were gathered?”

This sort of writing is the chief attraction of the book. There are few tirades in all literature equal in eloquence and venom. Now, I, this middle class lout of the future, find myself in yet another peculiar comedic situation. Undoubtedly some of Huysmans' writing here is ironic, for Des Esseintes is a sort of over the top Type, decadent to the point of absurdity. At times the author is having a laugh at his expense, such as when his tortoise with the gold and diamond shell almost immediately drops dead, or when he decides after reading Dickens to travel to London only to visit the local English pub and quickly return home. But there is undoubtedly some honest venom against the ignorant of the day, and the novels and paintings are described with an honest love that cannot be mere satire. Huysmans is perhaps escaping his own mundanities by writing about this ridiculous, exaggerated escape artist of the soul, and we as readers are seeking perhaps to escape as well or perhaps only to paint ourselves with a thin veneer of put-on melancholy and false intellectual depth. Des Esseintes is a challenge to us aspiring appreciators of fine literature and art, for can we really feel as deeply as he does the sensations the artist tries to evoke in us, can we really immerse ourselves as deeply in the false world that art attempts to create? It is strange in a way that Des Esseintes is not a writer himself, does not attempt to emulate any of those he admires. Perhaps the greatest artist does not share his work, perhaps through the inspiration of others he sends his soul into solitary worlds of dual origin where only he is worthy of perceiving the unspeakable beauty of what lies within. This is truly an act of love, to take what another has created and to join with it in spirit to enter into a new realm never seen again before or after. But of course the old joke is always lurking. We cannot escape. The quest ends in failure, in a forced return to the dreaded society. And what exactly were we thinking when we tried to escape? My own dreams proved oh so pale compared to the crude jokes and strivings of those around me, who were only trying to show me the true path. Even such a great dreamer as Des Esseintes finds his fantasies shattered in the end. Us, who dream in black and white and barely feel or remember the meaning, must depend on others to provide us with true emotions, true thoughts, the highest of art in my experience. The simplest night of joking with friends can sometimes stand above the subtlest tome. Or perhaps I have gone horribly wrong. Why am I writing here alone to no one? About this book? Trying to read again all these authors that themselves do not know the end of the lonely path we seekers stumble down, drunk on the dead dreams of other deviants. I will keep rambling until I realize that I have fulfilled my random requirement, to find in this book the absurd life I preach, the love for art and strangeness that allows us to escape for a while, and of course the laughter echoing from all sides, the spittle coming out of the gullets of the healthy and raining down upon us.

Here....

Thoughts on "Hunger" by Knut Hamsun

a scene from the 1966 film

I read this strange book for the first time last year, and finding myself back in the same place with the same familiar bookshelf, this was the first novel I wanted to re read. I have not been doing too much reading lately, and of course one of my first reactions to such a powerful work filled with life and vital thoughts is to look down upon my own writing with disgust. Fortunately for me I have always kept this great quote of Goethe's in mind ever since I first read it in Hegel: “for the great superiorities of others there is no remedy but love”. 

Perhaps the reason why Hunger could spawn feelings of inferiority in the reader is because it describes a situation that most pampered modern people are totally ignorant of. It is a matter of fact, first person account of “walking around starving in Christiania” (p.3). Christiania is now called Oslo, and the author, Knut Hamsun, actually did spend most of 1879 living in poverty in this city. The novel is not a mere work of imagination, it is more like notes on a cruel experiment conducted by God or fate, where in precise detail the subject describes the effects of starvation on his perceptive, strange, incredibly strong spirit that refuses to submit and die silently. In this situation, going without food for days on end, most of us would be utterly broken, either turning to the most desperate of crimes or lying silently waiting for death. The narrator has an almost superhuman strength, his ability to rise above pain and still laugh and joke and dream within himself places him beyond our mundane everyday realm of comprehension. But he is also stubborn, proud, and willfully self destructive, a powerful consciousness that sometimes must test its mettle in battle against itself. His strength is constantly pushed close to breaking, and the narrator is often nearly a madman, raging against the suffering that he can never quite understand or escape from:

“What in the hell is going on that a man has to turn himself into a living freak out of sheer hunger? I felt rage one more time, its final flaring up, like a muscular spasm...Here I was walking around with a better head than anyone else in the country, and a pair of fists that could, so help me God, grind a longshoreman into small bits, into powder, and i was becoming a freak from hunger in the middle of the city of Christiania! Was there any sense or reason in that? I had slept in the harness and worked day and night like a minister's mare, I had read till my eyes fell out of their sockets, and starved my hairs out of my head- and in hell's name, what for? Even whores on the street fled so as not to have to look at me. But now that was going to stop- do you hear me-stop, and hell take the whole thing.....With steadily increasing rage, I ground my teeth in despair, and with sobs and oaths I went on and roared wildly, paying no attention to the people going by. I started once more to punish my flesh, ran my forehead deliberately against lampposts, drove my fingernails deep into the backs of my hands, bit my tongue madly every time it failed to pronounce clearly and then laughed wildly whenever I caused a fairly good pain”

What a mixture of bravado, rage, and sheer misery! Such outbursts never last for long though, and he is soon following a new chain of thoughts and plans, always distracting himself from utter despair with his powers of observation and his creativity, never looking far enough into the probable future to give up entirely.

The parameters of the plot are simple. Throughout the entire novel, the narrator is completely penniless, searching desperately for 5 or 10 kroner (just a few dollars), that will bring respite for a few days from starvation and the threat of homelessness. He attempts to make his money as a writer, carrying around pencil and papers everywhere and fighting against the strange reveries and moods that his gnawing hunger brings in a desperate struggle to put some sense down on the page that can be sold, that will not end up in the editors waste basket “that looked as if it could swallow a man, bones and all. I felt sad, looking at this monstrous maw, this dragon, mouth always open, ready to receive more rejected articles, newly crushed hopes.” (119) In the course of the entire book he only makes money this way once, but he is constantly trying to write, struggling with all his might against physical pain and mental fog that never seems to break completely, sitting in the park or standing under a street lamp at night writing because he cannot afford a candle to use inside. Sometimes he is inspired and works joyfully, other times he desperately attempts to force the issue:

“I took out the manuscript and resolved firmly that I would finish the last three or four scenes; I meditated and sweated and read everything over from the beginning, but the speeches would not come. No rot now! I said, no hoity-toity stuff here! And I started to write blindly where I had broken off, I simply wrote down everything that occurred to me, just to get the play done in a hurry and get it over with. I tried to assure myself that I was experiencing a new creative mood, I lied to my own face, defrauded myself openly, and wrote on headlong as if I didn’t even need to look for the right word. This is good! I've really hit on something here! I kept whispering to myself, just get it all down! But the last speeches I had put down began to seem suspicious to me finally-they were in such stark contrast to the earlier scenes......I snapped my pencil off between my teeth, leaped up, tore my manuscript in two, ripped every page of it to shreds, threw my hat down on the street and jumped on it. “I am a lost man!” I whispered to myself. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am a lost man!” And I repeated that over and over as I went on jumping on my hat” (224)

Scenes like this capture the interplay of the comic and tragic in this book. One cannot help but laugh at such a scene, perfectly described even in translation, but the reader also feels the real despair, knows the terrible cost that these failures extract.

The rest of the time our hero is wandering the streets with no determined purpose, simply rambling around thinking thoughts that are close to madness, embarking on fantastical chains of association, obeying strange unconscious whims, observing the life around him with a sharp perceptiveness. His creative mind is both his salvation and his undoing. He is able to leave behind tormenting feelings of hunger to embark on strange mental voyages, transcending the pain and humiliation of his situation.

Not a sound came to disturb me- the soft dark had hidden the whole world from me, and buried me in a wonderful peace- only the desolate voice of stillness sounded monotonously in my ear. And the dark monsters out there wanted to pull me to themselves as soon as night came, and they wanted to take me far far over seas and through strange lands where no human being lives. And they wanted to bring me to Princess Ylayali's castle, where an undreamed of happiness was waiting for me, greater than any persons. And she herself would be sitting in a blazing room all of whose walls were amethyst, on a throne of yellow roses, and she would reach her hands out to me when I entered, greet me, and cry “Welcome” as I came near to her, and kneeled: “Welcome, O knight, to me and to my land! I have been waiting twenty summers for you, and have called your name every bright summer night, and when you were in grief I wept here, and when you slept I breathed marvellous dreams into your head...” And the beautiful creature took my hand as I rose, and led me on through long corridors where huge crowds of people shouted Hurrah, through sunlit orchards where three hundred young girls were playing and laughing, and into another chamber made all of brilliant emerald. The sun shone into it, choral music floated through the galleries and halls towards me, perfumed air moved over me. I held her hand in mine, and felt a mad occult delight shoot through my blood; I put my arms around her and she whispered “ Not here, come farther in!” So we walked into the red chamber all of whose walls were ruby- an overwhelming joy which made me faint. Then I felt her arms around me, she breathed in my face, whispering: “Welcome now, my sweet! Kiss me! Again....again....”

I had fallen asleep where I lay....I sat up, ruthlessly called back to life and misery (69)

(unhhh....maybe not quite how he pictured it, but you get the idea)

His dreams make us wish to perhaps starve as he does if it may bring us to such wondrous lands. Yet his strong will and bubbling impulses thwart his quest for money and shelter on many occasions. He stumbles onto money that would buy him his first meal of the day only to throw it away in a fit of anger or charity. This impossible puzzle of his character is what gives the book its black humour. He recognizes the absurdity of his situation, but sometimes takes positive pleasure in causing himself pain, describing these episodes in a voice unlike any other in literature. He is accidentally given someone elses change by a store clerk, but his conscience torments him into giving it away to a poor old cake seller. Days later he encounters her while starving as usual, and attempts to claim his gift back in cakes.

I didn’t give a damn if those coins I gave her were from the devil's private stock, or good honest hunks of silver from the Kongsberg mine! Enough is enough, a man can die, you know, from too much pride...

I walked over to the corner, took aim at the woman, and drew up in front of her. I smiled, nodded as though we were friends, and chose my words to give the impression that my return was very much a matter of course. “Good afternoon!” I said. “Perhaps you don’t recognize me this time?”

“No,” the woman answered slowly. “I don’t think I do.” She looked at me.

I smiled still more, as if to say her not recognizing me was one of her rare little jokes. I said, “Don't you remember, I gave you a whole pile of kroner one day? On that occasion I said nothing, as I recall, I don’t believe I did- I usually don’t in those situations. When one is dealing with honourable people, I have always found there is no need really to write everything down and, so to speak, sign a contract for every little thing. Ha-ha. Yes, I'm the one who handed you the money”

“Well, well, was that you! Yes, now I recognize you again, now that I think about it....”

I didn’t want her to start thanking me for the money, so I broke in quickly, my eyes already roving over her table looking for something to eat. “Yes, and I've come now to get the cakes.”

She didn’t understand that...

His difficult situation is made more difficult by his manic swings in temper, his struggle with himself. He alternatively beseeches and curses God, seeks to help himself and sabotages his efforts, looks for the good in his fellow man and tries to stand above him pridefully. Partly from hunger, partly from the stubbornness that keeps him alive while starving, he is forced to ride out a raging storm within himself while also being tossed about by fate.

I was making good progress until I realized that I had just churned out a nice little book report. I wonder what fine grade I would be anxiously waiting to receive..... Why am I describing this book to you imaginary readers? You would do best to pick it up with no preconceptions and enjoy this strange tale told in a unique voice on your own terms. But why would Hamsun write this book to be read in lazy comfort by us happy bourgeois as we munch a bag of chips or an apple in our nice easy chair? To impress us with his strength, his creative powers? We have difficulty relating to the hero, we feel oddly ill at ease in his company, we laugh nervous laughs at his frantic flights of fancy and utter sighs of disbelief when he gives up the money that he so desperately needs to satisfy some whim or notion of conscience. I am sure he would be laughing at us too, at our vague, comfortable impressions, our little triumphs and discomforts as we float through life. We will most likely never know this sort of suffering for the sake of ourselves, because of ourselves. Hamsun's hero never quite falls silent, never betrays himself into thinking that his impressions do not matter and should pass into nothingness. He simply wishes to speak, perhaps not caring who is listening. And in the end we try to sympathize. We understand a measure of his lost- ness, for no doubt we all feel at times cursed in this world, and cause ourselves to stumble and starve for the sake of our own misguided ideas. We love how the hero is full of life, even if his whims are sometimes foolish or a bit cruel, even if his dreams border on madness, even if his attempts at success fall painfully short. And we try to laugh in our own soft way at the black jokes at the heart of this book, for laughter is at its most sublime when it is laughter in the face of pain and suffering.  

Still here

Hello once again. I have been away a long time, for the usual reasons. So many days stretch out before me, waiting to be filled with creation and exploration, and I simply turn my eyes down to the filth and let them pass empty. I am still far too proud. I expect my creative work to appear without effort and be unblemished. I am still holding back too much waiting for perfection. I need to share more and think less. This blog should be a place for rough drafts and errant thoughts, for though I want to create something that goes beyond thoughtless chatter, I am limiting myself by holding back pieces of writing that need a response. Though I have not yet found any readers, I can at least take small steps towards the hope that one day someone else will understand some of what I say. I will now embark on a quest to lose any sort of censoring filter and simply seek to give as much as possible, taking inspiration from the immortal words "anything worth doing is worth doing badly". Master P has long been an inspiration to me because of his unwavering belief in himself and his art. I will leave you with one of his finest works, hopefully to return soon and more frequently!