Happy Ending

THE ROAD LEADS ON--Knut Hamsun-- Coward-McCann ($3).

Most writers stop writing long before they reach Knut Hamsun's age (73). But readers who feel nervous about an old man's maunderings need not hesitate to pick up Author Hamsun's latest and perhaps last book. Though The Road Leads On will not unduly excite a world which still remembers his monumental Growth of the Soil (1917), it would be a worthy and happy ending to a great career. Author Hamsun may lay down his pen in the consciousness that he has not overstayed either his welcome or his powers.

The finale of his Nordland novels (Segelfoss Town, Vagabonds, August), The Road Leads On finishes what Author Hamsun has to say about the modern world. His summing up is not complimentary but it is stated with tolerant, sometimes uproarious humor. His hero is "that" August, vagabond, Jack-of-all-trades, "a man who had sailed the seven seas and who was rags both inside and out ... a man of splendid virtues and brazen faults." Old now, and temporarily a useful citizen because he has no money in his pocket. Hamsun's epitome of the modern spirit turns up at the little Norwegian coastal town of Segelfoss, rapidly makes a place for himself as an indispensable handyman. With his helpful hand and his experienced advice, the young magnate of Segelfoss becomes more & more important and successful.

August discovers that he is not so poor as he thought. With a windfall in his lap he neglects to keep the necessary firm grip on his skittish character. He falls ridiculously in love, squanders his money on a grandiose scheme, and finally meets an appropriate but not altogether tragic fate. His author's verdict on him is stern but not unkindly: "It was his mission in life to father all forms of progress and development, and he had left behind him desolation in one form or another wherever he had gone. He was ignorant and therefore innocent; a warrior in the cause for human emancipation even were the result to prove meaningless and destructive in the end."

Not Strawman August but the liver creatures of Author Hamsun's fancy will most please U. S. readers: the sinister witch Aase, the bibulous druggist and his crony, the hotelkeeper; the postmaster's flirtatious wife, the village swains, masons. et al. Readers to whom Scandinavian literature is synonymous with gloom will find themselves agreeably surprised into many a chuckle over the mock courtship of Druggist Holm and Fru Hagen; the rival evangelists and their war over the Holy Ghost; the hit-or-miss conversations between a visiting Englishman and the squire's sister (carried on largely, out of politeness to the guest's linguistic shortcomings, in peasant profanity). In a rousingly successful benefit concert the final number was an extempore alphabet duet by the two drunken principals: "Com-ing to the letter Q, Vendt began to show signs of emotion; his mood was contagious and even the druggist was soon deeply touched. At the back of the house their audience was moaning with laughter. The singers were giving of their best; each waved his free hand gently to and fro during tender and plaintive passages. They sang the concluding letters of the alphabet in a manner which was downright voluptuous and with tears streaming down their cheeks.''

The Author. A U.S. headline in 1920 read: Horse-Car Conductor Wins Nobel Prize. It referred to Knut Pedersen Ham sun, whose long career had included a few months on a Chicago streetcar. Born of poor parents in central Norway, raised by a grim uncle on the grimmer Lofoten Is lands, Hamsun worked his way toward the university at Christiania (now Oslo) by jobs as shoemaker's apprentice, longshore man, coal-heaver, sheriff's assistant. Un able to make ends meet at the University, he emigrated to the U. S. Northwest, became dairyman, lecturer on French literature, secretary to a clergyman. Asa street car conductor in Chicago he used to infuriate passengers by carrying them past their stops because he was deep in a volume of Euripides. After another fruitless attempt to make a living in Norway. Hamsun set tled down to write. With the publication of Hunger, Pan and Growth of the Soil he took his acknowledged place as Norway's foremost novelist. With his wife and four children he lives in comfortable simplicity at his farm, Norholmen, near Grimstad.

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