About this title: In this psychological novel, most of the story is a monologue in which Nagel, a visitor to a small coastal town in Norway, discusses his dreams and opinions at great length. Nagel loves more than anything to talk, and he manages to confuse and fascinate the townspeople with his eccentric ideas and shifting perception of reality. Hamsun employs the ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: 2nd
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Noonday Press (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Date Published: 1972
ISBN-13:9780374508883ISBN:0374508887
Description: Good- As issued No Jacket. Fiction. Spine lean, light soiling to covers and edges, there is a slight must smell to it (barely detectable) and the book has a warp to it from being improperly stored(stacked). Reading copy only. read more
Description: Good. 0285647296 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Edition: Rev ed.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: The Noonday Press, New York
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780374525279ISBN:0374525277
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Text in English, Norwegian. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 348 p. Audience: General/trade. Author is a winner of The Nobel Prize in Literature. Synopsis: First published in 1892, Mysteries revolves around a small Norwegian coastal town turned on end by the sudden appearance of Johan Nagel, the prototypical social outcast--a wanderer, dropout, and eternal foe of the establishment. Nagel becomes the catalyst that brings to the surface all the hidden impulses, ... read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar, Straus And Giroux
Date Published: c1971
Description: Very Good in Very Good-dust jacket. Top edge dyed purple, a nice clean, solid copy, in a colorful dustjacket, in a new clear mylar DJ cover. read more
Edition: Reprint. 1978
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Picador/Pan, London
Date Published: 1976
ISBN-13:9780330246286ISBN:0330246283
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Text in English, Norwegian. [1], 254p. : 1port.; 20 cm. Includes Portraits. Near fine. very minor chips to bottom of front cover. Translated by Gerry Bothmer. Cover shows painting by Paul Leith. Age appropriate yellowing to papges. Binding tight. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Minor marking on back cover. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 348 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: 1st Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bard Books/Avon Books, United States
Date Published: 1975
ISBN-13:9780380005048ISBN:0380005042
Description: Near Fine. A real nice copy that has an extremely light crease on the front side of the wrap alongside the spine. This book is translated from Norwegian by Gerry Bothmer. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 1976
ISBN-13:9780330246286ISBN:0330246283
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Edition: North American First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Date Published: 1971
Description: Good in Fair jacket. New translation, book cover front edge has faded, a dedication written inside. jackets edge is very ragged w/ some tears taped. price clipped on front flap. read more
Description: Good. No Jacket. Remainder Mark Bottem Page Ends, Corners Bumped, Spine Creased, Price Sticker Back Cover, Previous Owners Markings On Cover Page, Text Is Unmarked, Overall Good Copy. read more
"Henry Miller described Mysteries as '...closer to me than any other book I have read'. I'm no Henry Miller, but it is a very dear book to me too, quite like a close friend. It seems that there is no getting to the bottom of it, no matter how many times you engage with it, just like a human being. On a first reading it is seems a mere catalogue of disconnected events taking place in small town, with a stranger called Nagel at their centre, who has arrived on a steamer. He comes and goes and behaves in an erratic manner as he interacts with a handful of other characters in the town.
It is a novel very like Hunger in that respect, and Nagel has indeed been seen as the hero of that earlier novel later in life, after Christiania has finished with him. Nagel too seems to be acting in accordance with strong inner compulsions that even he does not understand. To that extent, Mysteries, like Hunger, is a novel about youth, about being driven by your unconscious, which is quite clear about what it wants.
Nagel arrives at the small Norwegian coastal town on a steamer in the summer of 1891. He immediately leaves and arrives a second time. He leaves letters lying around in public view which catalogue revenue from his estates, but later reveals that he wrote them himself. A woman friend visits for a while and calls him by another name. He has an 'affair' with a woman in the town, Dagny, during which he does everything he can to put her off him. He is constantly setting up characters for himself to play, enacting roles, and then pulling them down. He is perhaps experimenting with different personas for himself and finding them all equally empty. He befriends a midget whom he comes to regard as the quintessence of evil, and is hugely generous to a lonely and impoverished woman, Martha, by pretending that a broken chair she has is extremely valuable to him.
The midget is intensely Christian, or at least that is what he wants people to think, but he performs some 'unspeakable' act on Martha, to whom Nagel is attracted - perhaps because she has no persona, no pretensions.
Towards the end of the novel, Nagel becomes intensely superstitious, obsessed with an iron ring he lost which will 'purify' him, and soon after commits suicide by running off a jetty. In an epilogue, Dagny and Martha, in conversation about events that happened years earlier, reveal that the midget was indeed evil, though nobody else believed it at the time, and that he had come 'to a bad end', though we are not told what that was.
We can interpret this novel in whatever way we wish. It is a sort of mirror that we can hold up to ourselves. It is a novel about inner exploration, corruption identity; the surface shifts and changes constantly; there is no 'message' or plot.
Hamsun, for all his Wagnerian faults, was a true genius, and once we have read Mysteries a part of us remains in that small Norwegian coastal town with Nagel, as a part of us remains in Christiania with the hero of Hunger. It works on an unconscious level, and the unconscious finds something deeply nutritious in it, returning there again and again to drink. Something remarkable within us is attracted to these books because they speak to it in its own language of symbols and shifting connections. Standard novels with a beginning, middle and end are works of the superficial ego, which Nagel is trying to purge himself of."
"Honestly, I read Hamsun in the Norwegian language and one of the reasons for reading him is the fact that he's a great "word wizard". I don't know if this quality is still obvious when he's translated into other languages.
Anyway, the book is a mystery. Hamsun has the ability to make great fiction out of everyday settings like small-town Norway back around 1890. And the main character, Nagel, is still a mystery after having finished the book. And, if nothing else, it makes you think deep and fundamental thoughts for some time!"
"I wrote Knut Hamsun's name into my reading list when I was going through a Henry Miller phase because I read in some autobiographical blurb that Hamsun was one of Miller's favorite writers. I can definitely see the connection; Hamsun is sort of a soft-core predecessor to Miller (or at least this particular book is). Problem is, what I like about Miller is how hard-core he is. This just didn't feel quite as vital."
"Someone gave this book to my wife with the note that the main character, Nagel, was the literary embodiment of me. The person who gave this book may not be my biggest fan."
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