Norway Rehabs Hamsun
All this week, Norway is feting a writer who was lucky to escape being shot for his shameless collaboration with the Nazis. Knut Hamsun was either, according to taste, one of the greatest figures in world literature, or a vile old man with a head full of nasty ideas who betrayed his country. Norway’s Hamsun rehabilitation reminds us: The list of great cultural figures would be reduced significantly if the output of geniuses with dubious or loathsome politics were excluded from our evaluation — Wagner, Celine, Shostakovich, etc etc etc.
