The bohemian life of 19th century artists is often romanticized (I'm pointing at you, Henri Murger). In Paris they go to smoky and sweaty cafés to get drunk from buckets of wine, and to discuss philosophical ideas. Or at least to admire greatly the chests of the women at the next table. If they don't grab a girl with them, they go home alone to shiver and put the last chair leg into the stove. In the morning they climb from the bed with ruffled hair, and start painting the next picture with their stomachs growling. They sure are hungry, but suffering just increases creativity, right? So now's the opportunity to grab the brush and ferociously paint life's hardships on the canvas.

This is ok too, it's nice to read these romantic ideas of artists' sufferings, but it was refreshing (if you can say that in this case) to dive into Hamsun's Norwegian version of 19th century life of a - in this case - writer. The stream of consciousness-like writing carries the reader from one day to another, all of which are mingled with each other. The protagonist lives from hand to mouth trying to scrape up a living by writing, but how can you get money when creativity withers down because of starvation? How to extinguish your hunger when you don't have any money to buy food? The rat race continues, until finally the food comes into his way, but instead of satisfying the hunger it's puked out.

The protagonist is anonymous, which makes the story even more powerful. The hunger is almost faceless, because Hamsun doesn't give us that much personal information to work with. The man's life is completely filled with hunger for creation and food. He could be anyone of those vagrants wandering the streets of any city. Sometimes luck kicks in, sometimes he has to rage at passers-by. His principle is to not accept charity and to keep a respectable appearance, which of course turns against him. Society is not the target of his disappointment, but it's the universe that is cruel. Admitting his situation is still hard.

The text itself shows the breakdown of the protagonist's mind with varied tenses, rambling, and jumping from one thing to another. Reading didn't seem to difficult at any point, however, because Hamsun's style flows nicely despite the protagonist's at times meandering imagination. What surprised me most was the atmosphere of the book. It wasn't just constant wallowing in sadness and misery like I thought, but it's sometimes even a bit cheerful. The story's end is like a fresh breath of a new beginning, and you sincerely wish for good luck for the man. Or at least that's how I interpreted it.

In the newer catastrophe films the target of destruction is almost always New York City, but at the end of the 19th century the epitome of the world is London. The setting was definitely more interesting this way, even though I usually complain about the image that a particular metropolis is the only important thing in the universe. Maybe there was some sense of novelty going on, but I just felt that this switch was for the better. The centre stage of Great Britain offers an opportunity to deal with imperialism, but in this case of course it occurs between planets instead of countries. Perhaps the sense of power due to imperialism has lulled the government into sleep, and causes it to overestimate its powers? Wells bravely challenged his contemporaries to reconsider the meaning of imperialism and its basic ideas.

The development of the situation from uncertainty, disbelief, and indifference into panic and chaos is narrated with credibility. People change in a situation of disarray, and mainly try to take care of themselves. When the end is nigh, laws cease to exist and the weakest unfortunately get trampled on. Each person has different ways of coping, and Wells has demonstrated this really well by reflecting it through the people the protagonist meets on his journey. When the Martians wreak havoc and the structures of society change, everyone are on the same line regardless of their birth, so that the individual characteristics are more clear.

Unlike with Jules Verne, Wells's stories are actually riveting. They take hold of you right until the very last page, and there are no excessive science babbles or irrelevant details, but the novels are still extremely interesting story- and theory-wise. The small amount of science there is, is understandable even to someone like me, who has strong humanist leanings. In this, the paragraphs at the beginning concerning space are not alienating, but intriguing and thought-provoking.

Wells's prose is simple but engaging (kind of like Doyle's). London feels realistic, even though it's not described that much apart from listing different neighbourhoods of London and around it, and the urban life of the 19th century is left to the background. The events seem real and completely plausible. A thin little novel, but gives plenty of reason to many interpretations from several points of view. A big influence on popular culture, but still works on its own.

BBC Radio 7
Three and a half stars.

BBC Radio 7

I'm abandoning this for now. I constantly had a terrible urge to skip pages because there was so much I just didn't care about. Since there wasn't a lot left I peeked the ending in Wikipedia and... haha, how fitting!

You know, it reminded me of those old western adventure comics that I used to pick from the shelves of boy relatives. I quickly changed them to Batman and Superman. Like I did with this one, quickly changed to another book (I'd been reading it for days but I never made it through halfway). It was just too boring for me to handle. A more engaging story and the message would have come across better, too.

Basically a heap of indifferent conversations and indifferent characters. I can imagine this as a play a lot better because frankly Murger does not have the literary skills to write a novel. Sentences after another didn't make an interesting insight to a bohemian life in 19th century Paris but rather snooze of a collection of boring chapters.