Rating: 
Summary: one of the big ones...
Review: ...yesirree. It starts as a simple tale and evolves into a modern narrative, weaving shifting points of view, moments of stream of consciousness, and a carry-you-forward narrative of simple rural economics evolving out of not so simple characters. I found this a great read, and for a long time afterwards, felt immersed in the landscape and the people. Isak is a true anti-hero, long before we knew the term. A provocative book in the best sense.
Rating:
Summary: Robust & Brilliant!
Review: A monumental work dealing with man's roll in the natural world, and the collision of this world with capitalism, egalitarianism and modernity. While Growth of the Soil is not overtly political, Hamsun took a clear and direct philosophical stance against what he saw as the coming bastardization of Europe's esoteric traditions (Hamsun recognized anthropocentrism was no less appealing when masked as "progress"). For Hamsun, Germanic man was intrinsically linked to the very soil that provided him with life and sustenance. This relationship, between man and earth Hamsun claimed, was almost religious and holy in nature. Only through the preservation of this communion with the earth could Northern Europe hope to maintain its uniqueness as a cultural and racial entity. Hamsun's worldview mirrored many of the then embryonic nationalist movements in Germany, most of which openly rallied against leftist socio-political systems that were seen as an affront to the notion of "Blood and Soil". Hamsun in many ways influenced the blending of ecology and nationalist politics in Northern Europe (was he the first "Green"?). Years later National Socialism gave Hamsun a political outlet for his worldview, while Hamsun gave the National Socialists a literary and philosophical giant to champion. While controversy has surrounded Hamsun's support for the German and Norwegian National Socialist movements of the 1930/40's, Hamsun (contrary to popular opinion) never apologized for his activities, and remained a somewhat staunch if cautious opponent of Europe's post-war "new order" ... even after the forced "reeducation" of his wife and both sons in Allied concentration camps. Growth of the Soil is beautifully and powerfully written. It is bold, uncompromising and radical.
It is, quite simply, magnificent. Every forward thinking person concerned with the fate of Western Civilization would do well to plunge into its wisdom-soaked pages.
Rating:
Summary: Blood and Soil!
Review: I simply cannot praise this book enough. The relationship between man and the soil that is his lifesblood has never been articulated with as much beauty and understanding as in Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil". This work is, in short, an honorable tribute to the wilds of Northern Europe. "No, a man of the wilds did not lose his head. The air was not less healthy now than before; there were folk enough to admire new clothes; there was no need of diamonds. Wine was a thing he knew from the feast at Cana. A man of the wild was not put out by the thought of great things he could not get; art, newspapers, luxuries, politics, and such-like were worth just what folk were willing to pay for them, no more. Growth of the soil was something different, a thing to be procured at any cost; the only the origin of all."
Rating: 
Summary: Bizarre, in context
Review: I was given this book as an assignment in my first year of college, and there was something odd about Hamsun's nativist philosophy; something that reminded me of another European volk-und-blut philosopher of the time.. Of course. Hamsun's hero- Adolf Hitler. When the Nazis invaded his homeland, Hamsun wrote that the Germans were their saviors. When Hitler died in the Bunker, Hamsun wrote him a tearful eulogy. And so this same man has become one of the guiding lights of the modern radical Green movement. Given the intellectual depth and historical knowledge of many of today's young Greens and neo-luddites, I am sad to say that I am not at all surprised.
Rating: 
Summary: Leave in Refrigerator
Review: It was primarily for this book that Hamsun won the Nobel Prize in 1921. From this distance it's hard to see why. "Growth" is a pretty good novel but not spectacular. Plot: pioneer sets up in wilderness, gets woman, they start farming and eventually become prosperous. The pioneer is too much the "cute" father-figure. The other characters are mildly interesting in a gossipy way, and enough happens to keep the reader interested in the story. But a "classic" needs more, by way of universality or comprehensiveness or emotional depth. The last is out because the characters are all types and do the expected things. The second is out because the scope of the book is limited to one Norwegian family. As for the first, the book is too comfortable to describe any real conflict that might affect anyone outside its limited range.
Rating:
Summary: caveman meets bureaucracy
Review: It's been several years since I've read Growth of the Soil, a book I feel reveals the dynamic between the working man and gov't sovereignty (I'm just scraping the surface here). Isak's work ethic is natural to him (though arguably superhuman). As a farmer in the wilds he's truly an iconoclast, a separatist who departs from the state to make it on his own. His hard work and plodding success is a tribute to the patience needed to live off the land. Juxtaposed are elements of immediate satisfaction, the making of a quick buck at the expense of those who actually do the work necessary to survive (gov't officials who tax, the miners, and Isak's restless son all take from Isak thereby eroding the status of the farmer in society). Isak's idyllic lifestyle on the farm is portrayed as the good life; the city nothing short of the source of all evil (maybe that's an overstatement). But what I think Hamsun appears to be getting at is what he sees as the corruptness of gov't based on the assumption that gov't and it's officials are opportunist thugs. The system of gov't arising from something more feudal, perhaps, becomes a free for all for bandits masquerading as gov't authorities. The citizens then become opportunists themselves which destroys a sense of honesty and loyalty among them. They all become thieves, more or less, whose identities are flexible to circumstance and opportunity. This resonates in concept with Pan, Hunger and Mysteries where the main characters are opportunistic loners or their opposites. If you still believe in the naive honesty of hard work Growth of the Soil would be a good read. Even if you're a slave to one institution or another and the purpose of your existence is to make money or enforce policy for someone else this would be a good read. It might just be the opportunity you need to reevalute your purpose.
Rating:
Summary: Verbal fireworks like no other
Review: Knut "upsets the straights" using flights of verbal fancy that left me gasping or laughing, occasionally wondering if Knutty had a secret stash of LSD.
Rating:
Summary: Great artists are not always great people
Review: Knut Hamson is a fascinating character and his personality comes through in his fiction. From Hunger on through to this novel he explores the psychology of man more intelligently and with more humour than anyone has ever done (with the possible exception of Dostoyevsky). Yes, Hamson was a racist, and a Nazi sympathizer. This has held many people back from reading his novels, assuming that someone who believes these things must not be worth reading. This is a huge mistake. The Gods of great art (assuming such a thing exists) don't care if your morals are in check, they don't care if you are a "good" person in accordance with our modern morality. The gifts of artistic skills fall upon people randomly and without regard for who they are. People may critisize Hamsons politics but his talent as a writer is untarnished, and his contribution to literature indisputable. Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein's "American" style of writing, whcih was very editorial, is seen first in Hamson's Hunger, written in 1888 and he has lost none of his power by the time he got around to writing "Growth of the Soil". So sensitive people who can only read novels by people they agree with might want to avoid his writing, but anyone who is interested in how twentieth century writing came to be should read Hamson, and I recomend this novel after reading his first three (Hunger, Mysteries, and Pan).
Rating:
Summary: Artless, Simple, Memorable
Review: Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am not a big reader of fiction, and I am particularly NOT a fan of Knut Hamsun. I have read several of his other books, including "Hunger" and "Pan" and only an effort of will power got me through them. But "The Growth of the Soil" is a pearl. It sits in the same realm of artless simplicity that is a hallmark of so much good Scandinavian literature, like Selma Lagerlof, Bjorne Bjornson and (under the surface) Sigrid Undset. The story of a poor farmer - calling him "poor" is almost an understatement - and his struggles to keep body and soul together in the far north is written in such simple prose, and yet Hamsun has a knack of getting into our interior life with his story and character. One other reviewer called it one of the best of the 20th century, and I wholeheartedly agree.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic portrait with great human insight
Review: People have different opinions of which was the greatest of Knut Hamsun's novels, and very often one of the works from the 1890s will range highest. People also have a lot to say about Hamsun's terms with Nazi-Germany and which made the common Norwegian to see him as a betrayer. He was their greatest hero, up there with King Haakon and Fridtjof Nansen. All these circumstances are more complex to be drawn up here, so let's stay with the fact that Hamsun was one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time. "Growth of the Soil" is the book that secured him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920, the book the common man of the day valued more than any other of his works, the book that the Germans had printed in "field-editions" to send with their soldiers to the fronts. But this is not an ideally portrait of the values in life - it is a very accurate description of how the life was in the outback for these early settlers, how extremely simple they were. It was not because they had achieved a great understanding of the meaning of life, readers in that belief are totally wrong. They had no choice, were not on terms with their inner-self at all, did not know comfort and beautiful music, could not afford to be fastidious. I can't think of any other book in world literature that comes anywhere near "Growth of the Soil" in portraying these simple, unsophisticated people breaking the land and struggle to live. I am sure this could be the life story of several of my ancestors in North-Norway, the diaries of their lives, but they (like Isak) could not read or write or tell their story. Instead Knut Hamsun has done it with such wisdom, humour and tenderness and most of all his great talent, that in many respects this is his best work
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