Editor Lynge

by Knut Hamsun, Rick Schober (Translator)

First-ever English translation of Editor Lynge, first published in Norwegian in 1893 as Redaktør Lynge, the third novel by Knut Hamsun, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.
SUMMARY
Alexander Lynge, is an unscrupulous newspaper editor who will stop at nothing to increase his publication's readership. He takes on budding writer, Fredrik Ihlen, solely in order to get closer to his sister, Charlotte, who is romantically involved with Ihlen's best friend, the radical Endre Bondesen. To complicate matters, Leo Højbro, a boarder in the Ihlen household, is secretly in love with Charlotte, and goes so far as to borrow money with forged papers from the bank in which he is employed in order to buy her a bicycle. All this plays out against the backdrop of the political unrest taking place in Scandinavia in the late 19th century.

Genres: Fiction

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1893

About the author

Novels of Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun (born Knud Pedersen), include Hunger (1890) and The Growth of the Soil (1917). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920.

He insisted on the intricacies of the human mind as the main object of modern literature to describe the "whisper of the blood, and the pleading of the bone marrow." Hamsun pursued his literary program, debuting in 1890 with the psychological novel Hunger.

Reviews

[Tuva Kongshaug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Føler boka like godt kunne vært skrevet som et debattinnlegg eller noe om pressens voksende betydning i samfunnet og partipressens fremvekst. Forsøket på å pakke det inn i et skjønnlitterært narrativ gikk ikke helt hjem hos meg. Men interessante betraktninger for ei som skriver om propaganda i masteren da!

[Reece · Rating 4 out of 5]

Med min tredje Hamsun-roman har jeg fått et svært annerledes inntrykk enn det jeg pleiet å vente fra ei sånn bok. I Sult og Mysterier fulgte vi etter to drittrare mennesker – med det første møtte vi en mann som bodde i fullstendig isolasjon, uten noen andre å ta vare på eller bli elsket av, bare ei endeløs tomhet som kun kunne fylles av litterære ambisjoner. Allikevel falt han dypere og dypere inni fattigdom mens han vandret igjennom byen uten å bli til den store forfatteren han hadde ønsket seg. I det andre var det og en rar, eksentrisk mann, men denne gang uten sånne store ambisjoner overhodet. Denne ungkaren gikk oppover og nedover gatene i en fremmed kystby et sted i Norge med hensikten til å finne på noe å tilbringe tida ved. Da han til slutt fant mening i hans retningsløse vandringer, det vil si: da han ble forelsket i en andre fra denne kystbyen, var det for tragisk for ham å leve med. Denne dama han møtte og ble glad i var allerede forlovet, skjønt denne forlovede mannen var fraværende hele romanen, og hun var ikke i stand til å bryte opp det hun hadde allerede bygd opp. Til ende druknet hovedkarakteren seg selv i en episode av galskap. I begge romaner er omstendighetene tragiske: ensomme, antisosiale menn som kaster livene bort uten klar mening. Med den første var det ambisjoner som drev en til ekkel fattigdom; med den andre var det enkel vanvittighet.

Og det er denne konteksten som gjør Redaktør Lynge så enestående som en av Hamsuns tidlige romaner. I den er det antisosiale ikke sentrert, men det sosiale i stedet. Vi følger etter ei rik besetning som fylles av regjeringsbetjenter, redaktører, typisk familiefolk, og mange andre. Heller enn å se den kosmopolitiske Norge gjennom en galmanns øyne får vi se den gjennom roller som blir spilt av vanlige personer i en nøkkelroman fokusert på en fiksjonalisert versjon av Olaf Thommessens tid som journalist da Norge gjennomgikk store politiske forandringer. Lynge selv er Thommessens romanisert dobbel, en som bytter sider nårsomhelst det hjelper ham. Og det er i hans visjon vi ser en sånn dyp, rik karakter som kaster forlibelse bort ett sekund, og sine politikker det neste. Stadig nytter Lynge dem som omgir ham for å oppstige i den journalistiske verden. Mot slutten av romanen ser vi hvordan han har aldeles ruinert livene til de andre karakterene uten å betenke seg hans rolle i det hele. Denne destruktive adferda som ødelegger de andre personene i romanen er det som renner igjennom hele boka fra første side av. Såklart handler boka om pressens fremvekst som en kraft i politikker og andres liv, men det er det individuelle, det tragiske som slår meg mektigst. Lynges ambisjoner er en flom som drukner alle, og er det som til sist og sjuende fører til en end hvori ingen andre vinner enn han selv.

[Craig Stockwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to write a review of this book in particular because it's one of the most obscure Hamsun books, if not the most obscure. I will assume that someone interested in this book already knows who Knut Hamsun was. I doubt that any person would make this book their first landing into the sometimes absurd, but always reactionary and exceptional place that is the territory of Knut Hamsun's writings.

I have a habit of developing nicknames for certain Hamsun books. I refer to Hamsun's "the Cultural Life of Modern America" as "Hamsun goes to America," "Hunger" as "Hamsun goes crazy," and "Pan" as "Hamsun's book about palatable social anxiety." I refer to this book, Editor Lynge, as "Hamsun's shitposting."

Robert Ferguson's biography of Hamsun, "Enigma[,]" quotes Henrik Ibsen regarding Editor Lynge: to paraphrase, this book was the most dishonest in Norwegian literature. This book also hadn't been translated into English until 2023. Hamsun himself dissociated from it after publication, as he instead wanted to focus on books that explored human psychology. Because of all this, and the fact that no libraries had it when I requested it through interlibrary loan, the book gained something of a white whale status to me, something that I simply had to get my hands on to figure out why it was so damned to literary history's trash bin.

The titular character was based on Norwegian publisher Ola Thommessen. I am not familiar with Herr Thommessen beyond what's in the text of his Norwegian Wikipedia page, or the fine day-to-day details of Norwegian politics circa 1893, so I took Hamsun's parody at face value, with a whole shaker of salt.

Lynge comes across as sort of a Rupert Murdoch character -- a left-wing muckraking newspaperman who eventually becomes more concerned with newspaper sales than ideological purity, thus drifting into right-wing talking points every fourth month to bump up sales. Hamsun also portrays Lynge as morally bereft, a degenerate, an adultering rapist, and someone with few moral scruples, provided the ends justify the means, with the ends being (a) sales of his newspaper, and (b) left-wing success in the Norwegian parliament. Bondesen, a secondary character, by the end of the book, appears to be the heir to Lynge's "ends justify the means" perspective, as Bondesen sweeps Lynge's attempted sexual assault from chapter XI under the rug when Charlotte mentions it to him (prompting Bondesen to dump Charlotte). Again, whether all this is based on real events in Kristiania in the 19th Century, or Hamsun made these events up from pure fiction based on tropes about left wing men, is unclear, given the temporal and cultural distances involved with this book.

The book amounts to Hamsun shitposting about how "the media" (to use a modern term) will gleefully buy up stories of child molestation by pastors, corruption (the customs official selling clothes on the black market), violence (assaults), and danger (Bondesen's bullshit fire story), in other words, sensationalism, to generate revenue. This message is very relevant to the modern audience and the book deserves to be read for that reason in my opinion (all $0.02 that my opinion is worth). However, readers who have also read Hamsun's Cultural Life of Modern America will know that Hamsun had a particular ax to grind against media sensationalism, and he himself had a tendency to be hyperbolic -- hyperbole about sensationalism.

This book can be dense in places, slowing down the reading. The book reads like a TV drama, with each character, or groups of characters, getting different spotlights in different chapters. The translation by Rick Schober didn't have any instances that made me blink or doubt the word choices, though I do recall a couple 21st century words being imported into the text. Overall, this is a well-written book.

In summary, however, having read it, I now understand why (1) Hamsun dissociated from it, (2) the book hasn't been translated until very recently, and (3) the book has extremely limited appeal, i.e., you're probably only going to pick this book up because you know who Hamsun was and you're determined to read all of Hamsun's novels. This book is a skeleton in the closet, and Hamsun himself is a skeleton in a closet. But, if you do wander down this obscure path, the book is worth the trip.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

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