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The Trilogy #1-3
Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
Few works of contemporary literature are so universally acclaimed as central to our understanding of the human experience as Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett's famous trilogy. "Molloy, " the first of these masterpieces, appeared in French in 1951. It was followed seven months later by "Malone Dies" and two years later by "The Unnamable." All three have been rendered into English by the author.
414 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
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About the author
Samuel Beckett
802Ìýbooks6,300ÌýfollowersSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in France for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.
Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.
Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1984 he was elected Saoi of Aosdána.
Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.
Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1984 he was elected Saoi of Aosdána.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 502 reviews
December 27, 2021
The matchless trilogy by Samuel Beckett is in the first echelon of the everlasting masterpieces � under the mask of feeblemindedness and senility of characters, the greatest wisdom is disguised.
A life of an individual is an incessant running on the spot � wherever one goes, it’s not a destination.
When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.
A life of an individual is an incessant running on the spot � wherever one goes, it’s not a destination.
March 25, 2021
Without question one of the most difficult and challenging books I've ever read. For a while I was sceptical. I wasn't connecting with it and was far from sure I was understanding it. Then, helped by reading it aloud, I suddenly found I had caught its music and now I've finished I really miss it.
The rhythmic musicality of the prose with its repetition and contradictory usage and alteration of stock phrases is mesmerising, especially as he originally wrote it in French. It's reminiscent of Woolf in The Waves and like her and Proust Beckett is conducting a kind of excavation of the human soul. He is trying through a tryptic of monologues to give a new language and form to the inner life of a human being. He is probing the roots of self-knowledge. Experiencing first-hand my mother's descent into dementia caused me to ask lots of questions about self-knowledge. How important is it? Might it not ultimately be yet another delusion? The composing of a fictional narrative above a more undefinable current of identity? Something quintessential of my mother remained even after all her memories had dissolved. She could convey something pristine and engaging of her self without having cognisance of it. She could tell stories without identifiable coordinates, without any sense of their meaning. As if there exists in us a core of identity that is not subject to alteration even when we no longer consciously own it. Beckett in many ways is tussling here with the erosions of dementia. He too, though self-consciously, is telling us stories without ostensible meaning or with a meaning his narrators can't find. His terrain is what remains of us when we are old and when even our stories and memories begin to fail us.
There's a lot of misery and belittling absurdity in this book. Yet it's far from being a depressing read because of how readily the prose gifts exhilaration. I can't say there weren't times when I didn't lose Beckett but it's a book whose insights give replenishment of the spirit and excited recognition of truth in large doses.
The rhythmic musicality of the prose with its repetition and contradictory usage and alteration of stock phrases is mesmerising, especially as he originally wrote it in French. It's reminiscent of Woolf in The Waves and like her and Proust Beckett is conducting a kind of excavation of the human soul. He is trying through a tryptic of monologues to give a new language and form to the inner life of a human being. He is probing the roots of self-knowledge. Experiencing first-hand my mother's descent into dementia caused me to ask lots of questions about self-knowledge. How important is it? Might it not ultimately be yet another delusion? The composing of a fictional narrative above a more undefinable current of identity? Something quintessential of my mother remained even after all her memories had dissolved. She could convey something pristine and engaging of her self without having cognisance of it. She could tell stories without identifiable coordinates, without any sense of their meaning. As if there exists in us a core of identity that is not subject to alteration even when we no longer consciously own it. Beckett in many ways is tussling here with the erosions of dementia. He too, though self-consciously, is telling us stories without ostensible meaning or with a meaning his narrators can't find. His terrain is what remains of us when we are old and when even our stories and memories begin to fail us.
There's a lot of misery and belittling absurdity in this book. Yet it's far from being a depressing read because of how readily the prose gifts exhilaration. I can't say there weren't times when I didn't lose Beckett but it's a book whose insights give replenishment of the spirit and excited recognition of truth in large doses.
September 13, 2013
Reading Beckett is not easy, since on the surface he seems to be talking of that which is rationally non existent, which doesn’t exist anywhere but perhaps in the subconscious of a mind; a mind which is set on the path of self exploration. An exploration, which is not merely to find a place, a balance with the world but rather to understand why is it that nothing makes sense or rather why “nothing� makes “perfect sense�. Can one live with this perception of nothingness and senselessness while still carrying a rational mind or is one in the danger of drifting away, as they say, with the flow of unrestrained thoughts?
Surely, Beckett doesn’t answer that. Suffering from an acute depression almost throughout his adult life, Sam’s writing is an expression of his deep state of melancholy. As a reader, you are a witness to his feelings of extreme despair. If you don’t keep a check and if you have, at any point in life, been plagued by hopelessness, you may find yourself moving towards a state where nothingness seems to prevail. Is it a warning? Perhaps yes. One needs to be cautious while reading him, specially this trilogy. It shakes one up; inside out to grasp the undeniable notion of the ultimate reality, to come face to face with it and let its voice enter inside you; a voice, which is constantly speaking to you, even if you are trying your best to ignore it. Is the experience fearful? I would say, no. It isn’t. It is just coming to terms with the inevitable. But then question is, why such a difficult prose; a prose where there seems to be no definite start and no explicit end, which seems more like a babbling of a disturbed mind than a rational approach. The answer for me is well; Sam’s writing is concentrated on the illustration of the idea of absurdism, as is apparent in his plays, and the writing here isn’t seeking out the reasons for the absurdness but is rather a grave transport of complete resignation; a resignation arising from a deep despair which can only culminate into the inescapable (that which isn’t obviously known). It reminded me of the “Myth of Sisyphus� by Albert Camus and the famous quote:
“The Struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.�
The delivery of the intended despair wouldn’t have the same effect or wouldn’t have touched so deeply, if the prose had been but undemanding.
The trilogy starts with Molloy, moving on to Malone Dies and finally The Unnameable. It seems like a sequence, although there is no explicit reason to believe that. Only perhaps the impression of a cycle completed! In Molloy, there seems to be a plot, because there seems to be an action, a few characters with whom Molloy connects. Though being physically impaired, he is on the move always, in search of his mother. This much we know, because he tells us that. We know that he comes across a Policeman, and then a woman, whose dog is accidentally killed by Molloy but who still offers to care for him. Then there is another character of Moran, in the second part of book, who is on the look out of Molloy. He ventures out in his search with his son. Through a monologue by Moran, we are told about how the days are spent in search, how Moran seems to have killed a man (perhaps the same policeman, we don’t know) and how he also comes across a man, who from the appearance seems Molloy. Towards the end of second part you even contemplate whether Molloy and Moran aren’t the same persons. But it is not important, what holds you is the incessant working of mind, the statements stated with a complete submission.
“For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker. It is then the true division begins, of twenty-two by seven for example, and the pages fill with the true ciphers at last...�
In Malone Dies, Malone is awaiting his death. His movement is restricted as he is bedridden. He appears to be living in an asylum. To pass his time, he tells himself stories. The drivel which is carried on, in his mind, is an exercise in keeping himself occupied.
� So I wonder if I should go on, I mean go on drawing up an inventory corresponding perhaps but faintly to the facts, and if I should not rather cut it short and devote myself to some other form of distraction, of less consequence, or simply wait, doing nothing, or counting perhaps, one, two, three and so on, until all danger to myself from myself is past at last.�
But it is the third one in trilogy, i.e. The Unnameable, where everything appears (so it seems) to come together. It sweeps you out of your mind. Yes, because here we don’t know who is talking to us, it may be one voice or another and it may switch places. It can be Molloy, Malone, Murphy or Moran or still, one who is not known, hence, unnameable. Could it be someone who’s been always there, from the very beginning; the beginning of times? Someone who has witnessed the coming and going (birth and death) of the likes of Molloys and Malones? This voice undoubtedly suggests this. But from where is it talking, i.e. if it is talking? The origin of the voice can be ascribed different places. It can be a grave, a place like heaven or hell, or it can be something in between, possibly inside a man, waiting to be released. But it certainly is coming after a death; death perhaps of Malone or Molloy, we don’t know that. It witnesses the passing of both of them on an interval, but we don’t know if the interval is regular. Now look at a quote from Molloy :
“And I, what was I doing there, and why come? These are things that we shall try and discover. But these are things we must not take seriously. There is a little of everything, apparently, in nature, and freaks are common. And I am perhaps confusing several different occasions, and different times, deep down, and deep down is my dwelling, oh not deepest down somewhere between the mud and the scum.�
And this one from Malone Dies:
“Yes, those were the days, quick to night and well beguiled with the search for warmth and reasonably edible scraps. And you imagine it will be so till the end. But suddenly all begins to rage and roar again, you are lost in forests of high threshing ferns or whirled far out on the face of wind-swept wastes, till you begin to wonder if you have not died without knowing and gone to hell or been born again.......�
I wonder whether Beckett wrote these books one at a time or was he writing the three of them simultaneously. Molloy passes and then Malone passes too, both unaware of some other presence, which witnesses their passing and seems to be always there, a consciousness turned into a voice, perhaps waiting for its birth too.
I also wondered whether Sam has tried to incorporate the concept of rebirth i.e. the birth cycle from Hindu philosophy, where a soul is consciousness and which never dies but is in the process of being born and dying as in a cycle.
“I hope this preamble will soon come to an end and the statement begin that will dispose of me. Unfortunately I am afraid (as always) of going on. For to go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again (a stranger first, then little by little the same as always) in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing (being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking) but of which little by little - in spite of these handicaps - I shall begin to know something: just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want (take your choice), which spews me out or swallows me up (I'll never know)...�
There were some more quotes which I felt related. For example, Beckett says:
“My master." There is a vein I must not lose sight of. But for the moment my concern..... (but before I forget: there may be more than one, a whole college of tyrants, differing in their views as to what should be done with me, in conclave since time began or a little later, listening to me from time to time, then breaking up for a meal or a game of cards)
Doesn’t it seem like waiting for the judgement before being born again?
Beckett also employs humor here to express his disdain with God. He takes a few quips before arriving at conclusion that perhaps, He too, is working under some compulsion, that He is bound to do what He is supposed to be doing. Hence, He is not to be blamed.
The end of the work is completely overwhelming, leaving one dazzled, as the writing reaches its culmination, asserting the need to go on, as there is but nothing else to be done, to be understood. The voice which may or may not belong to a man, the consciousness which may exist anywhere, anyplace, is subjected to the unfathomable because nothing is in one’s hands, neither the birth nor the death, so while one may find it impossible to move on, for there is no purpose in moving, one has to move on. In the words of Albert Camus - Opening oneself to the benign indifference of the Universe - one must go on.
“You must go on.
I can't go on.
I'll go on.�
March 28, 2016
I once recommended Molloy to a boyfriend by saying it was one of the funniest books I'd ever read. I gave him my copy of the trilogy, and he made it about thirty pages.
-I really don't see what's supposed to be funny, he said.
-Well, I actually underlined the lines that made me laugh, I said
-Is that what that is? I had no idea...
My ex was an intelligent person; he had a vast knowledge of art history and fairly broad taste in books, but I fear he was hopelessly in love with beauty, health, youth. He just couldn't understand why a book like Molloy should exist.
Beckett's art is often discussed as a formal reaction to Joyce and other modernists. While that's a valid approach, for me Beckett reads like a fairly straightforward realist. I've worked as a caregiver and companion to the dying. I've lived with tramps and homeless men, and visited prisons and mental hospitals. Absurdity is not a literary invention. Beckett writes about the shadow side of human existence, and does so with noble fidelity. And while death can never be experienced in the first person, the trilogy pushes about as far in that direction as can possibly be done.
(Perhaps I should add that if you don't think Molloy's funny it's unlikely the next two books will cheer you up much. Just as Beckett's narrator grows less and less mobile, his language hollows out, shedding the delightful/icky wit of the first volume.)
*
3/22/16
Seeing things in the world that make me think of Beckett. The other day I was biking home when I noticed a man walking in circles in the middle of a busy intersection. Cars kept having to swerve to avoid hitting him. I joined the small crowd of pedestrians that had gathered on the sidewalk. We called out to the man, "Come here! come here!" Sometimes he'd look at us, take a step in our direction, but then jerk erratically back to the street. A man in his forties. His eyes were glassy, a layer of sweat glistening on his face. After about ten minutes a cop car rolled up. To his credit, the officer really did an excellent job controlling the situation. Without using force, the cop was able to get the man to come to him, out of harm's way. And then the man finally spoke, and all he could say was, "I'm scared."
It occurred to me that while other writers might do a fine job describing the scene, or even recreating the man's life, no one but Beckett could really touch the depths contained in that simple I'm scared
*
3/27/16 (Easter and, it so happens, the birthday of my nephew, who's now six months old, and while far from grotesque, quite the opposite in fact, at the moment his claim to personhood is somewhat inchoate or liminal, so perhaps it's not such a stretch to see him as a Beckett-like character or maybe the subject of one of Beckett's inimitable philosophical investigations) - this being the third time I've read the trilogy all the way through from start to finish. My awe undiminished. Beckett's masterpiece and certainly one of the books of my life.
My first encounter was nearly 15 years ago, as a teenager who'd recently stopped believing in god. I could be cocky and defiant in my atheism, but was also prone to fits of depression. I'd look to books for solace. Beckett fascinated me. I was always able to appreciate his humor, but he could also be too extreme for my delicate temperament. When I read the trilogy it often felt like I was being taunted: Ha, see how ugly and meaningless it all is, this is what it's like to live in a godless world...
Perhaps I'm stronger now, or else more lucid in my frailty. It's still painful reading at times, particularly the last 50 or so pages of the Unnameable - the most intense, suffocating, feces-smearing scream in literature, I'm glad that doesn't go on for too much longer, but I'm also grateful something so singular exists. Beckett's tone no longer strikes me as at all mocking or superior. There's no denying all the filth and despair on display here, but in the depths there are also strange moments of tenderness, as between Moran and his son or Moll and Macmann. I now see the trilogy as an act of solidarity with the cowardly, weak, wretched, incontinent, and insane - all of us, in the long run.
(Dear goodreads, I'm sorry, but I can't resist making a list. Here are my ten favorite novels - the books I've lived with for years and hope to keep re-reading the rest of my life - in alphabetical order by author's name:
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
Molloy, Malone Dies, and the Unnameable by Samuel Beckett
The Death Of Virgil by Hermann Broch
Demons by Dostoevky
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
Something by Henry James - Wings of the Dove, the Golden Bowl, or Portrait of a Lady
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
A Book of Memories by Peter Nadas
Parallel Stories by Nadas
-I really don't see what's supposed to be funny, he said.
-Well, I actually underlined the lines that made me laugh, I said
-Is that what that is? I had no idea...
My ex was an intelligent person; he had a vast knowledge of art history and fairly broad taste in books, but I fear he was hopelessly in love with beauty, health, youth. He just couldn't understand why a book like Molloy should exist.
Beckett's art is often discussed as a formal reaction to Joyce and other modernists. While that's a valid approach, for me Beckett reads like a fairly straightforward realist. I've worked as a caregiver and companion to the dying. I've lived with tramps and homeless men, and visited prisons and mental hospitals. Absurdity is not a literary invention. Beckett writes about the shadow side of human existence, and does so with noble fidelity. And while death can never be experienced in the first person, the trilogy pushes about as far in that direction as can possibly be done.
(Perhaps I should add that if you don't think Molloy's funny it's unlikely the next two books will cheer you up much. Just as Beckett's narrator grows less and less mobile, his language hollows out, shedding the delightful/icky wit of the first volume.)
*
3/22/16
Seeing things in the world that make me think of Beckett. The other day I was biking home when I noticed a man walking in circles in the middle of a busy intersection. Cars kept having to swerve to avoid hitting him. I joined the small crowd of pedestrians that had gathered on the sidewalk. We called out to the man, "Come here! come here!" Sometimes he'd look at us, take a step in our direction, but then jerk erratically back to the street. A man in his forties. His eyes were glassy, a layer of sweat glistening on his face. After about ten minutes a cop car rolled up. To his credit, the officer really did an excellent job controlling the situation. Without using force, the cop was able to get the man to come to him, out of harm's way. And then the man finally spoke, and all he could say was, "I'm scared."
It occurred to me that while other writers might do a fine job describing the scene, or even recreating the man's life, no one but Beckett could really touch the depths contained in that simple I'm scared
*
3/27/16 (Easter and, it so happens, the birthday of my nephew, who's now six months old, and while far from grotesque, quite the opposite in fact, at the moment his claim to personhood is somewhat inchoate or liminal, so perhaps it's not such a stretch to see him as a Beckett-like character or maybe the subject of one of Beckett's inimitable philosophical investigations) - this being the third time I've read the trilogy all the way through from start to finish. My awe undiminished. Beckett's masterpiece and certainly one of the books of my life.
My first encounter was nearly 15 years ago, as a teenager who'd recently stopped believing in god. I could be cocky and defiant in my atheism, but was also prone to fits of depression. I'd look to books for solace. Beckett fascinated me. I was always able to appreciate his humor, but he could also be too extreme for my delicate temperament. When I read the trilogy it often felt like I was being taunted: Ha, see how ugly and meaningless it all is, this is what it's like to live in a godless world...
Perhaps I'm stronger now, or else more lucid in my frailty. It's still painful reading at times, particularly the last 50 or so pages of the Unnameable - the most intense, suffocating, feces-smearing scream in literature, I'm glad that doesn't go on for too much longer, but I'm also grateful something so singular exists. Beckett's tone no longer strikes me as at all mocking or superior. There's no denying all the filth and despair on display here, but in the depths there are also strange moments of tenderness, as between Moran and his son or Moll and Macmann. I now see the trilogy as an act of solidarity with the cowardly, weak, wretched, incontinent, and insane - all of us, in the long run.
Yes, I know they are words, there was a time time I didn't, as I still don't know if they are mine. Their hopes are therefore founded. In their shoes I'd be content with my knowing what I know, I'd demand no more of me than to know that what I hear is not the innocent and necessary sound of dumb things constrained to endure, but the terror-stricken babble of the condemned to silence.
(Dear goodreads, I'm sorry, but I can't resist making a list. Here are my ten favorite novels - the books I've lived with for years and hope to keep re-reading the rest of my life - in alphabetical order by author's name:
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
Molloy, Malone Dies, and the Unnameable by Samuel Beckett
The Death Of Virgil by Hermann Broch
Demons by Dostoevky
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
Something by Henry James - Wings of the Dove, the Golden Bowl, or Portrait of a Lady
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
A Book of Memories by Peter Nadas
Parallel Stories by Nadas
December 15, 2015
A venomous spate of reviewer’s block has rendered me incapable of forming opinions on all novels over the last few months. So I will keep this simple. I am now a Beckett convert. The prose! The prose! Samuel, O Samuel. It has taken me some time to backslide into the charms of hardcore modernism (so accustomed to pomo as I was), but this threesome of existential novels that interrogate the thing of narrative itself (and thing of life itself) has opened me up to the power of that movement (perchance because these novels, esp. in the self-referential The Unnameable paved the pomo path). On the whole, I prefer not to make the same remarks as countless millions of Beckett lovers have made before, so I will limit this to ecstatic superlatives. Molloy: hilarious, surreal, fucking brilliant prose, infinitely re-readable, fabulous. Malone Dies: darker, more baffling, hilarious, fucking brilliant prose, infinitely re-readable. The Unnameable: maddening, insane, fucking brilliant prose, enough to leave one squirming on the floor in all manner of priapic fits of pleasure and pain. The prose, the prose! Samuel, O Samuel!
December 15, 2024
“Of what one cannot speak, about that one must be silent.�
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Lógico-Philosophicus (tr. by Michael Beaney)
It is late evening. I’ve switched the light off and suddenly i am surrounded by blind darkness, and my phone’s black background merges with it. The white letters on its black background is the only source of light left. And I read:
That is the moment I’ve moved from admiring Beckett to feel him with my skin, my eyes, my mind�
But let’s come back to the beginning. At the beginning was Molloy�
This is the ending of “Molloy� that would inevitably send the one reading back to its beginning. But also it is the essence of writing a piece of fiction. It is generally acceptable to think that a good story depicts reality. But it never does. It lies. Sometimes it lies to get closer to the truth. Sometimes it lies because the language simply does not let it get closer.
To this point, when i am finishing writing this piece it is another day already, it is not dark anymore. My background is a white and the letters are black. But the impression has survived the change of scene.
I was thinking another day what fascinated me the most in reading a fictional piece. Apart from the obvious aesthetic pleasure, it might be “travelling� inside the writer’s mind. Not the character’s, but the writer’s: trying to figure which of his thoughts were converted into the text I was reading, how and why.
Beckett’s is outrageously adventurous, almost dangerous mind to be in. For comparison, visiting Gerald Murnane’s mind is like walking in a green meadow and seeing some other often unreachable but always visible remote green islands. While Beckett’s is like trying to rescue yourself from whirlpool of dangerous water. The water is a torrent of words he wanted to get rid off to reach solitude. To reach the place his unnamed and unnamable alter ego calls “silence�. It is impossible to swim against the current - it is too strong. His verbal dexterity might swamped you in even if you try to follow the flow. And it is a discomforting feeling being bounced from all the sides by those words. They excite, they amaze, they hurt.
It seems in the Trilogy, Beckett undertook two daring, deeply entangled projects: a stripping of self and a stripping of a novel. From “Molloy� to “The Unnamable�, a narrative becomes more and more abstract. It loses plot, setting, characters, even the names at the end. While from the first novel to the last, a person, or more precisely, a being in its centre is being peeled off any essential identity characteristics. It seems, Beckett tried to find out what if a totally “naked� self would be left with solely bare language.
Disenchanted with it, he was trying to go and find when the language ends. If an abstract painting can reveal us something about ourselves, is there way to do something like that with a language? His search was the one full or urgency, occasional despair, inability to stop, but also persistence. It was a lonely search. But he was not alone. There were others. Thirty years earlier and after the previous carnage in Europe, Wittgenstein thought he has solved this dilemma. He thought just words cannot express anything what matters. But this, what matters, would be somehow “shown� in language or otherwise. At the same time as Beckett, but thousands miles away Clarice Lispector tackled the same mystery. Like Beckett, she was also looking for the silence that comes after words. Her touch was gentler, her hand steadier:
In contrast, Beckett it seems could not stop, could not even make a pause as soon as he has started his search. In “Malloy�, the character asks: “I understood the language. Does it mean I am freer now than I was? I do not know, I shall learn.�
He keeps this hope. But then in “The Unamable� there is no hope to learn anything or even to control the unstoppable, almost panicky torrent of words:
It is an act of speaking because one cannot stop; to release oneself from words. Because those words are pouring out without giving any relief. Though the hope still remains that after the torrent of those words would be a beautiful silence.
Does articulating the existential horror makes one “freer�?
In Molloy: “The truth is, coenaesthetically speaking of course, I felt more or less the same as usual, that is to say, if i may give myself away, so terror-stricken that I was virtually bereft of feeling, not to say of consciousness and drowned in a deep and merciful torpor shot with brief abominable gleams, I give you my word.�
In Unnamable: “I’ll stop screaming, to listen and hear if anyone is answering, o look and see if anyone is coming, then go, close may eyes and go, screaming, to scream elsewhere. Yes, my mouth, but there it is, I wont open it, I have no mouth, and what about it, I’ll grow one, a little hole at first, then wider and wider, deeper and deeper, the air will gush into me, and out a second later, howling.�
Everyone knows Munch’s "The Scream":
This text is as intense as this painting, but expressed in words; and no orange sky any more, no bridge, no people on the background, not even eyes left; only mouth:
On the one hand, the Trilogy, “The Unnamable� especially is permeated by this existential horror, panic almost. But on the other hand, this torrent of words comes across almost like a therapeutical “talking cure� and all three novels are full of black humour with its timely relief.
By the dimensions of the Trilogy, the first novel, , is a almost “conventional� endeavour. There are two main characters: each of them possess a distinctive personality, appearance and a voice. The narrative consists of two consecutive monologues. First, welcome Molloy, a disable tramp. His monologue is a single paragraph that runs for about fifty pages. The “imperative� that drives him is to get to his mother. In the process, he undertakes an effort comparable to Ulysses if the latter would be a tramp on a bicycle and with crutches. The second part is told by Jacque Moran, an investigator who has been dispatched to track Molloy. His personality has reminded me the one of ’s characters, conceited, cold and enigmatic. The twist at the end of the novel is brilliant in its ambiguity that is also reminiscent of the best Nabokov’s plots. What is absolutely unique here the energy of the language and the sense of absurd peppered with “rude� jokes. Also Molloy comes across as pretty credible authentic person. I am sure it was not an intention, but i could easily believe such a human being really existed with his stones, misshapes and incredible purposefulness in spite of enormous obstacles.
In , the second novel Beckett gets rid off any plot, minimises the setting (an empty room and a window) and leaves the reader in the company of a single physically immobile personage, Malone, who tries to entertain himself with inventing stories while waiting for his own demise. Strangely, it is likely the most lyrical part of the Trilogy. It also deals with the concept of storytelling.
Inventing his own stories to pass the time, Malone soon faces the impossibility to stick to one a single modus of thinking, of writing (he uses an old pencil) or even of using language. In his mind, he starts an abstract story about someone totally invented but very soon his mind “swaps� to thinking about himself. It does it involuntary, almost unconsciously to Malone. Often he starts seeing himself in the invented other. And the story, once started never got to be finished.
In the introduction to the Trilogy, Gabriel Josipovici comments on this: “Malone long suspected that even the most absurd stories he invents are really stories about himself.�
However, in equal measure, his mind oscillates in other direction. When he tries to think about himself and his condition, the mind sways back towards an invented storytelling instead of keeping focus on his predicament. He constantly succumbs back to the stories he is not going to finish. The use of language and imagination leads him away from his own self.
So Malone fails on both accounts. He fails to approach his self sufficiently close but also he fails to “invent�. “After a fiasco, the solace, the repose, I began again, to try and live, cause to live, be another, in myself, in another. How false all this is.� But Malone, and very likely Beckett himself just cannot stop: “I began again. But little by little with a different aim, no longer in order to succeed, but in order to fail.�
And this is a majestic “failure� of anyone who is into the business of storytelling and also into the business of living. So basically it is an inevitable “failure� of all human beings: “Of myself I could never tell, any more than live or tell of others.�
Josipovici also describes this side of human condition very vividly:
But for any artist this impossibility seems to be much more pronounced. He cannot trust his medium but it is the only medium available to him.
Beckett said: “to be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world.� And echoed him from another side of the globe: “Not everyone succeeds in failing because it’s such hard work.�
. In the last novel of the Trilogy, Beckett goes as far as the medium could take him: radically abstract. He annihilates anything one might traditionally associate with a novel: the setting is stripped of any features apart from darkness; the narrative is stripped of any plot, coherence of story telling or any pretence of a story arc, the names, metaphors, paragraphs - all gone. In the absence of all of this, the first page poses a metafictional question containing the answer: “How to proceed? By aporia pure and simple? Or by affirmation and negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later?�. That is what Beckett does for the rest of the text. But strangely being so abstract the text does not lose any emotional power. In fact this style makes it very intense, sometimes unbearably so.
Beckett once said about Joyce: “His writing is not about something; it is that something itself.� I think it definitely applies to this novel. Moreover, it is the text “where pain is not something that happens to us, but is what we are.� (as said by Lispector about her own search).
So this is what is left of the narrative; and what about the character? The character is present. But he is also radically stripped of any features, possibly including the body and any individual possessions or connections. Molloy has got his stones, Malone - a pencil, a stick and a view from his window. So what is left here? It is just pure consciousness, the voice and the gift of a language. Or is it a curse?
I’ve written more about “The Unnamable� in a separate review". I will just repeat below a few main thoughts. Undoubtedly, it is a pinnacle of "The Trilogy" with all its abstract beauty and emotional intensity:
This desperate “I� is trapped in the “cage� of language. “I� seek to get free from this to no avail. The silence would be a relief, so far unreachable.
’s search goes further:
In spite of being trapped in language, Beckett’s creature does not have a name. There is a chance that the creature could use Clarice’s words: “And I also have no name, and that is my name. And because I depersonalise myself to the point of not having my name, I answer every time someone says: I.� But if in Clarice’s case it is a deliberate and positive effort, sort of act radical empathy, in Beckett’s case it is almost the opposite: the creature is not sure whether the “I� is his or whether he is just objectified and used like a mirror for someone else egos. This is the source of his anxiety. In the midst of voices he hears he is not sure whether any of those voices could be his; whether indeed he wants to have a voice.
“It’s the voice does that, it goes all knowing, to make me think I know, to make me think it’s mine...� but if it is his voice, than who is listening and why he cannot make the voice stop? “a voice that never stops, where it’s coming from?� This looks like a disturbing infinite regress of selves.
The Trilogy is a vortex that sucks you in with force and intensity. It starts with easily recognisable, almost crowded shore but than it throws you out into a place were everything is cold and bare but also somehow intensely and scarily familiar. However, the most important in spite of its unbearable intensity, from its first page to its last page, it its a celebration of resilience: Molloy never finish his move forward, Malone never puts his pencil down and the Unnamable: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on�.
It is also a pinnacle of creativity. It is such a radical attempt to free the novel from itself that the later attempts i am familiar with simply fade on this background. (For example - ’s “The Annihilation trilogy� or Cantarescu’s which his narrator calls an “anti-novel�. Maybe only Natalie Sarraute and David Markson get there.) It seems, Beckett anticipated such giants of our current letters like , , , or earlier - Jose Donoso and likely influenced many others. He also is the best composer of the first and last sentences. He has beaten Nabokov to this in my personal pantheon. I am glad I’ve got much more of his work to discover. He is the one of the greatest who has irreversibly and inevitably revolutionised the art after him.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Lógico-Philosophicus (tr. by Michael Beaney)
It is late evening. I’ve switched the light off and suddenly i am surrounded by blind darkness, and my phone’s black background merges with it. The white letters on its black background is the only source of light left. And I read:
“There, now there is no one here but me, no one wheels about me, no one comes toward me, no one has ever met anyone before my eyes, these creatures have never been, only I and this black void have ever been. And the sounds? And then lights?�
That is the moment I’ve moved from admiring Beckett to feel him with my skin, my eyes, my mind�
But let’s come back to the beginning. At the beginning was Molloy�
“Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.�
This is the ending of “Molloy� that would inevitably send the one reading back to its beginning. But also it is the essence of writing a piece of fiction. It is generally acceptable to think that a good story depicts reality. But it never does. It lies. Sometimes it lies to get closer to the truth. Sometimes it lies because the language simply does not let it get closer.
To this point, when i am finishing writing this piece it is another day already, it is not dark anymore. My background is a white and the letters are black. But the impression has survived the change of scene.
I was thinking another day what fascinated me the most in reading a fictional piece. Apart from the obvious aesthetic pleasure, it might be “travelling� inside the writer’s mind. Not the character’s, but the writer’s: trying to figure which of his thoughts were converted into the text I was reading, how and why.
Beckett’s is outrageously adventurous, almost dangerous mind to be in. For comparison, visiting Gerald Murnane’s mind is like walking in a green meadow and seeing some other often unreachable but always visible remote green islands. While Beckett’s is like trying to rescue yourself from whirlpool of dangerous water. The water is a torrent of words he wanted to get rid off to reach solitude. To reach the place his unnamed and unnamable alter ego calls “silence�. It is impossible to swim against the current - it is too strong. His verbal dexterity might swamped you in even if you try to follow the flow. And it is a discomforting feeling being bounced from all the sides by those words. They excite, they amaze, they hurt.
It seems in the Trilogy, Beckett undertook two daring, deeply entangled projects: a stripping of self and a stripping of a novel. From “Molloy� to “The Unnamable�, a narrative becomes more and more abstract. It loses plot, setting, characters, even the names at the end. While from the first novel to the last, a person, or more precisely, a being in its centre is being peeled off any essential identity characteristics. It seems, Beckett tried to find out what if a totally “naked� self would be left with solely bare language.
Disenchanted with it, he was trying to go and find when the language ends. If an abstract painting can reveal us something about ourselves, is there way to do something like that with a language? His search was the one full or urgency, occasional despair, inability to stop, but also persistence. It was a lonely search. But he was not alone. There were others. Thirty years earlier and after the previous carnage in Europe, Wittgenstein thought he has solved this dilemma. He thought just words cannot express anything what matters. But this, what matters, would be somehow “shown� in language or otherwise. At the same time as Beckett, but thousands miles away Clarice Lispector tackled the same mystery. Like Beckett, she was also looking for the silence that comes after words. Her touch was gentler, her hand steadier:
“Reality precedes the voice that seeks it, and just as the earth precedes the tree, the world precedes man, the sea precedes seeing the sea, so life precedes love, the body’s substance precedes the body, and in its turn language will one day have preceded the arrival of silence.�
In contrast, Beckett it seems could not stop, could not even make a pause as soon as he has started his search. In “Malloy�, the character asks: “I understood the language. Does it mean I am freer now than I was? I do not know, I shall learn.�
He keeps this hope. But then in “The Unamable� there is no hope to learn anything or even to control the unstoppable, almost panicky torrent of words:
“Someone speaks, someone hears, no need to go any further, it is not he, it’s I, or another, or others, what does it matter, the case is clear, it is not he, he would I know I am, that’s all I know that’s all I know, who I cannot say I am, I can’t say anything, i’ve tried, I am trying, he knows nothing, knows nothing, neither what is to speak, nor what it is to hear, to know nothing, to be capable of nothing, and to have to try, you don’t try any more, it goes on by itself, it drags on by itself, from word to word, a labouring whirl..�
It is an act of speaking because one cannot stop; to release oneself from words. Because those words are pouring out without giving any relief. Though the hope still remains that after the torrent of those words would be a beautiful silence.
Does articulating the existential horror makes one “freer�?
In Molloy: “The truth is, coenaesthetically speaking of course, I felt more or less the same as usual, that is to say, if i may give myself away, so terror-stricken that I was virtually bereft of feeling, not to say of consciousness and drowned in a deep and merciful torpor shot with brief abominable gleams, I give you my word.�
In Unnamable: “I’ll stop screaming, to listen and hear if anyone is answering, o look and see if anyone is coming, then go, close may eyes and go, screaming, to scream elsewhere. Yes, my mouth, but there it is, I wont open it, I have no mouth, and what about it, I’ll grow one, a little hole at first, then wider and wider, deeper and deeper, the air will gush into me, and out a second later, howling.�
Everyone knows Munch’s "The Scream":
This text is as intense as this painting, but expressed in words; and no orange sky any more, no bridge, no people on the background, not even eyes left; only mouth:
“Evoke at painful junctures, when discouragement threatens to raise its head, the image of a vast cretinous mouth, red, blubber and slobbering, in solitary confinement, extruding indefatigably, with noise of wet kisses and washing in a tub, the words that obstruct it.�
On the one hand, the Trilogy, “The Unnamable� especially is permeated by this existential horror, panic almost. But on the other hand, this torrent of words comes across almost like a therapeutical “talking cure� and all three novels are full of black humour with its timely relief.
By the dimensions of the Trilogy, the first novel, , is a almost “conventional� endeavour. There are two main characters: each of them possess a distinctive personality, appearance and a voice. The narrative consists of two consecutive monologues. First, welcome Molloy, a disable tramp. His monologue is a single paragraph that runs for about fifty pages. The “imperative� that drives him is to get to his mother. In the process, he undertakes an effort comparable to Ulysses if the latter would be a tramp on a bicycle and with crutches. The second part is told by Jacque Moran, an investigator who has been dispatched to track Molloy. His personality has reminded me the one of ’s characters, conceited, cold and enigmatic. The twist at the end of the novel is brilliant in its ambiguity that is also reminiscent of the best Nabokov’s plots. What is absolutely unique here the energy of the language and the sense of absurd peppered with “rude� jokes. Also Molloy comes across as pretty credible authentic person. I am sure it was not an intention, but i could easily believe such a human being really existed with his stones, misshapes and incredible purposefulness in spite of enormous obstacles.
In , the second novel Beckett gets rid off any plot, minimises the setting (an empty room and a window) and leaves the reader in the company of a single physically immobile personage, Malone, who tries to entertain himself with inventing stories while waiting for his own demise. Strangely, it is likely the most lyrical part of the Trilogy. It also deals with the concept of storytelling.
Inventing his own stories to pass the time, Malone soon faces the impossibility to stick to one a single modus of thinking, of writing (he uses an old pencil) or even of using language. In his mind, he starts an abstract story about someone totally invented but very soon his mind “swaps� to thinking about himself. It does it involuntary, almost unconsciously to Malone. Often he starts seeing himself in the invented other. And the story, once started never got to be finished.
In the introduction to the Trilogy, Gabriel Josipovici comments on this: “Malone long suspected that even the most absurd stories he invents are really stories about himself.�
However, in equal measure, his mind oscillates in other direction. When he tries to think about himself and his condition, the mind sways back towards an invented storytelling instead of keeping focus on his predicament. He constantly succumbs back to the stories he is not going to finish. The use of language and imagination leads him away from his own self.
“Live and invent. I have tried. I must have tried. Invent. It is not the word. Neither is live. No matter. I have tried. While within me the wild beast of earnestness padded up and down, roaring, ravening, rending.�
So Malone fails on both accounts. He fails to approach his self sufficiently close but also he fails to “invent�. “After a fiasco, the solace, the repose, I began again, to try and live, cause to live, be another, in myself, in another. How false all this is.� But Malone, and very likely Beckett himself just cannot stop: “I began again. But little by little with a different aim, no longer in order to succeed, but in order to fail.�
And this is a majestic “failure� of anyone who is into the business of storytelling and also into the business of living. So basically it is an inevitable “failure� of all human beings: “Of myself I could never tell, any more than live or tell of others.�
Josipovici also describes this side of human condition very vividly:
“When I tell myself or others the story of my life the narrative falls into linear sequence. .. But when I am not in the process of telling in my life does not seem to be like that at all. Far from falling into pattern it remains dark and confused, without discernible shape and hardly amenable to words. From one point of view, it is a state i need to escape. But from another point of view it is the stories I tell about myself which seem false and misleading. I feel that as person as I start to tell them I am moving away from rather than towards myself.�
But for any artist this impossibility seems to be much more pronounced. He cannot trust his medium but it is the only medium available to him.
Beckett said: “to be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world.� And echoed him from another side of the globe: “Not everyone succeeds in failing because it’s such hard work.�
. In the last novel of the Trilogy, Beckett goes as far as the medium could take him: radically abstract. He annihilates anything one might traditionally associate with a novel: the setting is stripped of any features apart from darkness; the narrative is stripped of any plot, coherence of story telling or any pretence of a story arc, the names, metaphors, paragraphs - all gone. In the absence of all of this, the first page poses a metafictional question containing the answer: “How to proceed? By aporia pure and simple? Or by affirmation and negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later?�. That is what Beckett does for the rest of the text. But strangely being so abstract the text does not lose any emotional power. In fact this style makes it very intense, sometimes unbearably so.
Beckett once said about Joyce: “His writing is not about something; it is that something itself.� I think it definitely applies to this novel. Moreover, it is the text “where pain is not something that happens to us, but is what we are.� (as said by Lispector about her own search).
So this is what is left of the narrative; and what about the character? The character is present. But he is also radically stripped of any features, possibly including the body and any individual possessions or connections. Molloy has got his stones, Malone - a pencil, a stick and a view from his window. So what is left here? It is just pure consciousness, the voice and the gift of a language. Or is it a curse?
I’ve written more about “The Unnamable� in a separate review". I will just repeat below a few main thoughts. Undoubtedly, it is a pinnacle of "The Trilogy" with all its abstract beauty and emotional intensity:
I’m the air, the walls, the walled-in one, everything eyelids, opens, ebbs, flows, like flakes, I’m all these flakes, meeting, falling, asunder,...I’m all these words, all these strings, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that i am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, with my little strength...�
This desperate “I� is trapped in the “cage� of language. “I� seek to get free from this to no avail. The silence would be a relief, so far unreachable.
’s search goes further:
“My fate is to search and my fate is to return empty-handed. But—I return with the unutterable. The unutterable can only be given to me through the failure of my language. Only when the word fails do I obtain what my language could not.� (The article “Going backwards�, 1962)
In spite of being trapped in language, Beckett’s creature does not have a name. There is a chance that the creature could use Clarice’s words: “And I also have no name, and that is my name. And because I depersonalise myself to the point of not having my name, I answer every time someone says: I.� But if in Clarice’s case it is a deliberate and positive effort, sort of act radical empathy, in Beckett’s case it is almost the opposite: the creature is not sure whether the “I� is his or whether he is just objectified and used like a mirror for someone else egos. This is the source of his anxiety. In the midst of voices he hears he is not sure whether any of those voices could be his; whether indeed he wants to have a voice.
“It’s the voice does that, it goes all knowing, to make me think I know, to make me think it’s mine...� but if it is his voice, than who is listening and why he cannot make the voice stop? “a voice that never stops, where it’s coming from?� This looks like a disturbing infinite regress of selves.
The Trilogy is a vortex that sucks you in with force and intensity. It starts with easily recognisable, almost crowded shore but than it throws you out into a place were everything is cold and bare but also somehow intensely and scarily familiar. However, the most important in spite of its unbearable intensity, from its first page to its last page, it its a celebration of resilience: Molloy never finish his move forward, Malone never puts his pencil down and the Unnamable: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on�.
It is also a pinnacle of creativity. It is such a radical attempt to free the novel from itself that the later attempts i am familiar with simply fade on this background. (For example - ’s “The Annihilation trilogy� or Cantarescu’s which his narrator calls an “anti-novel�. Maybe only Natalie Sarraute and David Markson get there.) It seems, Beckett anticipated such giants of our current letters like , , , or earlier - Jose Donoso and likely influenced many others. He also is the best composer of the first and last sentences. He has beaten Nabokov to this in my personal pantheon. I am glad I’ve got much more of his work to discover. He is the one of the greatest who has irreversibly and inevitably revolutionised the art after him.
December 15, 2022
Getting through this loosely-related trilogy of short novels was one of the hardest reading experiences I've ever had, and I'm not exactly sure if I enjoyed it, or even knew what Beckett was getting at half the time.
My interest level throughout was all over the place, as the below graphic demonstrates:
Reading this was similar to reading Proust -- I had to be absolutely ON while reading, or I'd lose the train of thought and have to re-read paragraphs. And when there are literally 80+ page segments in here without a paragraph break, that becomes an ordeal. Sometimes I would get in the flow (mostly during Molloy and the first parts of Malone Dies), but other times I would just be reading words without understanding meaning.
And honestly, I'm not sure I understood much in the way of meaning in general. I can get around the fact that there isn't much in the way of plot, characters, traditional storytelling devices, etc. Hey, I love the weird stuff. But I feel like you have to be in a MOOD to be able to read this. Some days, I just couldn't make it happen.
Not that there aren't moments where it all came together, and I went A-HA! GENIUS! And it's pretty darn FUNNY in spots, as well. But really, what IS all of this? What does it MEAN? I have no IDEA.
Molloy seemed to make the most sense. Deconstruction of a typical novel. Cool parallels between characters who may be the same person. Funny stuff. But as the pages went by, I couldn't get anything out of the text and stopped looking forward to reading it.
At any rate, I think I failed Beckett here, and probably should try again in 10 years or so, when I'll hopefully be a better reader.
My interest level throughout was all over the place, as the below graphic demonstrates:
Reading this was similar to reading Proust -- I had to be absolutely ON while reading, or I'd lose the train of thought and have to re-read paragraphs. And when there are literally 80+ page segments in here without a paragraph break, that becomes an ordeal. Sometimes I would get in the flow (mostly during Molloy and the first parts of Malone Dies), but other times I would just be reading words without understanding meaning.
And honestly, I'm not sure I understood much in the way of meaning in general. I can get around the fact that there isn't much in the way of plot, characters, traditional storytelling devices, etc. Hey, I love the weird stuff. But I feel like you have to be in a MOOD to be able to read this. Some days, I just couldn't make it happen.
Not that there aren't moments where it all came together, and I went A-HA! GENIUS! And it's pretty darn FUNNY in spots, as well. But really, what IS all of this? What does it MEAN? I have no IDEA.
Molloy seemed to make the most sense. Deconstruction of a typical novel. Cool parallels between characters who may be the same person. Funny stuff. But as the pages went by, I couldn't get anything out of the text and stopped looking forward to reading it.
At any rate, I think I failed Beckett here, and probably should try again in 10 years or so, when I'll hopefully be a better reader.
December 3, 2007
Beckett definitely gets 5 stars from me, but he's not for everyone. Nor is he for every mood - this book sat on my shelf for years before I found myself in the right place to give it a read. But once I began Molloy and realized I was feeling it, it shot to the top of my "most brilliant and personally influential reads" list. I actually cried when I was reading it because I thought it was so great, and I think about it pretty much every day. Yes, i am a huge dork. I don't think I'm as cynical or dry as SB and his antiheroes, but for some reason i really embrace them. Malone Dies and the Unnameable do get a bit more difficult, but the way I see it, it's just a relief to have some extra material to decompress with after the brilliance of Molloy.
December 20, 2024
I am in my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ review. I don't know how I got here. I was on the island just now. I have been on it always, perhaps even was born on the island. I don't know how I got there, either. Perhaps on a ship, that Wreck in the Moonlight painted by Caspar David Friedrich, mentioned on page 270. I was certainly brought in a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I'd never have got there alone. I am on a barren island, yet I am also in a sort of review right now, it is not I who am speaking, pretending to write this message in a bottle. One evening, ages ago, a plump professor of English literature had gathered us, his few students â€� the seminar was optional â€� in the middle of the auditorium, and he wedged himself between the rows of benches. He was like a buoy between waves, in front of us. We were there, crammed like on an academical island, listening to his silent voice. He asked us the classical question: what book would we take on an island, if we could only choose one. I myself said Beckett's trilogy, of course. But I wasn’t entirely sure or sincere. I think I just wanted to please our unnamable buoy. It wasn't my favourite book, I think. And it still isn’t, probably. I can’t tell. I can’t reach out for other books anymore. And there's no more room for comparisons. But it was, after all, the best book to take on the island, the most befitting, one that relentlessly seeks the end from the very beginning, one book to read unto death. I’m there now, although I’m also for the time being here, writing, but not for long, because I can’t go on. It doesn't matter. I must go on. Reading (with closed eyes, with open eyes) this book unto silence. It is not I who am speaking or writing, bereft of hands, a message from far away. Being here now from being there then. I believe in progress, I believe in silence. On.
[Everything in italics is taken directly from Beckett's trilogy]
[Everything in italics is taken directly from Beckett's trilogy]
June 7, 2016
Well slap me and call me Susan. Or was it Sarah? Edgar? I don’t know. No matter.
I could simply leave this as my review and summary of Beckett’s trilogy of nothingness, but in the spirit of Beckett himself, “I’ll go on.� Wow. Just�. yeah, wow. I’ve never read anything like this. Parts of The Unnamable at the end drift into what I call “literature of the black speech,� which like Leautreamont and Kafka, end up like being some evil incantation in which reading is reciting; there’s no meaning because the lines themselves embody the meaning, which here is nothingness or an attempt to achieve nothingness. Needless to say the attempt is a failure. YOU WON’T BE TAKING THIS ONE TO THE BEACH, KIDDIES.
What are we to do with Beckett? I read Murphy earlier this year, and enjoyed the holy hell out of it. It’s Pynchon before the Pynch and better. Witty and intellectual and interestingly described and� All of those attributes are under totalitarian siege in the trilogy. We see from Molloy ‘til the end of The Unnamable a gradual wearing down of thought until it is almost (but never quite) at its most primal level.
Beckett’s fav authors were Proust and Joyce. Both of those dudes wrote looooong books filled with words. In an essay, Beckett said Joyce had done all there is to do in transcending the word by use of words. I bet he looked at Proust and figured he’d done the same with the ability to craft fictive scenarios chock full of characters and setting and furniture and all the rest (I guess I’ll have to read his monograph Proust to find out). Beckett chided Rilke for thinking his “case of the fidgets� had resulted in him finding God, when they were really just the fidgets. So we have an anti-transcendentalist, but nonetheless a transcendentalist at heart, sapped of traditional narrative ambition, seeking anti-transcendentalism in the absolute breakdown of the narrative psyche. For anyone, like me, that believes an author’s works constitute a map of the author’s mind, the treatise of Beckett’s trilogy will be a specter that continues to haunt. The Muse herself is revealed for what she is: Nothing (with a capital N, which is something in itself�#paradox) By the end of the trilogy, Molloy seems not only beautifully written, but copious in plot. That’s an insane achievement in itself, worthy of the Nobel Prize. I agree with Leo Bersani, when he says in his essay “Beckett and the End of Literature�:
The open-ended novel, ready to receive a rich variety of unpredictable extensions both from the author and his public, tends, as we have seen, to be narrowed into the predictable, excessively determined structures of pathological compulsions in Robbe-Grillet’s work. Beckett’s struggle toward unrelieved monotony and total inexpressiveness, on the other hand, has taken on a kind of bizarre heroism given his fantastic talent for stylistic and dramatic diversity.�
Insert anyone you like for Robbe-Grillet, be it Pynchon or R.R. Martin, or whoever. Beckett mastered these guys in his first book; it truly is heroic then, albeit in a brutal kind of way, to choose and continually attempt the antithesis of what most writers only dream about achieving.
I could simply leave this as my review and summary of Beckett’s trilogy of nothingness, but in the spirit of Beckett himself, “I’ll go on.� Wow. Just�. yeah, wow. I’ve never read anything like this. Parts of The Unnamable at the end drift into what I call “literature of the black speech,� which like Leautreamont and Kafka, end up like being some evil incantation in which reading is reciting; there’s no meaning because the lines themselves embody the meaning, which here is nothingness or an attempt to achieve nothingness. Needless to say the attempt is a failure. YOU WON’T BE TAKING THIS ONE TO THE BEACH, KIDDIES.
What are we to do with Beckett? I read Murphy earlier this year, and enjoyed the holy hell out of it. It’s Pynchon before the Pynch and better. Witty and intellectual and interestingly described and� All of those attributes are under totalitarian siege in the trilogy. We see from Molloy ‘til the end of The Unnamable a gradual wearing down of thought until it is almost (but never quite) at its most primal level.
Beckett’s fav authors were Proust and Joyce. Both of those dudes wrote looooong books filled with words. In an essay, Beckett said Joyce had done all there is to do in transcending the word by use of words. I bet he looked at Proust and figured he’d done the same with the ability to craft fictive scenarios chock full of characters and setting and furniture and all the rest (I guess I’ll have to read his monograph Proust to find out). Beckett chided Rilke for thinking his “case of the fidgets� had resulted in him finding God, when they were really just the fidgets. So we have an anti-transcendentalist, but nonetheless a transcendentalist at heart, sapped of traditional narrative ambition, seeking anti-transcendentalism in the absolute breakdown of the narrative psyche. For anyone, like me, that believes an author’s works constitute a map of the author’s mind, the treatise of Beckett’s trilogy will be a specter that continues to haunt. The Muse herself is revealed for what she is: Nothing (with a capital N, which is something in itself�#paradox) By the end of the trilogy, Molloy seems not only beautifully written, but copious in plot. That’s an insane achievement in itself, worthy of the Nobel Prize. I agree with Leo Bersani, when he says in his essay “Beckett and the End of Literature�:
The open-ended novel, ready to receive a rich variety of unpredictable extensions both from the author and his public, tends, as we have seen, to be narrowed into the predictable, excessively determined structures of pathological compulsions in Robbe-Grillet’s work. Beckett’s struggle toward unrelieved monotony and total inexpressiveness, on the other hand, has taken on a kind of bizarre heroism given his fantastic talent for stylistic and dramatic diversity.�
Insert anyone you like for Robbe-Grillet, be it Pynchon or R.R. Martin, or whoever. Beckett mastered these guys in his first book; it truly is heroic then, albeit in a brutal kind of way, to choose and continually attempt the antithesis of what most writers only dream about achieving.
May 2, 2024
Rereading Malone Dies. Translated by the author from the original French. Starts with first person narrator considering his final productions before death. He is to write three stories: the first about a man and woman, the second about an animal, the third about a stone. In addition, he is to complete an inventory of his possessions. All must be precisely timed for the moment he buys the farm.
"When I have completed my inventory, if my death is not ready for me then, I shall write my memoirs. That's funny, I have made a joke. No matter. There is a cupboard I have never looked into. My possessions are in a corner, in a little heap. With my long stick I can rummage in them, draw them to me, send them back. My bed is by the window. I lie turned towards it most of the time. I see roofs and sky, a glimpse of street too, if I crane. I do not see any fields or hills. And yet they are near. But are they near? I don't know. I do not see the sea either, but I hear it when it is high. I can see into a room of the house across the way. Queer things go on there sometimes, people are queer. Perhaps these are abnormal. They must see me too, my big shaggy head up against the window-pane." (p. 209)
"When I have completed my inventory, if my death is not ready for me then, I shall write my memoirs. That's funny, I have made a joke. No matter. There is a cupboard I have never looked into. My possessions are in a corner, in a little heap. With my long stick I can rummage in them, draw them to me, send them back. My bed is by the window. I lie turned towards it most of the time. I see roofs and sky, a glimpse of street too, if I crane. I do not see any fields or hills. And yet they are near. But are they near? I don't know. I do not see the sea either, but I hear it when it is high. I can see into a room of the house across the way. Queer things go on there sometimes, people are queer. Perhaps these are abnormal. They must see me too, my big shaggy head up against the window-pane." (p. 209)
March 28, 2011
Mind-bending, breathless prose unlike anything else. Beckett's fascinating, disturbing, exhausting and droll depiction of consciousness—stripped of all outside contact and reference points by the time we stumble, benumbed, into The Unnamable—will definitely not appeal to everyone, but I found it hypnotic; even the third book, which friends (fans of the first two) had said was unreadable, drew me in with its relentless hyper-babble and I can't go on, I'll go on iterations.
There's plenty of looping and heaving humor etched into the non-stop flow, in especial the sequence of the sucking-stones and the obsessive ordering of them in the pockets at hand in order to achieve mouth-time equality. Throughout the course of the three books the body becomes more and more of an irritating and alienated appendage, eventually to be misplaced and regretted no more than the bicycle of Molloy. There are also the tantalizing references to an austere and removed God and angelic messengers that send the narrating entities on missions for which the purposes are inscrutable, the means a further fragmentation of the physical from the mental, and the end result a more circuitous, tortured route for consciousness to end up back at the starting point, no further enlightened (indeed, even more confused) and stimulating the endless counter-measures by the naked soul to repel the nausea—and quiet the abhorrence—for existence that the pointless eternity of the now engenders.
Definitely requires more than one reading, perhaps even reversing the order of the novels to experience Molloy's emergence from the echo chambers of the Unnamable, the Beckettian ontic proceeding from the ontological.
There's plenty of looping and heaving humor etched into the non-stop flow, in especial the sequence of the sucking-stones and the obsessive ordering of them in the pockets at hand in order to achieve mouth-time equality. Throughout the course of the three books the body becomes more and more of an irritating and alienated appendage, eventually to be misplaced and regretted no more than the bicycle of Molloy. There are also the tantalizing references to an austere and removed God and angelic messengers that send the narrating entities on missions for which the purposes are inscrutable, the means a further fragmentation of the physical from the mental, and the end result a more circuitous, tortured route for consciousness to end up back at the starting point, no further enlightened (indeed, even more confused) and stimulating the endless counter-measures by the naked soul to repel the nausea—and quiet the abhorrence—for existence that the pointless eternity of the now engenders.
Definitely requires more than one reading, perhaps even reversing the order of the novels to experience Molloy's emergence from the echo chambers of the Unnamable, the Beckettian ontic proceeding from the ontological.
February 28, 2018
Fiziksel varoluşun canı cehenneme artık sözden müteşekkil bir varoluşa merhaba! Ters yüz etti beni Beckett o ayrı ama bir sorunum var; Beckett'ın mizahına ve absürd karakterlerine alışanlar sonrasında ne yapıyorlar öğrenebilir miyim? ^^
December 6, 2020
Molloy
(read August 2018) (3-star)
Of course, I may have gotten it all wrong. There's really no way of telling with Beckett. Perhaps the rest of the trilogy will make this all make sense. I'm going to find out. I do plan on reading the other two books.
Malone Dies (read May 2019) (3-star)
The mystery continues. I'm not sure anyone is meant to understand Beckett's writing but it is intriguing and mysterious. It's a mystery & puzzle of a story.
What happens in this book? �..Well, Malone dies.
A strange tale with strange characters and containing murder and yet a positive life-affirming outlook. I'm not sure how Beckett gets this across in this confusing, intriguing, sometimes boring, sometimes thrilling, completely messed up story.
Do I like it? Yes. Do I understand it? Not really.
Will I continue the trilogy? Damn yes.
The Unnamable (read November 2020) (3-star)
Did I mention that this was a messed up trilogy?! Well, that continues in this last segment. LOL.
The Trilogy as a whole:
Making my way through this story was a mixture of admiration, insight, confusion, and true scratch-my-head moments. What was I reading?! Yet, it does, in a strange & obscure way, come together at the end of each book, and as a whole for the trilogy.
So, like the stories of Molloy/Malone/The Unnamable, my review is a confusing mess. But I hope it is also a positive, affirming one.
This book probably rates higher than I'm rating it. However, so much went over my head that I can't give it more than 3-stars. I enjoyed it (most of it) but think I understood only enough to give it this rating.
Of course, I may have gotten it all wrong. There's really no way of telling with Beckett. Perhaps the rest of the trilogy will make this all make sense. I'm going to find out. I do plan on reading the other two books.
Malone Dies (read May 2019) (3-star)
The mystery continues. I'm not sure anyone is meant to understand Beckett's writing but it is intriguing and mysterious. It's a mystery & puzzle of a story.
What happens in this book? �..Well, Malone dies.
A strange tale with strange characters and containing murder and yet a positive life-affirming outlook. I'm not sure how Beckett gets this across in this confusing, intriguing, sometimes boring, sometimes thrilling, completely messed up story.
Do I like it? Yes. Do I understand it? Not really.
Will I continue the trilogy? Damn yes.
The Unnamable (read November 2020) (3-star)
Did I mention that this was a messed up trilogy?! Well, that continues in this last segment. LOL.
The Trilogy as a whole:
Making my way through this story was a mixture of admiration, insight, confusion, and true scratch-my-head moments. What was I reading?! Yet, it does, in a strange & obscure way, come together at the end of each book, and as a whole for the trilogy.
So, like the stories of Molloy/Malone/The Unnamable, my review is a confusing mess. But I hope it is also a positive, affirming one.
This book probably rates higher than I'm rating it. However, so much went over my head that I can't give it more than 3-stars. I enjoyed it (most of it) but think I understood only enough to give it this rating.
May 16, 2009
Crazy. There's really nothing else like this. Just read the first section of Molloy in one uninterrupted sitting if it is possible.
March 16, 2014
This book is bigger than me. I still plan on devoting a week to going back over it and give it my best shot at doing it some justice. A seance invoking the spirit of Beckett is not out of the question.
April 12, 2014
I read all the three novels and I have a copy of this book. So, I might as well add it as a read book and add a point in my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ' 2014 Reading Challenge.
I liked all the three novels. Reading Beckett is totally like a different experience. I have been reading a lot and a couple of weeks back my eyes would just cry for not reason at all. The doctor and my wife both said that I am abusing my eyes by working (I am a workaholic) and reading (I am a bookaholic). So my eyes are oftentimes dry and so they cry to lubricate the surface of the eyeballs. Now I am using artificial tears (brand: Tears Naturale) to help in the lubrication. They (the doctor and my wife) suggested to refrain from reading too much but what can I do. I love reading and I still have the 3rd and 4th volumes of Samuel Beckett's Centenary Collection and the other 2,600+ books in my to-be-read folder (all inside my and my wife's bedroom). They are my treasured possessions. My distraction from the daily travails of living in a rat-race kind of life.
This is one of the best trilogy that I've read ever. Well, it did not topple The Lord of the Rings in the no. 1 slot but this trilogy will be something that I will remember maybe forever. It is a joy to read. The first two have a recognizable plot about some kind of weird bicycle-riding boy Molloy (4 stars) and the second one has Malone (5 stars) who is dying in his cell, thus called Malone Dies but writing a book about a boy Macmann who like Molloy goes around and meets all interesting people and does a variety of weird stuff only Beckett would imagine. My only concern is book 3, The Unnameable (3 stars) because it just appeared as an afterthought of Molloy, Malone and all the other fictional characters that Beckett gave life to in his novels. It is just like capping the strong story lines of the first two books with beautiful words that felt like dramatic lamentations of goodbye.
If you simply want to distract yourself from reading well-defined plots and enjoy the brilliance of a different post-modernist prose, go for this trilogy. Beckett is like eating in a French restaurant if you are an Asian. It's a feast for your eyes and nose. Asians have lots of eat-all-you-can restaurants. In those, there are so many choices and they will surely fill your tummy to the brim. When you go to Paris, however, you will rarely find buffets. You'll find artsy restaurant offering small servings of delectable and nicely presented piece of food served on a large white porcelain plate with nice decorations. It will also make you feel full but not to the extent that you would like to burp or run to the nearby toilet. You will feel some kind of class by paying a lot for a food that filled not your tummy but your other senses.
That's Beckett for you.
I liked all the three novels. Reading Beckett is totally like a different experience. I have been reading a lot and a couple of weeks back my eyes would just cry for not reason at all. The doctor and my wife both said that I am abusing my eyes by working (I am a workaholic) and reading (I am a bookaholic). So my eyes are oftentimes dry and so they cry to lubricate the surface of the eyeballs. Now I am using artificial tears (brand: Tears Naturale) to help in the lubrication. They (the doctor and my wife) suggested to refrain from reading too much but what can I do. I love reading and I still have the 3rd and 4th volumes of Samuel Beckett's Centenary Collection and the other 2,600+ books in my to-be-read folder (all inside my and my wife's bedroom). They are my treasured possessions. My distraction from the daily travails of living in a rat-race kind of life.
This is one of the best trilogy that I've read ever. Well, it did not topple The Lord of the Rings in the no. 1 slot but this trilogy will be something that I will remember maybe forever. It is a joy to read. The first two have a recognizable plot about some kind of weird bicycle-riding boy Molloy (4 stars) and the second one has Malone (5 stars) who is dying in his cell, thus called Malone Dies but writing a book about a boy Macmann who like Molloy goes around and meets all interesting people and does a variety of weird stuff only Beckett would imagine. My only concern is book 3, The Unnameable (3 stars) because it just appeared as an afterthought of Molloy, Malone and all the other fictional characters that Beckett gave life to in his novels. It is just like capping the strong story lines of the first two books with beautiful words that felt like dramatic lamentations of goodbye.
If you simply want to distract yourself from reading well-defined plots and enjoy the brilliance of a different post-modernist prose, go for this trilogy. Beckett is like eating in a French restaurant if you are an Asian. It's a feast for your eyes and nose. Asians have lots of eat-all-you-can restaurants. In those, there are so many choices and they will surely fill your tummy to the brim. When you go to Paris, however, you will rarely find buffets. You'll find artsy restaurant offering small servings of delectable and nicely presented piece of food served on a large white porcelain plate with nice decorations. It will also make you feel full but not to the extent that you would like to burp or run to the nearby toilet. You will feel some kind of class by paying a lot for a food that filled not your tummy but your other senses.
That's Beckett for you.
December 8, 2024
There’s no sequence of self-referential novels—Sam forbade usage of ‘trilogy� to both John Calder and Grove—in existence that are better than these THREE NOVELS. My emphasis is to stress the way the first omnibus edition, seen with this review, was sanctioned for release by Beckett. There is no better novel—equals, sure—than Molloy, full stop. (Feel free to type the code to italicize the previous where needed; there’s very good boxing on or I would’ve.)
March 17, 2021
I have no excuses for coming to Samuel Beckett so late. I’ve been aware of him and his work since I was about 16, when we first read and secondly watched a performance (on VHS) of Waiting for Godot in English class, and I really enjoyed it. But for whatever reason, I never followed up. Other things distracted me, other authors found their way to me, I went down rabbit holes, life happened.
At the time of this writing, I’m months away from turning 33. A few months ago, while idly perusing the mass-market paperbacks at the local used bookstore and coming up otherwise empty, I noticed a lone volume by Samuel Beckett, this old Black Cat omnibus of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. The price was $3. Sold.
Having now worked my way through these back to back, I have to say I’m very annoyed with myself for putting this off for so long, this exploring Beckett’s novels. I feel like I’ve been waiting for him and his voice my whole life. He’s very funny, he’s all about interior voice; he’s also somehow maximal and minimal in tandem. He’s an endless paragraph man (a stylistic conceit I happen to be very, very fond of for reasons I have a hard time articulating) and he digresses all over the place (ditto). So little actually happens, and yet so much. And to say the very least, you could say he’s obviously spent a lot of time thinking about death.
(My kind of guy, in essence.)
I feel bad playing favorites, but if forced I’ll say The Unnamable with very little hesitation. Page after page after page of relentless interior voice; initially clipped, staccato sentences that gradually give way to torrential labyrinths that run on for pages at a time. It’s the ultimate in loneliness � the consciousness alone with itself. It’s hilarious, horrifying, claustrophobic, incredible stuff.
(An aside: I’m not exaggerating when I say that throughout my life I’ve had nightmares much like this novel, where its me alone in dark silence staring off in one direction, unable to move, alone with my interior voice for all eternity. It’s (among my) worst nightmare(s). Needless to say, coming across something like it in novel form was quite revelatory, and a hell of a lot funnier (in a gallows sort of way) than I ever would have imagined.)
None of my adoration of The Unnamable should be construed as a slight to Molloy or Malone Dies, both exquisite(ly entertaining and gorgeous) texts in their own rights. And the three of these work beautifully together in a single volume. When I reread these, and I certainly will, I won’t revisit them singly, but all three again as a single unit. I can’t imagine separating them. They feel far too aesthetically unified for that. That being said, I suppose you could read them on their own, or out of order. I just wouldn’t necessarily want to because of the myriad ways they seem to play off each other.
Anyway, I have little else to contribute other than to say that reading Beckett’s trilogy was an invigorating and overwhelmingly tremendous experience from start to finish and it gets my highest recommendation.
(Much more Beckett in my future, you can bet your ass.)
At the time of this writing, I’m months away from turning 33. A few months ago, while idly perusing the mass-market paperbacks at the local used bookstore and coming up otherwise empty, I noticed a lone volume by Samuel Beckett, this old Black Cat omnibus of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. The price was $3. Sold.
Having now worked my way through these back to back, I have to say I’m very annoyed with myself for putting this off for so long, this exploring Beckett’s novels. I feel like I’ve been waiting for him and his voice my whole life. He’s very funny, he’s all about interior voice; he’s also somehow maximal and minimal in tandem. He’s an endless paragraph man (a stylistic conceit I happen to be very, very fond of for reasons I have a hard time articulating) and he digresses all over the place (ditto). So little actually happens, and yet so much. And to say the very least, you could say he’s obviously spent a lot of time thinking about death.
(My kind of guy, in essence.)
I feel bad playing favorites, but if forced I’ll say The Unnamable with very little hesitation. Page after page after page of relentless interior voice; initially clipped, staccato sentences that gradually give way to torrential labyrinths that run on for pages at a time. It’s the ultimate in loneliness � the consciousness alone with itself. It’s hilarious, horrifying, claustrophobic, incredible stuff.
(An aside: I’m not exaggerating when I say that throughout my life I’ve had nightmares much like this novel, where its me alone in dark silence staring off in one direction, unable to move, alone with my interior voice for all eternity. It’s (among my) worst nightmare(s). Needless to say, coming across something like it in novel form was quite revelatory, and a hell of a lot funnier (in a gallows sort of way) than I ever would have imagined.)
None of my adoration of The Unnamable should be construed as a slight to Molloy or Malone Dies, both exquisite(ly entertaining and gorgeous) texts in their own rights. And the three of these work beautifully together in a single volume. When I reread these, and I certainly will, I won’t revisit them singly, but all three again as a single unit. I can’t imagine separating them. They feel far too aesthetically unified for that. That being said, I suppose you could read them on their own, or out of order. I just wouldn’t necessarily want to because of the myriad ways they seem to play off each other.
Anyway, I have little else to contribute other than to say that reading Beckett’s trilogy was an invigorating and overwhelmingly tremendous experience from start to finish and it gets my highest recommendation.
(Much more Beckett in my future, you can bet your ass.)
January 1, 2016
I read this on a long train trip from Chicago to Salt Lake City and back several years ago. It was an excruciating read, difficult, a real grind. When I finished, I felt that I had read a masterpiece of literature (I had!), but the experience was so painful that I only gave it four stars. Now, after I skim it again, the images and experience comes back in a flood, but with only a modicum of the pain. It's an incredible, exhilirating feeling, tinged with a very slight pinch. What an incredible piece of art. It's time to fill in that fifth star and consider a re-read. It was worth all the pain.
Currently reading
September 23, 2011On Molloy
Wow, what happened to the past two weeks? The last thing I remember it was two Sundays ago and I was thinking to myself, "Huh, the next few days will be pretty bus�" and the next thing I knew I was waking up in a ditch by the metaphorical tracks while a bullet train composed of book signings, broken computers, early-morning and late-evening meetings, social calls and looming deadlines, raced past my throbbing head. In the far distance, receding all the time, I could just make out the tiny shapes of overlooked blogging commitments I had passed somewhere along the way.
My commitment, for example, to re-read Beckett's could-be-called-a-Trilogy with blogging friend , who has by this late date posted his thoughts on both the and books. I can barely distinguish this commitment, way back last Wednesday, waving forlornly to me from a distant platform. I knew, though, that I wanted to take my time with this post even if it meant delaying, because Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable are among those books in my personal canon—the ones which sustain me, which arrived in my life at a key moment and changed my ideas about what's possible in literature and even in life. The ones whose lines and rhythms and bizarrely beautiful narrative voices reverberate in my brain as I go about my days. This, for example:
Or this:
This re-read of Molloy, hurried and fragmented as it was, lived up to all my memories. A two-part, cyclical work, it has the most plot of any of these three books, which incidentally is not very much. We get two sections, both narrated in first-person by two different (but not all that different) men: the first is the ancient Molloy, who recalls his own name with difficulty; the second is Moran, who believes he is an agent sent to track down Molloy. Both men set forth, one after the other, on torturous, convoluted journeys—in many ways the same journey, since Moran attempts to follow in Molloy's footsteps—in which they persevere in spite of mental vagueness and rapid, inexplicable physical deterioration. Both men become obsessed along the way by seemingly irrelevant details—the best manner in which to suck sixteen stones in succession without sucking the same stone twice, for example. In the end both men, somehow, return to what we assume is their beginning point, although in both cases much has changed and this change exceeds their understanding.
This is the classic Beckettian "pointless journey," much like Mercier and Camier and Waiting for Godot. These are journeys in which a character seeks fiercely yet intermittently after something that never appears; something of which the traveler often loses sight or memory, which the reader suspects may not exist in the first place, and which the traveler would probably not reach even if it did.
I must admit that I find this construct oddly comforting, this idea that the objects of our obsessions are irrelevant to our overall experience—or, if not irrelevant, they are related in ways not immediately obvious, especially as they often go unexamined for long periods of time and our minds and bodies do not cooperate with our stated aims. Molloy knows, although he sometimes forgets, that he is trying to visit his mother: an ostensibly simple task. But he is unable to remember why he wants to visit her; he can barely remember his own name and doesn't recall if hers is the same; he can't ascertain whether the town in which he finds himself is the one where he (and she) live, and he is prone to getting distracted for months or possibly years at a time, being taken in by batty old ladies, or washing up on the seashore for months, perplexed by the stone-sucking dilemma. Likewise, private detective Moran believes that he's pursuing Molloy: a straightforward tail job. However, he's not even sure if his object's name is Molloy or Mollose: most of his "facts" on the case originate in his own imagination; he devotes most of his energy to bullying his son and housekeeper rather than constructing a plan; and in the end none of it matters anyway, as his legs inexplicably become stiffer and stiffer until he can barely move at all, and he abandons the search for Molloy in favor of dispatching his son for a used bicycle. Nothing is accomplished and nothing is known. And yet in the midst of the despair and laughter at this futility there are glimpses of an abiding attachment to human life.
All this is rife with the hilarity and horror of being a) such a rickety contraption as a human, who must b) glean your understanding of the world through flawed sense perceptions, and your reality is moreover c) divorced from standard assumptions about cause, effect, and continuity, but you must nevertheless d) shape your experience into some kind of coherent narrative, or else cease to speak at all. Beckett's work is often called "absurdist," but in my experience it's actually less absurd than most of us might like to believe. Instead, it seems to me an accurate picture of life without the mental filtering mechanisms we use to stay sane. The systems of habit and filtration we use to make sense of our world are so delicate and complex, and can veer off the rails with surprising ease—yet we take them for granted out of necessity, because otherwise even the simplest task would be impossible. We pretend, for example, that we are the same person from moment to moment, when our reality may be more fragmented and unpredictable ("A little dog followed him, a pomeranian I think, but I don't think so."). Or that we perceive the world and then narrate based on what we perceive, rather than creating or half-creating the world via our acts of perception and narration ("I resumed my inspection of the room and was on the point of endowing it with other properties when the valet came back..."). In the absence of these trusty shorthands, the task of communication, even with oneself, becomes daunting.
Yet there is something in us which spurs us onward, so that we continue attempting until the very end, despite our inevitable failures and detours along the way. Despite the lack of externally-imposed meaning, and the gaping holes in any system we create to understand the world around us, we are compelled to continue trying, to continue shaping our narratives however we can, incorporating the contradictions and random-seeming obstacles that rise before and within us.
Notes on Disgust
(For more information on the disgust project, see .)
The subject of disgust in this novel would take another long post all on its own, and I have to admit that I often found myself swept away with the beauty and hilarity of Beckett's language to such an extent that I forgot to examine the sections that deal in disgust. They are there, though, and plenty of them. On my first read, I remember being struck by the repugnance of Moran's character, his cruelty to his son, and in particular the scene in which he gives his son an enema. There's also Molloy's allusions to the fact that he may have had sex with his ancient crone of a mother. On top of this is the obvious disintegration of both men's bodies throughout the course of their journeys; Molloy is elderly and Moran appears simply to be inexplicably disabled, but both are falling to pieces, and mixed up sexually and otherwise with other human bodies which are falling to pieces, such as the old whore who may or may not have been Molloy's one experience of "love" (whatever he means by that). At the time she approaches him,
If I were to hazard a hypothesis on not very careful analysis, it might be that disgust here is something unavoidable which must be accepted, no more or less "meaningful" than anything else in life (unless we make it so) and something which we are all bound to both feel, and to occasion in others. Molloy depicts an undifferentiated world, where questions and observations we normally filter out of our stories and our thoughts (why a person is not a landmark; whether we truly recognize our home towns) instead get dwelt upon compulsively and become ordering principles, substitutes for meaning. As such, the disgusting, which normally dwells in that undifferentiated mass outside normal boundaries, can be found wherever you look and is neither a sign of any particular quality, nor a deterrent to finding meaning there.
Wow, what happened to the past two weeks? The last thing I remember it was two Sundays ago and I was thinking to myself, "Huh, the next few days will be pretty bus�" and the next thing I knew I was waking up in a ditch by the metaphorical tracks while a bullet train composed of book signings, broken computers, early-morning and late-evening meetings, social calls and looming deadlines, raced past my throbbing head. In the far distance, receding all the time, I could just make out the tiny shapes of overlooked blogging commitments I had passed somewhere along the way.
My commitment, for example, to re-read Beckett's could-be-called-a-Trilogy with blogging friend , who has by this late date posted his thoughts on both the and books. I can barely distinguish this commitment, way back last Wednesday, waving forlornly to me from a distant platform. I knew, though, that I wanted to take my time with this post even if it meant delaying, because Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable are among those books in my personal canon—the ones which sustain me, which arrived in my life at a key moment and changed my ideas about what's possible in literature and even in life. The ones whose lines and rhythms and bizarrely beautiful narrative voices reverberate in my brain as I go about my days. This, for example:
And I said, with rapture, Here is something I can study all my life, and never understand.
Or this:
And I myself will never lend myself to such a perversion (of the truth), until such time as I am compelled or find it convenient to do so. And I knew this swamp a little, having risked my life in it, cautiously, on several occasions, at a period of my life richer in illusions than the one I am trying to patch together here, I mean richer in certain illusions, in others poorer.
This re-read of Molloy, hurried and fragmented as it was, lived up to all my memories. A two-part, cyclical work, it has the most plot of any of these three books, which incidentally is not very much. We get two sections, both narrated in first-person by two different (but not all that different) men: the first is the ancient Molloy, who recalls his own name with difficulty; the second is Moran, who believes he is an agent sent to track down Molloy. Both men set forth, one after the other, on torturous, convoluted journeys—in many ways the same journey, since Moran attempts to follow in Molloy's footsteps—in which they persevere in spite of mental vagueness and rapid, inexplicable physical deterioration. Both men become obsessed along the way by seemingly irrelevant details—the best manner in which to suck sixteen stones in succession without sucking the same stone twice, for example. In the end both men, somehow, return to what we assume is their beginning point, although in both cases much has changed and this change exceeds their understanding.
This is the classic Beckettian "pointless journey," much like Mercier and Camier and Waiting for Godot. These are journeys in which a character seeks fiercely yet intermittently after something that never appears; something of which the traveler often loses sight or memory, which the reader suspects may not exist in the first place, and which the traveler would probably not reach even if it did.
Yes, I was straining towards those spurious deeps, their lying promise of gravity and peace, from all my old poisons I struggled towards them, safely bound.
I must admit that I find this construct oddly comforting, this idea that the objects of our obsessions are irrelevant to our overall experience—or, if not irrelevant, they are related in ways not immediately obvious, especially as they often go unexamined for long periods of time and our minds and bodies do not cooperate with our stated aims. Molloy knows, although he sometimes forgets, that he is trying to visit his mother: an ostensibly simple task. But he is unable to remember why he wants to visit her; he can barely remember his own name and doesn't recall if hers is the same; he can't ascertain whether the town in which he finds himself is the one where he (and she) live, and he is prone to getting distracted for months or possibly years at a time, being taken in by batty old ladies, or washing up on the seashore for months, perplexed by the stone-sucking dilemma. Likewise, private detective Moran believes that he's pursuing Molloy: a straightforward tail job. However, he's not even sure if his object's name is Molloy or Mollose: most of his "facts" on the case originate in his own imagination; he devotes most of his energy to bullying his son and housekeeper rather than constructing a plan; and in the end none of it matters anyway, as his legs inexplicably become stiffer and stiffer until he can barely move at all, and he abandons the search for Molloy in favor of dispatching his son for a used bicycle. Nothing is accomplished and nothing is known. And yet in the midst of the despair and laughter at this futility there are glimpses of an abiding attachment to human life.
I went on my way, that way of which I knew nothing, qua way, which was nothing more than a surface, bright or dark, smooth or rough, and always dear to me, in spite of all, and the dear sound of that which goes and is gone, with a brief dust, when the weather is dry.
All this is rife with the hilarity and horror of being a) such a rickety contraption as a human, who must b) glean your understanding of the world through flawed sense perceptions, and your reality is moreover c) divorced from standard assumptions about cause, effect, and continuity, but you must nevertheless d) shape your experience into some kind of coherent narrative, or else cease to speak at all. Beckett's work is often called "absurdist," but in my experience it's actually less absurd than most of us might like to believe. Instead, it seems to me an accurate picture of life without the mental filtering mechanisms we use to stay sane. The systems of habit and filtration we use to make sense of our world are so delicate and complex, and can veer off the rails with surprising ease—yet we take them for granted out of necessity, because otherwise even the simplest task would be impossible. We pretend, for example, that we are the same person from moment to moment, when our reality may be more fragmented and unpredictable ("A little dog followed him, a pomeranian I think, but I don't think so."). Or that we perceive the world and then narrate based on what we perceive, rather than creating or half-creating the world via our acts of perception and narration ("I resumed my inspection of the room and was on the point of endowing it with other properties when the valet came back..."). In the absence of these trusty shorthands, the task of communication, even with oneself, becomes daunting.
I felt more or less the same as usual, that is to say, if I may give myself away, so terror-stricken that I was virtually bereft of feeling, not to say of consciousness, and drowned in a deep and merciful torpor shot with brief abominable gleams, I give you my word.
Yet there is something in us which spurs us onward, so that we continue attempting until the very end, despite our inevitable failures and detours along the way. Despite the lack of externally-imposed meaning, and the gaping holes in any system we create to understand the world around us, we are compelled to continue trying, to continue shaping our narratives however we can, incorporating the contradictions and random-seeming obstacles that rise before and within us.
And of myself, all my life, I think I had been going to my mother, with the purpose of establishing our relations on a less precarious footing. And when I was with her, and I often succeeded, I left her without having done anything. And when I was no longer with her I was again on my way to her, hoping to do better next time. And when I appeared to give up and to busy myself with something else, or with nothing at all any more, in reality I was hatching my plans and seeking the way to her house.
Notes on Disgust
(For more information on the disgust project, see .)
The subject of disgust in this novel would take another long post all on its own, and I have to admit that I often found myself swept away with the beauty and hilarity of Beckett's language to such an extent that I forgot to examine the sections that deal in disgust. They are there, though, and plenty of them. On my first read, I remember being struck by the repugnance of Moran's character, his cruelty to his son, and in particular the scene in which he gives his son an enema. There's also Molloy's allusions to the fact that he may have had sex with his ancient crone of a mother. On top of this is the obvious disintegration of both men's bodies throughout the course of their journeys; Molloy is elderly and Moran appears simply to be inexplicably disabled, but both are falling to pieces, and mixed up sexually and otherwise with other human bodies which are falling to pieces, such as the old whore who may or may not have been Molloy's one experience of "love" (whatever he means by that). At the time she approaches him,
I was bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating...
If I were to hazard a hypothesis on not very careful analysis, it might be that disgust here is something unavoidable which must be accepted, no more or less "meaningful" than anything else in life (unless we make it so) and something which we are all bound to both feel, and to occasion in others. Molloy depicts an undifferentiated world, where questions and observations we normally filter out of our stories and our thoughts (why a person is not a landmark; whether we truly recognize our home towns) instead get dwelt upon compulsively and become ordering principles, substitutes for meaning. As such, the disgusting, which normally dwells in that undifferentiated mass outside normal boundaries, can be found wherever you look and is neither a sign of any particular quality, nor a deterrent to finding meaning there.
And if ever I'm reduced to looking for a meaning to my life, you never can tell, it's in that old mess I'll stick my nose to begin with, the mess of that poor old uniparous whore and myself the last of my foul brood, neither man nor beast.
August 27, 2024
Che bomba. La più importante opera narrativa di Beckett è formata da tre libri scritti tra il �47 e il �50. Ogni romanzo ha un narratore in prima persona disorientato, contraddittorio, immobilizzato/intrappolato in un ambiente senza senso, in attesa della fine. Cose che ritornano: l’identità , la natura dell’essere, l’isolamento involontario, la memoria, la madre. Qua e là atti violenti inaspettati e non spiegati. Prosa innovativa, spinta all’estremo, ossessiva, minimale. È abbastanza evidente che sia stato un riferimento per gente come Bernhard e Fosse. Per nulla scalfito dal tempo. Imperdibile. (1) Molloy vive nella stanza della madre. È incerto su come ci sia arrivato o se sua madre sia viva o morta. Scrive quello che ricorda del suo viaggio surreale, fatto prima i bici, poi aiutato dalle stampelle, e infine, ormai incapace di camminare, strisciando. Chi lo ha condotto nella stanza viene a ritirare periodicamente i fogli che scrive. Nella seconda parte Moran, una specie di investigatore privato, è incaricato di redigere un rapporto su Molloy senza avere nessuna istruzione precisa. Man mano che la narrazione procede, nasce un senso di confusione sulla sua identità e sul suo scopo. Anche lui si ritroverà a vagabondare per i boschi, condividendo lo stesso declino mentale e fisico. (2) Malone muore ha come protagonista un uomo anziano, costretto a letto, che non ricorda come è arrivato nella stanza in cui è confinato. Trascorre il tempo a scrivere su un quaderno per distrarsi dalla sua morte imminente. Riflette sulla sua vita e fa l’inventario di ciò che lo circonda. Poi inventa storie: una di queste segue un personaggio di nome Sapo, in seguito chiamato Macmann: le sue dinamiche familiari, il suo vagabondare, il manicomio. C’� un collegamento con ciò che ha vissuto? Finale in parte irrisolto e potentissimo. Con (3) L’innominabile le cose si complicano. È la parte più impegnativa da leggere, senza trama, arco narrativo, coerenza; un flusso di coscienza sconnesso, maniacale, ripetitivo, quasi totalmente in un unico blocco tipografico. C’� tutto e la negazione di tutto. A tratti estenuante, a tratti poetico, straziante, da brividi, con le parole che si accumulano a sassate. Un’indagine esistenziale, un punto di non ritorno. Radicale, ai limiti dell’astrazione.
[97/100]
[97/100]
January 24, 2016
Language is a real son of a bitch. On the one hand, it's an essential part of human communication, the most common way we use to get our emotions and experiences across. Yes, there's much to be said for a visual approach, but even paintings and sculptures can be boiled down to words: in fact, there are plenty among us who dislike pieces of visual art because they don't appear to convey anything that can't also be conveyed by words. In fact, language (along, of course, with technology, but some could argue that technology springs from language) is the number one thing separating us humans from the - for lack of a better term - "lower animals."
On the other hand, despite being an essential component to human existence, language is also imprecise. We all know what it feels like to lack the proper words to express something: some of my more intense experiences with psychedelics have definitely fit under this label, as have, on a more mundane level, those times when I just can't say what I want to. We all know what it means to miscommunicate, to lose our train of thought, to think faster than we can speak. And if any idea is at the center of Beckett's trilogy, it's the idea of this contradiction behind language: so vital, yet so flawed.
In my readings, I've stumbled across the theory that every Beckett play is about confronting God, God as this terrifying, merciless force that creates and destroys. Well, I'm gonna postulate a little, and say that the "God" behind Beckett's Trilogy, isn't the deity-as-we-know-it but a more primal conception of it: language, the Word Made Flesh. I'm going to theorize that Beckett wants us to understand that there isn't a hell of a lot of difference between Camus and Kafka's absurd-world God who's just as flawed as his creations and language, a powerful force that's almost impossible to understand and yet one that nonetheless suffers from crippling flaws. Consider the anxiety felt by the Unnamable, who wants to stop talking and yet cannot. Or consider how Malone tries and fails to tell both his own story and the story of Sapo, and consider how this ties into Molloy's inability to simply tell the tale of his journey in a coherent fashion and express his mother's mental state, which in turn ties back to Moran and his obvious parallels with Molloy, his future self that he is nonetheless looking for (the snake eats its own tail), which ties back to the fact that many characters in this trilogy are crippled (i.e. unable to express themselves without aid, and even those aids fail them in the end), which ties back to...
Look. I recognize the potential for either futility or redundancy in what I'm doing, since here I am trying to communicate the fact that this book is about the things we can't communicate. This is rapidly becoming a self-reflexive mess, and I get that not everybody likes self-reflexive messes. So let me, if you don't mind, make a quick jump to the point: while Beckett's trilogy may at first appear to be abstracted beyond the level of meaning anything, but ends up revealing something essential about the human experience. Beckett isn't the most elegant of writers - he's strange and unsettling and has a seriously dark sense of humor (but is undoubtedly funny; just don't be surprised if you find yourself wondering why you're laughing) - but the insight, originality, and vitality of this work, whose surface I'm sure I've only just scratched, is astounding. An astounding achievement by any standard.
On the other hand, despite being an essential component to human existence, language is also imprecise. We all know what it feels like to lack the proper words to express something: some of my more intense experiences with psychedelics have definitely fit under this label, as have, on a more mundane level, those times when I just can't say what I want to. We all know what it means to miscommunicate, to lose our train of thought, to think faster than we can speak. And if any idea is at the center of Beckett's trilogy, it's the idea of this contradiction behind language: so vital, yet so flawed.
In my readings, I've stumbled across the theory that every Beckett play is about confronting God, God as this terrifying, merciless force that creates and destroys. Well, I'm gonna postulate a little, and say that the "God" behind Beckett's Trilogy, isn't the deity-as-we-know-it but a more primal conception of it: language, the Word Made Flesh. I'm going to theorize that Beckett wants us to understand that there isn't a hell of a lot of difference between Camus and Kafka's absurd-world God who's just as flawed as his creations and language, a powerful force that's almost impossible to understand and yet one that nonetheless suffers from crippling flaws. Consider the anxiety felt by the Unnamable, who wants to stop talking and yet cannot. Or consider how Malone tries and fails to tell both his own story and the story of Sapo, and consider how this ties into Molloy's inability to simply tell the tale of his journey in a coherent fashion and express his mother's mental state, which in turn ties back to Moran and his obvious parallels with Molloy, his future self that he is nonetheless looking for (the snake eats its own tail), which ties back to the fact that many characters in this trilogy are crippled (i.e. unable to express themselves without aid, and even those aids fail them in the end), which ties back to...
Look. I recognize the potential for either futility or redundancy in what I'm doing, since here I am trying to communicate the fact that this book is about the things we can't communicate. This is rapidly becoming a self-reflexive mess, and I get that not everybody likes self-reflexive messes. So let me, if you don't mind, make a quick jump to the point: while Beckett's trilogy may at first appear to be abstracted beyond the level of meaning anything, but ends up revealing something essential about the human experience. Beckett isn't the most elegant of writers - he's strange and unsettling and has a seriously dark sense of humor (but is undoubtedly funny; just don't be surprised if you find yourself wondering why you're laughing) - but the insight, originality, and vitality of this work, whose surface I'm sure I've only just scratched, is astounding. An astounding achievement by any standard.
May 14, 2018
Brilliant. If you have read Waiting for Godot, Beckett’s famous play, you will recognize his style of writing in these three novels.
Beckett was the most famous of the existential playwrights/writers that comprised the Theatre of the Absurd genre. In all of these novels, we are immersed in existentialism. His writing is more minimalist compared to Joyce, who he was often compared to. Beckett once commented that instead of adding to the descriptions he removed words so he could take a different path than Joyce. Here is a very brief synopsis of the three novels. I don’t think I have given away any spoilers here as the stories are all existential and a bit absurd and open to a fair amount of interpretation.
In the first novel, Molloy, we see the ruminating of what seems to be an old man confined to his room. He is at times fixated on his mother, who is probably dead, and other memories. Later we see a thread emerge through the eyes of a detective who is traveling across the countryside. It seems by the end of the story that the detective and Molloy are maybe the same individual. Five stars. This story evokes a fair amount of empathy.
In the second novel, Malone Dies, a man is confined to an asylum of some type, is taken with some other patients on a day trip to an island. Traveling by a horse drawn wagon, some strangers are picked up. An accident occurs and they are eventually transferred to the boat and several people are stabbed. They eventually continue on to the island. Five stars. Very vivid story. Reminded me a little of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
In the last novel, the Unnamed, we see a thread that is largely a stream of consciousness full of contradictions and absurdity. There is not much of a story per se here. This was not my favorite story but the theme was true to the title.
So there is a quality to Becket’s writing that resonates for me. He is at his best when writing about nothing important or simply the mundane such as in Malone Dies when he describes the importance and the look and shape of a pencil.
“So little by little my little pencil dwindles, inevitably, and the day is fast approaching when nothing will remain but a fragment too tiny to hold. So I write as lightly as I can. But the lead is hard and would leave no trace if I wrote too lightly. But I say to myself, Between a hard lead with which one dare not write too lightly, if a trace is to be left, and a soft fat lead which blackens the page almost without touching it, what possible difference can there be, from the point of view of durability.�
Beckett was the most famous of the existential playwrights/writers that comprised the Theatre of the Absurd genre. In all of these novels, we are immersed in existentialism. His writing is more minimalist compared to Joyce, who he was often compared to. Beckett once commented that instead of adding to the descriptions he removed words so he could take a different path than Joyce. Here is a very brief synopsis of the three novels. I don’t think I have given away any spoilers here as the stories are all existential and a bit absurd and open to a fair amount of interpretation.
In the first novel, Molloy, we see the ruminating of what seems to be an old man confined to his room. He is at times fixated on his mother, who is probably dead, and other memories. Later we see a thread emerge through the eyes of a detective who is traveling across the countryside. It seems by the end of the story that the detective and Molloy are maybe the same individual. Five stars. This story evokes a fair amount of empathy.
In the second novel, Malone Dies, a man is confined to an asylum of some type, is taken with some other patients on a day trip to an island. Traveling by a horse drawn wagon, some strangers are picked up. An accident occurs and they are eventually transferred to the boat and several people are stabbed. They eventually continue on to the island. Five stars. Very vivid story. Reminded me a little of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
In the last novel, the Unnamed, we see a thread that is largely a stream of consciousness full of contradictions and absurdity. There is not much of a story per se here. This was not my favorite story but the theme was true to the title.
So there is a quality to Becket’s writing that resonates for me. He is at his best when writing about nothing important or simply the mundane such as in Malone Dies when he describes the importance and the look and shape of a pencil.
“So little by little my little pencil dwindles, inevitably, and the day is fast approaching when nothing will remain but a fragment too tiny to hold. So I write as lightly as I can. But the lead is hard and would leave no trace if I wrote too lightly. But I say to myself, Between a hard lead with which one dare not write too lightly, if a trace is to be left, and a soft fat lead which blackens the page almost without touching it, what possible difference can there be, from the point of view of durability.�
November 16, 2016
1. MOLLOY
Nella stanza che fu di sua madre, Molloy, un vecchio ormai senza più le gambe, guercio da un occhio e con molte rotelle fuori posto, scrive senza sosta, come un fiume in piena riversa sulle pagine quello che ricorda, o che crede di ricordare, o che vuole a modo suo ricordare del viaggio intrapreso nell'ultimo anno per arrivare a casa della madre (con cui aveva una questione da sistemare). Questo viaggio durato circa un anno, Molloy l'ha condotto entro i confini di una contea grande appena 5 chilometri quadrati, dapprima in bicicletta, poi sulle stampelle, infine strisciando.
E' una narrazione fatta di reticenza, di confusione, di menzogne, di scoppi d'odio, d'indifferenza, d'introspezione frustrata e inutile, di osservazione della propria progressiva decadenza, d'autocompiacimento nella descrizione della propria lordura e sudiciume; è capace di fissarsi a lungo, in modo ossessivo e persecutorio, su particolari del tutto inutili e allo stesso tempo di sorvolare del tutto altri aspetti senza ragione alcuna, su niente vuole gettare luce perché non ha alcun interesse a chiarire nulla, aspira piuttosto a una condizione ideale di felicità , di pace assoluta, quella cioè di sapere di non poter sapere nulla.
Molloy naturalmente fallisce nel suo scopo, non arriva alla casa della madre se non dopo che questa è già morta ed è stata portata via. Ma in fondo Molloy non aveva nessuno scopo e il suo agire alcuna motivazione o spiegazione. Così il suo fiume di parole si interrompe bruscamente in un fosso al limitare del bosco.
Inizia qui una seconda narrazione, collocabile temporalmente più o meno all'inizio del viaggio di Molloy. A scrivere è questa volta un tal Moran, una specie d'improbabile agente segreto che, nella sua casa vuota e abbandonata, sta redigendo per il suo boss Youdi un rapporto sulla missione di cui era stato incaricato, cioè rintracciare Molloy.
Questo nuovo racconto si sviluppa in modo più piano e tradizionale rispetto al primo, presentandosi questo Moran come un razionale. Tuttavia, se il caos della mente di Molloy si era palesato da subito, il viaggio nella testa di Moran diviene a poco a poco sempre più sgradevole, in quanto questo puntiglioso detective nonché fedele frequentatore della parrocchia locale, si rivela essere un folle psicopatico e soprattutto un padre malato. Le pagine in cui Moran descrive il suo modo di rapportarsi con il figlio - e che occupano buona parte del racconto - sono a tratti insostenibili.
In ogni caso, non solo la missione di Moran è destinata a fallire, ma lo è anche la sua narrazione che si impantana nei preparativi, nel viaggio di avvicinamento alla contea in cui Molloy vive e in episodi che in maniera sinistra ricalcano le vicende di Molloy stesso, tanto che Moran e Molloy sembrano simbolicamente avvicinarsi, se non addirittura sovrapporsi e confondersi l'uno con l'altro, finché non ci si domanda se non potrebbero essere la stessa persona.
Se Molloy ci ha offerto un ritratto grottesco della condizione umana, riuscendo spesso a divertirci e a strapparci parecchie risate*, ridicolizzando qualsiasi nostra velleità , cogliendo in pratica il ridicolo che c'è nella tragedia, dall'altra parte Moran ci ha rivelato il lato più disgustoso e inaccettabile della nostra follia e stupidità (seppure, a tratti, anche lui divertendo); e Beckett, da parte sua, ha probabilmente scritto un capolavoro, un'opera d'arte che è un fare le capriole nel nulla, tessere una tela inesistente, per piantare poi il tutto in basso, molto in basso.
"Che volete, il gas mi esce dal culo in qualsiasi circostanza, sono quindi proprio obbligato ad alludervi ogni tanto, malgrado la ripugnanza che mi ispira. Una volta li contai. Trecentoquindici peti in diciannove ore, cioè una media di sedici peti all'ora. Non è un'enormità , dopo tutto. Quattro peti ogni quarto d'ora. E' una cosa da nulla. Neanche un peto ogni quattro minuti. E' davvero incredibile. Via, via, non sono che un mediocre scoreggiatore".
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* Molloy porta in tasca alcuni sassi e di tanto in tanto li succhia per lenire la fame. Ebbene, signore mie, v'è una tirata di parecchie pagine in cui Molloy cerca di stabilire un sistema che gli permetta di succhiare i suoi sassi a rotazione in modo da essere sicuro di non ri-succhiare mai lo stesso sasso che è un pezzo di virtuosismo letterario (e talmente divertente!) come non ne avete certamente mai letto uno. Consigliatissimo anche ai più convinti detrattori di Beckett.
2. MALONE MUORE ****
Ve lo ricordate l'Adorno dell'impossibilità della poesia dopo Auschwitz? Ebbene, al di là di qualunque cosa si possa pensare di quella sentenza, è inevitabile, procedendo su queste pagine, ripensarci, impossibile non riflettervi e leggere la presente narrazione nella precisa ottica del non poter più stendere narrazioni come si faceva prima, perché il protrarsi verso la morte di Malone ne è la messa in pratica.
Malone muore (1951) è un'opera importante nella produzione di Samuel Beckett, la sua stesura segue a rotta di collo e in pratica senza soluzione di continuità Molloy e precede quella sorta di approdo che sarà Aspettando Godot (1952), immediatamente successivo e precedente al terzo romanzo della cosiddetta trilogia, L'innominabile (1953).
Se l'immane carnaio della II Guerra Mondiale segna la svolta creativa di questo autore - è talmente palese, enorme, la diversità del primo Beckett da questo, che si può parlare di due periodi nettamente distinti - e Molloy rappresenta forse la miglior testimonianza di questa svolta, Malone Muore ne rappresenta il punto di non ritorno.
Malone attende la morte con neutralità , non vuole accelerare né rallentare questo evento che definisce nelle primissime battute "rimborso". Esordisce, Malone, con un perentorio "Non perdono a nessuno", seguito da un augurio di una vita atroce per tutti. Stima arbitrariamente un residuo di 15/20 giorni prima di morire e pianifica il riempimento di questo lasso di tempo con la descrizione della sua situazione attuale, con la narrazione di tre storie (in un magistrale anti-climax: una prima storia con protagonisti "umani", una seconda storia con "animali", una terza storia con "oggetti", pietre) e con la stesura di un inventario dei suoi possedimenti.
Malone giace in un letto, in una camera che ritiene sua, non ricorda come ci è arrivato, si è svegliato lì nel letto, prima il vuoto. Da qui cominciano le non-narrazioni di Malone che, in fondo, attraverso i vari personaggi che con la sua matita mette su pagina, non fa altro che tentare, fallendo, di raccontare sempre sè stesso (come è naturale che sia, come è nella vita). L'infinito narrare che fin dall'antichità era un tentativo di tenere lontana la morte, un tentativo di salvezza, è qui ormai senza scopo alcuno, essendo la nostra stessa esistenza una narrazione che non arriva a vedere la sua fine perché interrotta dalla morte.
C'è in questo Beckett il rifiuto di qualsiasi sospensione dell'incredulità , la messa in scacco di qualsiasi narrazione affabulatoria, mistificante, falsa, c'è una inquietante aderenza con la realtà . E cerca di farlo proprio uscendo dal linguaggio, per sua natura artificiale in quanto puramente convenzionale. In pratica si mette in un corto circuito sapendo di farlo. Ne risulta una voce, se vogliamo "narrante", che è più un brusio, un ronzio, il continuo rumore che fa la vita. In questo senso è uno dei libri più onesti che si possano leggere, davvero qui non è possibile leggere semplicemente una storia, perché non c'è.
Beckett, tutto sommato, esce da questo tentativo con successo. Non fa ancora il miracolo, quello lo farà di lì a qualche mese, un anno dopo, con Aspettando Godot, la sua più celebre pièce teatrale: dove non succede nulla ma dove riesce, incredibilmente, a coinvolgere e pure divertire il pubblico, e parliamo di pubblico medio, di massa, non di una spocchiosa frangia intellettuale. Probabilmente ci riuscirà perché metterà il pubblico stesso al centro del nulla che viene rappresentato e quindi il miracolo sarà doppio in quanto è assai difficile che un lettore/spettatore abbia il coraggio di aderire a quel tipo di verità che gli viene sbattuta in faccia, non esattamente facile da sopportare. Ma questo Malone che cerca inutilmente sé stesso, questo uomo/libro, questa voce, questo inutile brusìo che a un certo punto viene meno senza che per questo il libro abbia una fine - il libro non finisce mai, al limite tu lo chiudi ma poi lo riapre qualcun'altro, e così è la tua vita che finisce mentre gli altri vanno avanti - è una importante tappa di un percorso creativo che mette sincerità e onestà prima di ogni altra cosa.
3. L'INNOMINABILE
L'imporante è continuare, è andare avanti, non importa con che cosa.
Si va avanti. Una voce, un monologo. In fin dei conti dobbiamo evidentemente affrontare un insolubile problema di pronomi personali. Ma chi li ha inventati? Chi è l'artefice di una tale sciagura? C'è un io contrapposto a un loro, boh, ma perchè non un lui, allora? Loro gli hanno insegnato alcune cose, lui non ha mai fatto attenzione o forse ha fatto particolare attenzione a non fare attenzione, per dimenticarsi tutto, ma inevitabilmente, contro la sua volontà le cose rimangono, persistono, non ce ne si sbarazza mai del tutto e così le si utilizza. Prendiamo ad esempio le parole che gli hanno insegnato: quante combinazioni sono possibili con tutte queste parole, che discorsi, che frasi, che racconti escono dalla combinazione di queste parole! No, nessun racconto esce dalla combinazione delle parole, che cosa vogliono dire queste parole lui non lo sa, le usa perchè gliele hanno insegnate ma non ha idea di che cosa vogliano dire.
Il problema è in realtà un pelo più radicale, certo questa voce sembra assumere sostanza, materia, addirittura gli dà un nome, Mahood, poi anche un altro, Worm, ma lui è veramente un tempo stato Mahood e poi è diventato Worm? E dopo Worm, ancora, questa voce è qui e non si sa se provenga da lui o d'altrove. E Molloy? E Murphy? E Moran? E Malone? E... Mercier!, non è Mercier quello? E' così, ogni tanto gli passa davanti qualcuno, cioè entra nel suo campo visivo da una parte e esce dall'altra. Che gli girino attorno in orbite più o meno regolari? Finiranno per scontrarsi tra loro? O è lui che gira? Di che diavolo stiamo parlando, di corpi celesti? Sono io che sono al centro con questi (loro) che mi ruotano attorno o sono io che ruoto attorno a loro? O loro sono lì, dietro alla parete che osservano ogni mia mossa attraverso fori per guardarmi. Che diavolo avrò (ha lui?) di così interessante? Mi guardano diventare umano? Sono io che osservo gli effetti di tutto quello che mi hanno insegnato?
Già , il problema è davvero un pelo più radicale. Cosa possono dire le parole di cui disponiamo, che ci hanno insegnato a usare? Cosa posso dire di me? E quest'occhio lacrimante, di chi è? O, chi è? Che cos'è che piange?
Per me, io mi fermo qui. E vi assicuro che sto bene. C'è già questo libro che va avanti al posto mio e forse ci sono io che posso leggerlo all'infinito. So che si dovrebbe continuare, lo so, ma mi fermo ugualmente.
Opera dinamitarda, meravigliosamente estremista, L'innominabile è un fiume di parole dotato di uno strano, stranissimo potere: quello di tenerti incollato alla pagina, di non permetterti di staccare un attimo gli occhi da queste righe forsennate nonostante tu ti perda continuamente, nonostante tu non ci capisca niente - ma questo non è vero perché non c'è niente da capire, in realtà tutto è chiarissimo.
L'esperimento cominciato e portato avanti nelle due tappe precedenti giunge in porto, cioè da nessuna parte, ovvero proprio qui dove ci sono io che annoto queste mie misere impressioni. La dissoluzione del personaggio è definitiva, al punto che procedendo nella lettura, mentre stavo in guardia e credevo di scorgerne qua e là dei segnali identificativi, ad un tratto mi sono accorto dell'inutilità di quel che stavo facendo, anzi che proprio stavo sbagliando tutto, che non potevo leggere come al solito, che il discorso era ormai andato ben al di là di una eventuale riflessione "sul personaggio". Era rimasta solo una voce, il personaggio non c'era più e io stavo osservando qualcosa di simile al moto dei corpi celesti, o quello degli elettroni attorno al nucleo dell'atomo. Una voce farneticante, inconcludente, balbuziente, completamente superflua e inutile, anche se questa è una serie di aggettivi del tutto inadeguati a descrivere questa voce, perché sono appunto aggettivi, hanno la pretesa di evocare delle qualità ! Bà h!
Non sarà che questa voce, questo rumore di fondo continuo che è questo libro, sia la cosa più aderente alla realtà che ti sia mai capitato di leggere? Già , proprio come in Malone ma con qualcosa in più, c'è un ingrediente segreto che Beckett ha versato in queste pagine. Ha, in qualche modo misterioso, qualcosa a che fare con la geometria: come fosse la proiezione ortogonale delle parole qui contenute che intersecando il piano delle pagine balzano fuori sotto forma di solido. Uà u! Forse è così! Sì! Dammi un cinque!
Il linguaggio è pura convenzione, è privo di contatti con quello che ti circonda che, di fatto, è senza nome. E allora di che cazzo parli con questo linguaggio di cui disponi? Boh, magari fai una roba così, tipo questo libro, che forse ci va un po' più vicino (a quel che ti circonda) di qualunque altra ingannevole storiella da leggere.
Nella stanza che fu di sua madre, Molloy, un vecchio ormai senza più le gambe, guercio da un occhio e con molte rotelle fuori posto, scrive senza sosta, come un fiume in piena riversa sulle pagine quello che ricorda, o che crede di ricordare, o che vuole a modo suo ricordare del viaggio intrapreso nell'ultimo anno per arrivare a casa della madre (con cui aveva una questione da sistemare). Questo viaggio durato circa un anno, Molloy l'ha condotto entro i confini di una contea grande appena 5 chilometri quadrati, dapprima in bicicletta, poi sulle stampelle, infine strisciando.
E' una narrazione fatta di reticenza, di confusione, di menzogne, di scoppi d'odio, d'indifferenza, d'introspezione frustrata e inutile, di osservazione della propria progressiva decadenza, d'autocompiacimento nella descrizione della propria lordura e sudiciume; è capace di fissarsi a lungo, in modo ossessivo e persecutorio, su particolari del tutto inutili e allo stesso tempo di sorvolare del tutto altri aspetti senza ragione alcuna, su niente vuole gettare luce perché non ha alcun interesse a chiarire nulla, aspira piuttosto a una condizione ideale di felicità , di pace assoluta, quella cioè di sapere di non poter sapere nulla.
Molloy naturalmente fallisce nel suo scopo, non arriva alla casa della madre se non dopo che questa è già morta ed è stata portata via. Ma in fondo Molloy non aveva nessuno scopo e il suo agire alcuna motivazione o spiegazione. Così il suo fiume di parole si interrompe bruscamente in un fosso al limitare del bosco.
Inizia qui una seconda narrazione, collocabile temporalmente più o meno all'inizio del viaggio di Molloy. A scrivere è questa volta un tal Moran, una specie d'improbabile agente segreto che, nella sua casa vuota e abbandonata, sta redigendo per il suo boss Youdi un rapporto sulla missione di cui era stato incaricato, cioè rintracciare Molloy.
Questo nuovo racconto si sviluppa in modo più piano e tradizionale rispetto al primo, presentandosi questo Moran come un razionale. Tuttavia, se il caos della mente di Molloy si era palesato da subito, il viaggio nella testa di Moran diviene a poco a poco sempre più sgradevole, in quanto questo puntiglioso detective nonché fedele frequentatore della parrocchia locale, si rivela essere un folle psicopatico e soprattutto un padre malato. Le pagine in cui Moran descrive il suo modo di rapportarsi con il figlio - e che occupano buona parte del racconto - sono a tratti insostenibili.
In ogni caso, non solo la missione di Moran è destinata a fallire, ma lo è anche la sua narrazione che si impantana nei preparativi, nel viaggio di avvicinamento alla contea in cui Molloy vive e in episodi che in maniera sinistra ricalcano le vicende di Molloy stesso, tanto che Moran e Molloy sembrano simbolicamente avvicinarsi, se non addirittura sovrapporsi e confondersi l'uno con l'altro, finché non ci si domanda se non potrebbero essere la stessa persona.
Se Molloy ci ha offerto un ritratto grottesco della condizione umana, riuscendo spesso a divertirci e a strapparci parecchie risate*, ridicolizzando qualsiasi nostra velleità , cogliendo in pratica il ridicolo che c'è nella tragedia, dall'altra parte Moran ci ha rivelato il lato più disgustoso e inaccettabile della nostra follia e stupidità (seppure, a tratti, anche lui divertendo); e Beckett, da parte sua, ha probabilmente scritto un capolavoro, un'opera d'arte che è un fare le capriole nel nulla, tessere una tela inesistente, per piantare poi il tutto in basso, molto in basso.
"Che volete, il gas mi esce dal culo in qualsiasi circostanza, sono quindi proprio obbligato ad alludervi ogni tanto, malgrado la ripugnanza che mi ispira. Una volta li contai. Trecentoquindici peti in diciannove ore, cioè una media di sedici peti all'ora. Non è un'enormità , dopo tutto. Quattro peti ogni quarto d'ora. E' una cosa da nulla. Neanche un peto ogni quattro minuti. E' davvero incredibile. Via, via, non sono che un mediocre scoreggiatore".
---------
* Molloy porta in tasca alcuni sassi e di tanto in tanto li succhia per lenire la fame. Ebbene, signore mie, v'è una tirata di parecchie pagine in cui Molloy cerca di stabilire un sistema che gli permetta di succhiare i suoi sassi a rotazione in modo da essere sicuro di non ri-succhiare mai lo stesso sasso che è un pezzo di virtuosismo letterario (e talmente divertente!) come non ne avete certamente mai letto uno. Consigliatissimo anche ai più convinti detrattori di Beckett.
2. MALONE MUORE ****
Ve lo ricordate l'Adorno dell'impossibilità della poesia dopo Auschwitz? Ebbene, al di là di qualunque cosa si possa pensare di quella sentenza, è inevitabile, procedendo su queste pagine, ripensarci, impossibile non riflettervi e leggere la presente narrazione nella precisa ottica del non poter più stendere narrazioni come si faceva prima, perché il protrarsi verso la morte di Malone ne è la messa in pratica.
Malone muore (1951) è un'opera importante nella produzione di Samuel Beckett, la sua stesura segue a rotta di collo e in pratica senza soluzione di continuità Molloy e precede quella sorta di approdo che sarà Aspettando Godot (1952), immediatamente successivo e precedente al terzo romanzo della cosiddetta trilogia, L'innominabile (1953).
Se l'immane carnaio della II Guerra Mondiale segna la svolta creativa di questo autore - è talmente palese, enorme, la diversità del primo Beckett da questo, che si può parlare di due periodi nettamente distinti - e Molloy rappresenta forse la miglior testimonianza di questa svolta, Malone Muore ne rappresenta il punto di non ritorno.
Malone attende la morte con neutralità , non vuole accelerare né rallentare questo evento che definisce nelle primissime battute "rimborso". Esordisce, Malone, con un perentorio "Non perdono a nessuno", seguito da un augurio di una vita atroce per tutti. Stima arbitrariamente un residuo di 15/20 giorni prima di morire e pianifica il riempimento di questo lasso di tempo con la descrizione della sua situazione attuale, con la narrazione di tre storie (in un magistrale anti-climax: una prima storia con protagonisti "umani", una seconda storia con "animali", una terza storia con "oggetti", pietre) e con la stesura di un inventario dei suoi possedimenti.
Malone giace in un letto, in una camera che ritiene sua, non ricorda come ci è arrivato, si è svegliato lì nel letto, prima il vuoto. Da qui cominciano le non-narrazioni di Malone che, in fondo, attraverso i vari personaggi che con la sua matita mette su pagina, non fa altro che tentare, fallendo, di raccontare sempre sè stesso (come è naturale che sia, come è nella vita). L'infinito narrare che fin dall'antichità era un tentativo di tenere lontana la morte, un tentativo di salvezza, è qui ormai senza scopo alcuno, essendo la nostra stessa esistenza una narrazione che non arriva a vedere la sua fine perché interrotta dalla morte.
C'è in questo Beckett il rifiuto di qualsiasi sospensione dell'incredulità , la messa in scacco di qualsiasi narrazione affabulatoria, mistificante, falsa, c'è una inquietante aderenza con la realtà . E cerca di farlo proprio uscendo dal linguaggio, per sua natura artificiale in quanto puramente convenzionale. In pratica si mette in un corto circuito sapendo di farlo. Ne risulta una voce, se vogliamo "narrante", che è più un brusio, un ronzio, il continuo rumore che fa la vita. In questo senso è uno dei libri più onesti che si possano leggere, davvero qui non è possibile leggere semplicemente una storia, perché non c'è.
Beckett, tutto sommato, esce da questo tentativo con successo. Non fa ancora il miracolo, quello lo farà di lì a qualche mese, un anno dopo, con Aspettando Godot, la sua più celebre pièce teatrale: dove non succede nulla ma dove riesce, incredibilmente, a coinvolgere e pure divertire il pubblico, e parliamo di pubblico medio, di massa, non di una spocchiosa frangia intellettuale. Probabilmente ci riuscirà perché metterà il pubblico stesso al centro del nulla che viene rappresentato e quindi il miracolo sarà doppio in quanto è assai difficile che un lettore/spettatore abbia il coraggio di aderire a quel tipo di verità che gli viene sbattuta in faccia, non esattamente facile da sopportare. Ma questo Malone che cerca inutilmente sé stesso, questo uomo/libro, questa voce, questo inutile brusìo che a un certo punto viene meno senza che per questo il libro abbia una fine - il libro non finisce mai, al limite tu lo chiudi ma poi lo riapre qualcun'altro, e così è la tua vita che finisce mentre gli altri vanno avanti - è una importante tappa di un percorso creativo che mette sincerità e onestà prima di ogni altra cosa.
3. L'INNOMINABILE
L'imporante è continuare, è andare avanti, non importa con che cosa.
Si va avanti. Una voce, un monologo. In fin dei conti dobbiamo evidentemente affrontare un insolubile problema di pronomi personali. Ma chi li ha inventati? Chi è l'artefice di una tale sciagura? C'è un io contrapposto a un loro, boh, ma perchè non un lui, allora? Loro gli hanno insegnato alcune cose, lui non ha mai fatto attenzione o forse ha fatto particolare attenzione a non fare attenzione, per dimenticarsi tutto, ma inevitabilmente, contro la sua volontà le cose rimangono, persistono, non ce ne si sbarazza mai del tutto e così le si utilizza. Prendiamo ad esempio le parole che gli hanno insegnato: quante combinazioni sono possibili con tutte queste parole, che discorsi, che frasi, che racconti escono dalla combinazione di queste parole! No, nessun racconto esce dalla combinazione delle parole, che cosa vogliono dire queste parole lui non lo sa, le usa perchè gliele hanno insegnate ma non ha idea di che cosa vogliano dire.
Il problema è in realtà un pelo più radicale, certo questa voce sembra assumere sostanza, materia, addirittura gli dà un nome, Mahood, poi anche un altro, Worm, ma lui è veramente un tempo stato Mahood e poi è diventato Worm? E dopo Worm, ancora, questa voce è qui e non si sa se provenga da lui o d'altrove. E Molloy? E Murphy? E Moran? E Malone? E... Mercier!, non è Mercier quello? E' così, ogni tanto gli passa davanti qualcuno, cioè entra nel suo campo visivo da una parte e esce dall'altra. Che gli girino attorno in orbite più o meno regolari? Finiranno per scontrarsi tra loro? O è lui che gira? Di che diavolo stiamo parlando, di corpi celesti? Sono io che sono al centro con questi (loro) che mi ruotano attorno o sono io che ruoto attorno a loro? O loro sono lì, dietro alla parete che osservano ogni mia mossa attraverso fori per guardarmi. Che diavolo avrò (ha lui?) di così interessante? Mi guardano diventare umano? Sono io che osservo gli effetti di tutto quello che mi hanno insegnato?
Già , il problema è davvero un pelo più radicale. Cosa possono dire le parole di cui disponiamo, che ci hanno insegnato a usare? Cosa posso dire di me? E quest'occhio lacrimante, di chi è? O, chi è? Che cos'è che piange?
Per me, io mi fermo qui. E vi assicuro che sto bene. C'è già questo libro che va avanti al posto mio e forse ci sono io che posso leggerlo all'infinito. So che si dovrebbe continuare, lo so, ma mi fermo ugualmente.
Opera dinamitarda, meravigliosamente estremista, L'innominabile è un fiume di parole dotato di uno strano, stranissimo potere: quello di tenerti incollato alla pagina, di non permetterti di staccare un attimo gli occhi da queste righe forsennate nonostante tu ti perda continuamente, nonostante tu non ci capisca niente - ma questo non è vero perché non c'è niente da capire, in realtà tutto è chiarissimo.
L'esperimento cominciato e portato avanti nelle due tappe precedenti giunge in porto, cioè da nessuna parte, ovvero proprio qui dove ci sono io che annoto queste mie misere impressioni. La dissoluzione del personaggio è definitiva, al punto che procedendo nella lettura, mentre stavo in guardia e credevo di scorgerne qua e là dei segnali identificativi, ad un tratto mi sono accorto dell'inutilità di quel che stavo facendo, anzi che proprio stavo sbagliando tutto, che non potevo leggere come al solito, che il discorso era ormai andato ben al di là di una eventuale riflessione "sul personaggio". Era rimasta solo una voce, il personaggio non c'era più e io stavo osservando qualcosa di simile al moto dei corpi celesti, o quello degli elettroni attorno al nucleo dell'atomo. Una voce farneticante, inconcludente, balbuziente, completamente superflua e inutile, anche se questa è una serie di aggettivi del tutto inadeguati a descrivere questa voce, perché sono appunto aggettivi, hanno la pretesa di evocare delle qualità ! Bà h!
Non sarà che questa voce, questo rumore di fondo continuo che è questo libro, sia la cosa più aderente alla realtà che ti sia mai capitato di leggere? Già , proprio come in Malone ma con qualcosa in più, c'è un ingrediente segreto che Beckett ha versato in queste pagine. Ha, in qualche modo misterioso, qualcosa a che fare con la geometria: come fosse la proiezione ortogonale delle parole qui contenute che intersecando il piano delle pagine balzano fuori sotto forma di solido. Uà u! Forse è così! Sì! Dammi un cinque!
Il linguaggio è pura convenzione, è privo di contatti con quello che ti circonda che, di fatto, è senza nome. E allora di che cazzo parli con questo linguaggio di cui disponi? Boh, magari fai una roba così, tipo questo libro, che forse ci va un po' più vicino (a quel che ti circonda) di qualunque altra ingannevole storiella da leggere.
July 19, 2014
Beckett writes from the edge. The voices (and they seem more like voices then characters) that narrate these books are those of wretches occupying some dying twilight world of their own dwindling consciousness, faced with their own immanent dissolution. They are literally just on this side of aphasia and death. The prose in each of these is singular. You could recognize one of Beckett's sentences in a heartbeat. There is, to my knowledge, just no one else who writes like this, or who would want to try. These three novels are books of sentences. Not chapters, not sections, not paragraphs, but of one skittering clause chasing after another in this dark, staccato style that seems to refuse any progression. They babble, repeat and curl back into themselves with the sort of logic you usually only here from sad, raving homeless people. Yet they are also weirdly affirming in spite of their darkness, you get the sense that these voices are forever circling the void, merely perpetuating themselves by some act of sheer will that is as futile as it is inevitable. What do you do when you can't go on? You go on.
July 5, 2022
new try:
If you don't approach this book as a normal one, then you can read it. And even rate it 5 stars. Because this is not a normal book, this is actually a work of art in the domain of literature.
Probably it also helped that I read it in Romanian, with a fantastic translation from French.
From Molloy which is bearable, to Malone dying which starts to be claustrophobic, you go to the The Unnamable, which is practically a claustrophobic opening of some sort of self which is trapped inside a body and tries to open itself through the mouth, ears and eyes. Imagine you are stirring a soup of words in a skull which has some openings and sometimes these words come as sentences, parts of sentences or words. This is the image I had reading the last part. I even tried using a pencil, trying to make sense of it all. I couldn't. Still it was fascinating. I mean, it is difficult to make sense of some painting by Miro, why would you not have something like that in literature. To be able to write something like this...wow - chapeau.
I didn't even read the whole third part. Piece of advice for this part (actually for all three chapters, but especially for this one) - you can read it as the pages turn, or you can read it the pages (or blocks of pages) randomly. Just like you treat some painting, where you move with your eyes everywhere and stay there a bit longer and there a bit even longer, do the same with this one.
Again - great translation in Romanian. Huge challenge.
I only half read "Molloy" so I cannot rate this. The book consists of 2 chapters, both writen from the self-perspective.
The first part is hypnotising and very engagingly written. You are actually taking part at Molloy's journey. Some paragraphs are quite witty. The story progresses at a nice pace.
The second part is unbearable. I mean really. There is the same perspective of writing. Probably I need to read and cultivate myself more, in order to understand the true wittiness and geniousness of Beckett's story - but pages after pages of nothing (from my POV) made me stop reading the second part. is it that Beckett wanted to say that his writing is the same as the nothingness of life? Maybe. But that doesn't justify my spending so much time in trying to decipher some strange meanings. No way.
If you don't approach this book as a normal one, then you can read it. And even rate it 5 stars. Because this is not a normal book, this is actually a work of art in the domain of literature.
Probably it also helped that I read it in Romanian, with a fantastic translation from French.
From Molloy which is bearable, to Malone dying which starts to be claustrophobic, you go to the The Unnamable, which is practically a claustrophobic opening of some sort of self which is trapped inside a body and tries to open itself through the mouth, ears and eyes. Imagine you are stirring a soup of words in a skull which has some openings and sometimes these words come as sentences, parts of sentences or words. This is the image I had reading the last part. I even tried using a pencil, trying to make sense of it all. I couldn't. Still it was fascinating. I mean, it is difficult to make sense of some painting by Miro, why would you not have something like that in literature. To be able to write something like this...wow - chapeau.
I didn't even read the whole third part. Piece of advice for this part (actually for all three chapters, but especially for this one) - you can read it as the pages turn, or you can read it the pages (or blocks of pages) randomly. Just like you treat some painting, where you move with your eyes everywhere and stay there a bit longer and there a bit even longer, do the same with this one.
Again - great translation in Romanian. Huge challenge.
I only half read "Molloy" so I cannot rate this. The book consists of 2 chapters, both writen from the self-perspective.
The first part is hypnotising and very engagingly written. You are actually taking part at Molloy's journey. Some paragraphs are quite witty. The story progresses at a nice pace.
The second part is unbearable. I mean really. There is the same perspective of writing. Probably I need to read and cultivate myself more, in order to understand the true wittiness and geniousness of Beckett's story - but pages after pages of nothing (from my POV) made me stop reading the second part. is it that Beckett wanted to say that his writing is the same as the nothingness of life? Maybe. But that doesn't justify my spending so much time in trying to decipher some strange meanings. No way.
September 10, 2016
"Nothing is more real than nothing."
These novels are different from Beckett's shorts, which I personally liked more. There is no old-style plot in any of them. Somehow, this is exactly what gave Beckett recognition. What we get here is accounts of long interior monologues of three highly miserable and unreliable characters. Also the narrator in all three is physically challenged due to different reasons (injury, old age and deformity) and also probably mentally challenged.
There are hardly any links between the three novels except that the narrator of third claimed the creation of first two but he also claimed the creation of another novel - Murphy (which I haven't read). The novels ride completely on back of Beckett's unusual narrative style - completely absurd, often self-contradictory, explaining very obvious activities in a great detail and a very sad, pessimistic and dark humor - some of these things are common to most of Beckett I have read.
I have reviewed them separately too but here are some examples of prose to be expected:
Self contraditory:
"A little dog followed him, a pomeranian I think, but I don't think so."
"I found my bicycle (I didn't know I had one) in the same place I must have left it."
Dark humor:
"I don’t wash, but I don’t get dirty. If I get dirty somewhere I rub the part with my finger wet with spittle. What matters is to eat and excrete. Dish and pot, dish and pot, these are the poles.
"...but of her who brought me into the world. through the hole in her arse if my memory is correct. First taste of the shit."
and finally my favorite ...
"What was God doing with himself before the creation? "
These novels are different from Beckett's shorts, which I personally liked more. There is no old-style plot in any of them. Somehow, this is exactly what gave Beckett recognition. What we get here is accounts of long interior monologues of three highly miserable and unreliable characters. Also the narrator in all three is physically challenged due to different reasons (injury, old age and deformity) and also probably mentally challenged.
There are hardly any links between the three novels except that the narrator of third claimed the creation of first two but he also claimed the creation of another novel - Murphy (which I haven't read). The novels ride completely on back of Beckett's unusual narrative style - completely absurd, often self-contradictory, explaining very obvious activities in a great detail and a very sad, pessimistic and dark humor - some of these things are common to most of Beckett I have read.
I have reviewed them separately too but here are some examples of prose to be expected:
Self contraditory:
"A little dog followed him, a pomeranian I think, but I don't think so."
"I found my bicycle (I didn't know I had one) in the same place I must have left it."
Dark humor:
"I don’t wash, but I don’t get dirty. If I get dirty somewhere I rub the part with my finger wet with spittle. What matters is to eat and excrete. Dish and pot, dish and pot, these are the poles.
"...but of her who brought me into the world. through the hole in her arse if my memory is correct. First taste of the shit."
and finally my favorite ...
"What was God doing with himself before the creation? "
January 4, 2011
Like getting drunk on words in a vacuum.
March 10, 2019
This book was read in my monthly Joyce book group. The consensus was that we preferred his plays many times more than his novels. We also commented on Beckett's desire to avoid all comparison to Joyce (some accounts state Beckett never read Ulysses) and for that reason, he wrote in French. One member noted that the writer John Banville owes a debt to Beckett as many of his sentences would fit comfortably into something by Beckett. I can't say after reading Beckett if I agree as I admire Banville's fiction much more than Beckett's.
This is a book for those who study Beckett, and probably less so for casual readers.
This is a book for those who study Beckett, and probably less so for casual readers.
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