The things we do!

"
Hamsun's form is always fluid. In the two works now published it
approaches formlessness. "Under the Autumn Star" is a mere sketch,
seemingly lacking both plan and plot. Much of the time Knut Pedersen is
merely thinking aloud. But out of his devious musings a purpose finally
shapes itself, and gradually we find ourselves the spectator of a
marital drama that becomes the dominant note in the sequel. The
development of this main theme is, as I have already suggested,
distinctly Conradian in its method, and looking back from the ironical
epilogue that closes "A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings," one marvels at
the art that could work such a compelling totality out of such a
miscellany of unrelated fragments.
There is a weakness common to both these works which cannot be passed up
in silence. More than once the narrator falls out of his part as a tramp
worker to rail journalistically at various things that have aroused his
particular wrath, such as the tourist traffic, the city worker and
everything relating to Switzerland.


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