Pan: From Lieutenant Thomas Glahn's Papers (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
by Knut Hamsun
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 411)
Read in January, 2006
This book was not such as page-turner as Growth of the Soil. I
enjoyed it, especially the main character's love of the outdoors.
I don't believe the story is about Glahn's mind being broken by a love
gone bad. It seems to me that he was broken to begin with, and was
seeking some kind of therapeutic refuge on the edge of the forest.
The book hints that he was not the first, and would not be the last
person to stay in the hut and be appraised by Edvarda. I think that
something subtle may...more
enjoyed it, especially the main character's love of the outdoors.
I don't believe the story is about Glahn's mind being broken by a love
gone bad. It seems to me that he was broken to begin with, and was
seeking some kind of therapeutic refuge on the edge of the forest.
The book hints that he was not the first, and would not be the last
person to stay in the hut and be appraised by Edvarda. I think that
something subtle may...more
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This reminds me of "Hunger" in that the joke gets lost through first-person perspective. This book is hilarious. The only sad thing I found was that the clumsy, oblivious lead character reminds me of a friend with Asperger's syndrome.
My favorite scenario: Edvarda has told Glahn that she has a friend who thinks Glahn has "animal eyes," so Glahn goes to a party and hits on every girl he thinks might be that girl. Later, the Doctor tells him, "[Edvarda:] says th...more
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Read in October, 2007
i devoured 'pan' in less than a week. this was my introduction to knut hamsun, and now i can't wait to read 'hunger,' the book he's apparently known for. 'pan' is a striking, gorgeous character study - a man who lives alone, with his dog, who is driven insane by love, and the want for it. it's one of the most brilliant character arcs i've ever encountered, and the epilogue is - as eliot puts it - the 'last twist of the knife.' i literally was sucking in my breath at certain points, inwardly ...more
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Read in February, 2007
Hamsun takes what may seem to be a strange step--at least to readers familiar with his other work--in this short novel. He focuses on Lt. Thomas Glahn, a self-described "Son of the Forest" living near a small village. Glahn's persona attracts many women; Glahn's persona destroys them. What Pan does, as a novel, is establish a very solid unreliable narrator, one who inspires thought in the reader about how being "connected to nature" has become a trend, a fad, something tha...more
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Lt. Thomas Glahn is one of the most awkward men I've ever met. When he threw her shoe into the river I thought I had discovered a kindred spirit. I am convinced that Knut Hamsun would have been welcome in the strategic games club. Any man who rides on the top of a locomotive is welcome indeed. And did he wear a cape? If he is reincarnated I recommend keeping both Knut Hamsun and Thomas Glahn away from any semi-automatic weaponry. Counseling would do the trick, but these are not men who crave cou...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in January, 2005
recommends it for:
Boys and Girls
I have many a merry hour even yet. But time -it stands still, and I cannot understand how it can stand so still. I am out of the service and free as a prince; all is well; I meet people, drive in carriages; now and again I shut one eye and write with one finger up in the sky; I tickle the moon under the chin, and fancy that it laughs - laughs broadly at being tickled under the chin. All things smile. I pop a cork and call gay people to me.
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Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
you, him & her
Imagine a borderline sociopath, a manic personality driven both by testosterone and by a lust for the outdoors, a combination of Hemingway deprived of Montparnasse and Hunter S. Thompson without his drugs. That is Hamsun's protagonist in Pan--he's a man perfectly at home in the woods, but put him within earshot of civilization and soon he'll come apart, most spectacularly, at the seams.
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Deliciously romantic and ecstatic, earnest and mysterious - very gleeful, yet inhabited by fluctuating notions of enormous melancholia. As a whole, I don't know if I like it as much as the two others I've read by Hamsun (Sult and Mysterier), but it contain passages of uniquely sincere, frantic and passionate outbreaks impossible to resist.
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Anyone thinking Hamsun is a one trick pony and read only Hunger should check out this book. Entirely different from Hunger, this bleak but achingly beautiful (it reads like a long prose poem) book discusses civilization versus wilderness with the character of the bizarre Lt. Glahn. A bitter epilogue adds a new angle to the narrative.
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Using the character of Pan as allegory this book travels through the highs and lows of one man's love life as he lives in a forest and finds flights of fancy in manors, rivers, and out by the woodshed.
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This book is such a powerful narrative about an interesting man with a love of nature. He falls in love with a stubborn girl who breaks his heart, which he lets turn into madness. It's a great display of human nature, and Hamsun's writing style is like poetic-prose. I loved it.
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