Before Knut Hamsun became a novelist his dream had been to be a boxing champion. This is a little known fact about the famous novelist, but in his twenties he sailed to America and tried make his living as a pugilist. Going under the moniker Handsome Hamsun, the dour Norwegian unsuccessfully lost his first three professional fights and resorted to fighting in illegal basement brawls in New York City’s notorious Bowery. Irish hooligans soon started calling the future Noble Prize winner “Knut the Galoot”, a name that would drive Hamsun into irrational rages and temper tantrums. The crowd loved this, but it did little to help him win his fights. Finally after a few years of losing basement fights and being outraged at the suggestion that he might be better suited in the role of a geek, who would fight a live chicken and finish his opponent by biting off it’s head, he left the shores of America for his home in Norway. There Hamsun would write through the pain of his failure in America by extolling the virtues of the land and the existential nature of man.
Category Archives: fun fact
The word blog comes up as misspelled on this here blog composer / editor. This is either a) a mistake of some kind or b) an attempt to not discourage self-referential posts. Meta-posts if you will. I find it amusing.
Want to know what else I find amusing? When the on-off button goes on my computer and I’m left with a pretty plastic box with all my stuff in it, but with no way to get at it. Sniff, sniff.
One more comment? I was wrong. Not one person asked me for an Arthur C. Clarke book last week.
