Letters To An
Overseas Friend.

One of the characters in Shane is from New England. This could be a somewhat important detail. Suppose it can implicitly say much about the tastes and mannerisms of the character. I don’t think I noted the origin of that character the first time I read the book. I figure it’s one of those details that I might pass over and not register. I think it could also be one of those details that show up on an elementary school English test. Which I would have gotten incorrect after a panic struck me for not being able to answer the question. That experience made me not want to read books, because, clearly, I’m reading them wrong.

But you gotta teach reading comprehension to the children, right? I suppose testing is a proven way to educate?

Flukes. It took me over a decade to get around to reading Hunger. During that decade plus period, I had walked into book stores on occasion casually looking for Hunger. I’d look for Knute Homson. Didn’t find it, of course, and leave. I was certain enough, for no strong reason, of the spelling of Hamsun that I felt safe in my assumption that the book was not at that store. I suppose I never actually looked up the author in a way that would have exposed the true spelling of his name. How many times have I walked out of a book store without Hunger when it was a few inches or feet away from me? How long ago would I have read that book?

I’m reading Hunger. Knute (I did it again! I’ll call this the Knute Rockne Effect) Knut Hamsun. I am doing kind of a literary revisiting tour. Things I’ve read and things that were once on my consciousness and then weren’t. Schaefer’s Shane. Camus’ The Outsider. And now Hamsun, 14 years after Norway, where I heard so much about Hamsun’s writing, which was intriguing, and his world view, which was distracting.

I bought something at the local hardware store that came to just under ten dollars. I hand the clerk a twenty dollar bill. The clerk takes it and says “from ten.” I don’t correct him. No need to. He meant “from twenty.” Let him correct himself. But maybe he thinks it is ten? No. I see him put the twenty dollar bill in the slot with the other twenties. He misspoke. But then he gives me change for ten. I say I gave him a twenty. He looks at me cockeyed. Pauses. A short one. Didn’t even feel uncomfortably long. No sound of crickets or a wolf howl in the distance. Nothing like that. He breaks the short pause like so:

-“OK.”

He hands me an additional ten and wishes me a good day. I am appeased. And that’s that or is it that? I feel a trust has been broken. Perhaps a trust in my honesty. Perhaps a trust in my currency note recognition. Perhaps a trust in his own currency note recognition or “with-it-ness”. Is that worth ten dollars? To me, yes, it’s worth it. Ten bucks is ten bucks. But what is two bucks? Fifty cents? There is a number for sure.

Hamsun’s protagonist would have said to keep the extra ten, he doesn’t need it anyways.