Knut Hamsun

Norwegian wunderkind Knut Hamsun began his career as many artists do: beaten by a moralistic uncle in a remote Norwegian village, forced to herd cattle, and then required to work drudging hours in a shoe factory. Perhaps this last item reminds you of Tennessee Williams? Certainly the rebellious nature it spawned was similar. Hamsun was determined to be a poet and at nineteen self-published a volume with his own earnings. Few people read it. The young Hamsun then visited the Continent and subsequently sailed for America, where many Europeans were seeking fortune. Hamsun, however, was determined to write poetry for Norwegians in America. Needless to say there was no market for this sort of thing, and after working as a streetcar operator and a fisherman, he returned in 1888 to Norway. Why all these biographical details? Because this is the man who would later win the Nobel Prize for literature, the man who would be studied by Hemingway and Kafka, the man who wrote the lyrical and beautiful novel (almost a prose poem) Mysteries.
Reference: Larsen, Hanna Astrup. 1922. Knut Hamsun. New York: Knopf.