I suppose learning what influenced admired writers is interesting partly because you get a glimpse of how a good writer transforms what they’ve read and seen into something altogether new. And I find it reassuring to know that even the finest writers have been fans of other artists — that they’re not above the mixture of envy, admiration and possessiveness that a fan feels toward the object of her devotion.

jb says:  Hunger is a wonderful novel, in fact all of the first four of Hamsun’s novels are well worth reading. Isaac Bashevis Singer, referring to Hamson in his Nobel acceptance speech,  said: “the whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun, just as Russian literature in the nineteenth century ‘came out of Gogol’s greatcoat.’ ”

But literature has always worked by influence. Each age produces a few individuals who build on the work of their forefathers. They take everything that has gone before and add to it in a qualitative sense. Then the next generation inherit a different canon.

As for hunger, it’s interesting how seldom we actually experience that sensation. I liked Hamsun’s description of his “nervous and excitable state.” And the three wise men at once made me laugh. xo, BL

jb says: I suppose most writers have something like Wallace Stevens’ occasional book, often called a commonplace book, or simply a notebook. The Stevens’ one sounds like a pretty good blog.

Your sentence about hunger is double-edged, because there are many of us who experience physical hunger and not much else. The thing about Hunger, the book, is that, although the protagonist is hungry for food, the hunger of the title is a metaphor for the hunger of a writer to transform words and phrases into art.

But I fully concur with your enjoyment of learning about another’s antecedents.  Is it the sense of order, the proof that one thing follows another? The hope that there may be something other than randomness?