FROM ‘HUNGER’

In her thorough review, Judith Freeman asks us to “Imagine going 24 hours, 48 hours, without food.” But I don’t think this is so unusual.

For more than 150 years, Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) have deliberately abstained from food and drink for 24 hours on the first Sunday of each month so as to show by fasting and prayer their love for God and to contribute these saved meals to the poor.

Nevertheless, the complete devotion to writing of the young writer Knut Hamsun did inspire such writers as Isaac Singer and Henry Miller and may yet inspire other starving young writers living in the dispossessed and poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles and other cities (a la Jack Kerouac) to read and study Hamsun’s unique novel called “Hunger.”

KENNETH LLOYD LARSON, LOS ANGELES