Three Novels: Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable

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Three Novels: Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable

4.29 of 5 stars 4.29 · rating details · 3,722 ratings · 201 reviews

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...more

Paperback, 407 pages

Published June 16th 2009 by Grove Press (first published 1958)

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Mar 13, 2013 Phillip rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: mad geniuses with lower back trauma

Recommended to Phillip by: some prick

Shelves: fiction, 50-favorite-books, existentialism

(actually, i'm not reading it, but re-reading it) This trilogy is really the heart of Beckett's writing. Nearly everything he ever wrote is coded in these three novels. You can see the seeds of all the plays and the short prose in here - but in this case, it's expressed in a longer narrative, where he takes his time playing and cloying with the ideas of narrative, tearing those ideas apart as he goes along. I think this is his greatest achievement, and I'm a huge fan of the plays and the other w...more

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Dec 02, 2007 Natalie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: certain people, in particular moods

Shelves: favorites, place-irish, time-postmodern, existentialism, 1001

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...more

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Dec 27, 2012 and rated it 5 of 5 stars

the reason all the philosophers/ academics are obsessed with beckett is because he perfectly describes their pathetic, obsessive, plotless existence. this was the most boring set of novels i have ever read in my life. i hate novels about people's thoughts, this was 100 times worse. i tried so fucking hard to finish the unnamable but felt like pinning my tongue to a light fixture and hanging myself would have been a better idea.

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in other words, beckett did too good of a job with his stories

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Nov 03, 2012 Kenny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics_novels

These go swiftly downhill. Molloy is by far the best, and I would actually recommend it. It's consistently funny and entertainingly weird. Malone Dies becomes tedious, but still has some wit about it. The Unnamable (I recognize this is by now a very old pun) is nigh unreadable. It drones on, repeating the same thoughts in pretty much the same words, for so long that you start to consider dropping whatever class you're reading it for (if it's not for class, you don't get that far in before you st...more These go swiftly downhill. Molloy is by far the best, and I would actually recommend it. It's consistently funny and entertainingly weird. Malone Dies becomes tedious, but still has some wit about it. The Unnamable (I recognize this is by now a very old pun) is nigh unreadable. It drones on, repeating the same thoughts in pretty much the same words, for so long that you start to consider dropping whatever class you're reading it for (if it's not for class, you don't get that far in before you stop reading it).

The received wisdom about these novels seems to be that in them, Beckett is removing, piece by piece, the traditional elements that novels are supposed to have. Already in Molloy, a coherent plot and relatable characters are absent. We don't have to question everything our unreliable narrator tells us, because he questions it right after he says it! To the point that this becomes irritating and you wish he could just lump all those statements into one broad disclaimer at the end (e.g. "I don't know whether any of what I have said is true"), and save us all a lot of time.

Next, in Malone Dies, plot of any kind has gone missing. We're treated to a single, long monologue of a character who says he's dying and doesn't seem to know much else about himself. We learn all about his room (he's bedridden), and he tells us several stories as we wait for death (his or our own, whichever comes first). The stories aren't as good as the ones in Molloy.

Finally, in The Unnamable, character, plot, setting, and any reason to read the book other than to say you've read it, are all MIA. At this point, if not earlier, it has become apparent that some at least of the traditional elements of a novel are there for a good reason and shouldn't have been thrown out. If you are a being constituted similarly to myself, you may begin to read this book out of curiosity, but it will require compulsion to cause you to finish it.

inb4 "Dude, you were supposed to hate it, that's the whole point!"(less)

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Aug 21, 2012 Javier rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: prose

Samuel Beckett's writing hints at a growing storm cloud, at a force that builds up underneath the surface. What starts out as word play quickly erupts into a bastardizing of the English language. And like a storm cloud, his writing carries with it an ominous quality. What Beckett does so well is present a nightmare vision of what it means to be alive, with all the mundane consequences that accompany it. His characters exude strong pathos that allows us to sense the nightmare they are borne into....more Samuel Beckett's writing hints at a growing storm cloud, at a force that builds up underneath the surface. What starts out as word play quickly erupts into a bastardizing of the English language. And like a storm cloud, his writing carries with it an ominous quality. What Beckett does so well is present a nightmare vision of what it means to be alive, with all the mundane consequences that accompany it. His characters exude strong pathos that allows us to sense the nightmare they are borne into. This, and not a linear plot, may be what a reader should be searching for when reading his "Three Novels."

The human condition is Samuel Beckett's primary concern. Again, the stories in this collection do not bother with plots, but what you miss out on in terms of a storyline you gain with glimpses into the consciousness of these grotesque individuals. The stories are the thought patterns and digressions that constitute the lives of these characters, in their attempts to distract themselves from their dark realities. A claustrophobic quality takes a hold on you and you feel like you are actually stepping into a nightmare, only you're aware of the happenings around you. This is the flip side of life; the absolute negative. Despite the bleak environments of the stories, the struggle to carry on hints at the author's humanism.

In "Molloy," a degenerate tramp decides to visit his ailing mother. He is hampered by his handicap; he uses crutches to get around but manages to steal a bicycle. From here on out, what it presumably a short trip to his mother's bedside turns into a series of obstacles and misadventures in a slightly recognizable world. During this prolonged trek he accidentally kills a socialite's dog and pays his debt by playing the role of pet. He escapes and gets into a confrontation with a stranger he may or may not recognize and kills him, and ends up in a room being served papers by an unknown figure. His narrative is interrupted by second guessing and digression; he is not wholly sure who he is. The second half of the novel follows a Moran, a private investigator type who is ordered by an unseen boss to track down this Molloy. His trip is hampered by similar obstacles that befell Molloy. Moran also gets into a confrontation with a man and kills him, and decides to turn back to his home in failure. Months later, he reaches his house in rags, and finds himself in a room, where he is instructed by a figure to write. We could see this as a dual personality story, Molloy could be the enlightened Moran, in that the facade of everyday life has been torn down and now the world seen through the eyes of Molloy is a more honest representation.

"Malone Dies" is the story of a bedridden narrator who kills his time writing down random tidbits, observations and stories on a notepad. One story he seems unusually determined to finish before his impending death is that of a man named Sapo. Then he abandons that story for a new one, featuring a Macmann. Macmann goes from leaving his homestead, to several odd mini adventures and relationships, to finding himself confined to a mental institution. Malone reveals he is responsible for the death of several men, possibly alluding to his being in a mental institution himself. The odd thing about this story is that the reader may not know where the true story ends or begins, is this story of Malone or Macmann? At times the distinction is blurred. We realize that Malone's "release" so to speak, his death, hinges on the completion of Macmann's story. Malone is no godhead, but he's given life to Macmann, and now their fates are forever intertwined. He does not live vicariously through Macmann; Macmann lives vicariously through Malone. He, without knowing it, has to rely on Malone to finish his story. By the ending, Macmann is taken with other patients on a charity trip set up by a rich patron. An abusive guard at the institution takes it upon himself to hack two of the patron's bodyguards to death and gathers the patients onto a boat to return to the institution. He raises his hatchet, but he will not "hit anyone with it again."

“The Unnamable” is definitely the most difficult to comprehend. Admittedly, it was downright incomprehensible to me. What I was able to gather at the time was an unnamed narrator who appeared to be completely immobilized. He first describes his situation as being in a sitting position, hands on his knees, sitting straight up without any idea of where or why. He then proceeds to contradict himself; now he is missing a leg and arm, and he surmises he in fact may not be sitting. In any case, he is immobile, and is forced to witness the trials and tribulations of Molloy, Malone, and several other characters from past works of Beckett. I figured he was an omniscient witness whose purpose was to paint a picture of the quiet hell the characters had to endure. It was only after reading a review that it made sense, he wasn't a witness but a voice, the voice in everyone's head.

Each story peels away a layer of coherence and awareness until we're left with the barest of bare essentials. An onion serves as a good metaphor, because we don't necessarily want to see what is at the core. There is a theme of disintegration, and of escalating immobility. With each story, the character's freedom of movement is reduced. Molloy/Moran enjoys some level of freedom as they roam around the countryside until the end of their stories. Malone, struggling between a state of consciousness and semi consciousness and confined to a bed, is still able to make use of objects around him to prove to himself that he's alive. By the Unnameable's story, our narrator is completely immobile and prisoner to itself...it must confront awareness, the very proof of our existance. Sometimes, being left to one's own thoughts can be a frightening experience. In these stories, the cry for help is seldom heard because these characters do not appear to know any better. While I avoided giving this book 5 stars because of its elusiveness, I feel the collage of thoughts and the message it hints at presages any standards I might hold to it. The fault is my own, and not the book's.
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Mar 28, 2011 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 loopin...more

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Aug 28, 2007 Marcus rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

I read this alongside an audio version, which greatly enhanced many aspects of the work.

“The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never” (Unnamable, 331-332)

Life, movement, and inquiry...more

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Apr 11, 2013 thegift rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: art, uklit, literature, xlong-over-100kwords, xperimental, irelandlit, francelit

well. i read it: long 2 flights, airport time between, only made it seem longer. i wanted to like it, blurbs on the copy sounded promising, i have enjoyed his plays, i was ready to do without the usual furnishings of fiction, you know, plot, character, place. maybe i am just not ready to find the humor said to be embedded in the long, long, long, pointlessness of these books. one laugh, after he discards the chewing stones… this is not enough to enjoy it. i tried to like it, but since then i hav...more

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May 30, 2008 Tait rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: french, irish, literature

While most people are familiar with "Waiting for Godot," the play that made him famous, few have braved Beckett's prose writing. Dense and dreamlike only scratch the surface, having been influenced heavily by Joyce and Proust, Beckett sets out to destroy every convention and form of thought available to language, so that we are left with plotless, settingless, and even characterless stories that nonetheless explore the despair and consciousness of what it means to be alive. Not for the casual re...more

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May 03, 2011 Jason Carlin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: will-complete-over-time

I put my hand in my pocket. There's a piece of paper in there. I fiddle it for a second, questioning whether to take it out. Eventually I do. At the top, in black writing, are the words REASONS TO NOT DESPAIR OF BEING IRISH. I've done this before, quite a while ago. A horrible lack of material there. No harm. It makes it the more sweet when an addition is made. I write, right under Wilde, with a pen taken from the pocket opposite the one in which the paper was, Beckett. I replace the letter and...more

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May 08, 2012 Jeremy added it

Shelves: irish-literature

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...more

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May 22, 2011 Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Each of these novels deserves its own review but there are two highly-distracting birds flying back and forth around the Columbus airport right now, and anyway the plain fact is that Beckett's human or post-human or pre-human comedy wants to be read as a single, prolonged descent. Except that the terminal station was reached with Watt, a book that pushes its audience's tolerance far further than these three. So why the pullback? Why return to Purgatory, as if Beatrice and the flower-drain of cir...more

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Aug 11, 2009 Erik Evenson rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have no idea how to write a little blurb for these three books (Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable). I can’t comment on the plots of any of the three because there really aren’t any. I can’t really comment on the characters either, as they tend to become the same person in some shape or form. And, come to think of it, I can’t comment on anything about the stories as novels at all, because, frankly, I really don’t know what I read on the page. So, what did I think of these books? Brilliant....more I have no idea how to write a little blurb for these three books (Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable). I can’t comment on the plots of any of the three because there really aren’t any. I can’t really comment on the characters either, as they tend to become the same person in some shape or form. And, come to think of it, I can’t comment on anything about the stories as novels at all, because, frankly, I really don’t know what I read on the page. So, what did I think of these books? Brilliant.
And that word doesn’t even do them justice. They have changed my view of what writing stories can be, stretched the meaning of what stories can do. I am utterly convinced that neither I nor anyone else will ever write like Samuel Beckett, and yet I can’t shake the feeling that I will be a better writer (and probably better overall person) knowing that there was a Samuel Beckett in the world and that he found the courage to write the way he did.
A bit dramatic? Probably. I have to confess I developed a bit of an obsession with Mr. Beckett midway through Molloy. I found filmed versions of two of his plays on the old Youtube (Waiting for Godot and Endgame) along with the only short film shot from a screenplay of his (it was called, of course, Film). In all of these works, I came away with the same feeling: I didn’t quite know what I had experienced, but I knew I liked it somehow, I think. It was an unsettling sensation, not having any idea why I liked these works so much. One thing about Mr. Beckett: he does put you to work. Reading his books or watching his plays can bring about emotions that range at times from tedious to downright frustrating (try figuring out who Mahood or Worm is in The Unnamable, for instance), but the rewards are there: surprising, unexpected, tiny, human miracles.
I know I won’t remember anything from these books in terms of what I usually remember when I read a book that I love, such as a great story, a complex character, or even great lines—the thing that I especially love when reading stories. Instead, what will stay in my head for what will be a very long time is the residue of images. I will remember Molloy ruminating on true love and how the women in his life (who might’ve been men, he can’t remember) remind him of his mother.
I will remember Jacques Moran walking for days towards home, using his umbrella as a walking stick. When it rains, he has the choice to walk in the rain and get wet, or stop, open his umbrella, and stand still while the rain comes down for hours. After this epic decision Moran has to make (he finally opts to stand still, umbrella open), we find out that his umbrella is in tatters, so he gets wet anyway.
I will remember Malone, lying in his bed, waiting to die, having to stop writing the final story of his life for 48 hours because he lost his pencil in the sheets.
I will remember that Molloy’s mother calls him Dan, even though his name is Molloy, that Malone sounds suspiciously like Molloy, that Basil is actually Mahood and Worm might be Mahood, except that they are different, that Saposcat turns into Macmann because it’s a better name and that the narrator of The Unnamable is, in fact, unnamable and might, at any time, be any of these people or none of them at all. And I’m pretty sure everyone has a bum leg or two.
I will remember that there isn’t a lot of remembering in these books, that one of the most used phrases is “I forget,” followed by “I don’t know,” and rounding out with, “It doesn’t matter.” I will remember how monumental the tedium is in Mr. Beckett’s world, how choosing your sucking stones, or taking inventory of the few things you own could be some of the biggest and most important decisions you’ll ever make.
I will remember that you will probably fail at them, too.
And speaking of failure, I will remember that I probably failed to grasp Mr. Beckett’s work, that I didn’t “get it,” that someone has done a better job understanding and comprehending what the hell Mr. Beckett was trying to accomplish with his trilogy. It’s okay. To steal one of Mr. Beckett’s phrases, it doesn’t matter. This stuff is lodged in my brain and I’m positive that it will stay there until I decide to revisit it again (who knows when that will be?) and find out that, when it comes to Mr. Beckett’s work, I won’t know less as much as I don’t know now.
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Mar 17, 2008 Hamish rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lit

I'd give Molloy 5 stars, Malone Dies 4 and the Unnamable 3, which comes out to an even 4. Beckett's minimalism was what made Molloy (and to a slightly lesser extent Malone Dies) such a disturbing and unsettling read, but with the Unnamable it was so minimalist that I felt like i had nothing in it to hold onto and it slipped through my my mind like grains of sand through my fingers. It was still a work I could admire and appreciate, but not necessarily one I found particularly readable.

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Apr 25, 2013 Ipsith rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-gothic

In these novels, there is little or no dialogue. Malone Dies is a sombre soliloquy in which one or two shadowy characters appear; and in the other two the page is unbroken except for an occasional questionnaire. Place and time are of no importance; towns have peculiar names like "Bally" or "Hole"; the past is murkily remembered, the present non-existent, family ties are few and far between. All the characters are deformed or hideous and move in a terrifying atmosphere of rejection, abandonment a...more

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Mar 01, 2008 Erica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone

Recommended to Erica by: andrew

This is a very hard book to write a review of.... basically a life-changing group of novels exploring death, life, hope, absence, failure, oh so many things are discussed in these novels which come highly recommended to you by someone who is NOT a fan of Beckett's plays. (I'm going to read more of his fiction, though!) Either you'll love it or you won't and if you don't you are no longer invited to my birthday party.

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Apr 18, 2012 Philip Lane rated it 1 of 5 stars

I am reviewing only The Unnamable here as I have discussed the other two separately. I was reading and thinking, wandering, hearing the ticking of the clock as the pages swirled, words flowing forwards, backwards losing meaning and time and then back into consciousness. Was it time to cook or should I, or maybe it is no longer I but he who is reading and I who am thinking of food and time and the clock ticking. Did I miss someting, was that word a clue to another meaning a feeling or a hunger gn...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Emily is currently reading it · review of another edition

On 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 ti...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really am not capable of doing this book anything like justice. Read it if you consider yourself at all a reader.

Beckett provides fuel for an academic industry, much of it completely over my head, but I did see one review that struck a chord with me where the reviewer tried to answer why she reads Beckett. There was some grand stuff about his words soaking into you, and that's why I would recommend the trilogy to anyone who enjoys the activity and texture of reading. It left me quite pensive,...more I really am not capable of doing this book anything like justice. Read it if you consider yourself at all a reader.

Beckett provides fuel for an academic industry, much of it completely over my head, but I did see one review that struck a chord with me where the reviewer tried to answer why she reads Beckett. There was some grand stuff about his words soaking into you, and that's why I would recommend the trilogy to anyone who enjoys the activity and texture of reading. It left me quite pensive, and I'm waiting on Texts for Nothing to turn up in the post today.

Molloy follows on from Watt and Murphy, with Beckett's standard cast of transient, despairing men. The two narratives (not stories) of Molloy and Moran have a beautiful symmetry, and we really feel the dejection and hopeless of them both as they stumble around a desolate landscape becoming progressively more damaged.

Malone Dies echoes many novels about prison and psychiatric wards in it's misery and unremitting settings of vague, terrible institutions. Malone is the ultimate hard case to get through to, cynical to an infinite degree, but we can revel in Beckett's language as he drags his character around a little loop to a surprisingly dramatic ending, thrown in as though the author is tired and just wants to finish the damn thing off (we're in on the joke).

It took me a long time to work my way through The Unnamable. A reviewer said it's Beckett moving from modernism to postmodernism, and that sounds about right. The Unnamable is Descarte's evil demon hypothesis subjected to even more doubt, where "I think, therefore I am" becomes "I think, so there are thoughts", then on to is there an I, are there thoughts? The Unnamable struggles to confound a They and their suppositions about living, about identity, occassionally remembering previous Beckett characters and spinning off small, contemptuously built stories. The Mahood stories in particular seem to presage many of Beckett's later plays with their disembodied actors and endless rants. But there is great gallows humour on every page, and Beckett's language cycling on, making reading this book an experience like no other.

Told you I couldn't describe it. It's quantum metaphysics, read it!(less)

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Feb 10, 2009 Melynda Yesenia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review is for those who often have stream-of-consciousness thoughts in their own heads and are thinking of reading Molloy. All others continue on.

Read this book if your mind is on constant RSS mode, the sort of thinking where one thing flows directly into the next without pausing to consider its aim or the importance of the connection, the sort of thing they call "racing thoughts" in some places you choose not to think about, where your mind devours letters like firewood and makes nothing o...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Joel rated it 5 of 5 stars

-molloy was my favorite, then malone dies, then the unnamable.
-molloy and malone dies "plots" were somewhat coherent, but not really coherent. hey look at that beckett sentence, maybe. idk. The unnamable lacks completely lacks any semblance of a plot.
-all 3 books features bros whose physical body was failing on them. molloy was able to ride a bike w/ one leg in the beginning and by the end he was crawling. malone couldnt leave his bed. the unnamable i think was just a pile of body or something o...more -molloy was my favorite, then malone dies, then the unnamable.
-molloy and malone dies "plots" were somewhat coherent, but not really coherent. hey look at that beckett sentence, maybe. idk. The unnamable lacks completely lacks any semblance of a plot.
-all 3 books features bros whose physical body was failing on them. molloy was able to ride a bike w/ one leg in the beginning and by the end he was crawling. malone couldnt leave his bed. the unnamable i think was just a pile of body or something on a bench that didnt move for years. anyway what was left w/o the physical body was the self. Being was still there.
-as the body deteriorates whats left is questions to be asked like what are we doing is any of this real and does it even matter?
-along these lines and a huge theme or idea throughout the book is the idea that language is not enough to describe existential thoughts or history or current events, something is lost in the written word. everything is subjective. does truth exist? the narrators in each of these books are especially untrustworthy.

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.

or the famous quote that concludes the unnamable:

I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

-Each book is filled with these contradictions. Admittedly by the end of the unnamable (my least favorite of the 3) it could get a little tiresome, or at least repetitive.
-the books were filled with terrifying ideas questioning what it means to exist, why are we here and, of course, life is meaningless (which it is). horrifying and dark yet on the same page there might also be a funny bit about taking a cräp or just whatever:

Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.

I am still alive then. That may come in useful.

conclusion: recommended for anyone with interesting in Modernist literature or those searching for a meaning to life. beckett is known for his minimalist writing. its a dense book with not many sentences describing the colors of the sky or the shade of a room. theres only a handful of paragraphs or so in the 400 long pages. its Beckett though and he should be read for anybody that has an interest in literature (or philosophy maybe). this is one of the hyped authors like joyce or kafka that i can get behind and say "yeah, that guy rules. and ive read his books no big deal. also we are alone and know nothing."
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Sep 04, 2009 Brandon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Despite only giving this book three stars I really enjoyed parts of it. I think the absence of a traditional plot in each of the novels alienated me enough to make me uncomfortable with my ability to read this. The structure makes it read a little like poetry, a little like philosophy which make it's ideas extremely interpretive.

This being said, I thought the creation of the narrative voice in each novel was almost perfect. As someone who greatly enjoys stream of consciousness writing, I thought...more

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Jun 04, 2008 Olivian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

no, 'can't go on' ;
nothing is quite the same after these three.

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Jan 20, 2013 Tej rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Call me lazy, but I just don't have the patience for modernist stream-of-consciousness books anymore. I need structure--like chapters and paragraphs. I really like sentences, too. And it helps if you can at least give me the semblance of a narrative and an interesting character. Instead, Beckett gives us a lunatic who spends several pages trying to figure out the best method for rotating his sucking stones. Wow. I understand trying something unique with language, trying to be inventive, trying t...more

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May 15, 2012 Brittany rated it 3 of 5 stars

This trilogy (although not initially meant by Beckett to be presented as so!) is the epitome of post-modernism. All three novels are not grounded in anything other than a reliance on the creative rhetorical power of language, and language alone. The stories somehow manage to still exist despite the absolutely obscure and etch-a-sketch-like presentation. Beckett's writing is beyond vague, it is impenetrable. With every bit of information the unreliable narrator presents, another bit of informatio...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Nicolas Mertens rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Okay, my rating isn't really fair. And like my review of Molloy, I can see my rating change over time. Of course time is the biggest problem with this collection. Each of these books are similar in nature in terms of their philosophy and writing style, but the narrative changes. I feel very reminiscent of Burroughs, Joyce and Dostoevsky in terms of style, which sounds like an awesome combination, but Beckett's experimental touch made this very difficult to read: you can't put it down...because h...more

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Feb 18, 2012 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

The human Self is not an unvarying thing, not a single unity. It is a synthetic whole, a synthesis synthesizing itself from disjoint elements of perception, body, state of mind, self-consciousness. The synthesis is effected by the continuity of memory and action, by transcendental apperception of self, by one’s conscious idea of oneself, by reification in the gaze of the Other, and by a unifying conceptual framework, both one’s own and that of the social whole. In his trilogy, Beckett examines t...more The human Self is not an unvarying thing, not a single unity. It is a synthetic whole, a synthesis synthesizing itself from disjoint elements of perception, body, state of mind, self-consciousness. The synthesis is effected by the continuity of memory and action, by transcendental apperception of self, by one’s conscious idea of oneself, by reification in the gaze of the Other, and by a unifying conceptual framework, both one’s own and that of the social whole. In his trilogy, Beckett examines this synthesis by dissolving it, revealing every element in a state of decay and breaking apart from the others.

The first of the trilogy, Molloy, gives us two characters “crumbling...dispossessed of self.” It dwells on their grotesque, painful, ever-rotting physicality, the errant extremes of their emotions. They are the kind of miserable, erratic individuals found in Dostoevsky and Hamsun, but here they are taken to their outermost limits. They are all ramblings and gesticulations. The first is a pitiful fellow, held together only with absurd routines and vague connections to his mother; the second, a cruel one, holding himself together by insistence on his own rules, by brutally lashing the world and the people within it with his will and his ideology. By the end, the latter character resembles the former: they have become the same by both dissolving into the minimal elements of human reality. Above all, neither can stop narrating: the narration, the telling of their own story, the use of words to circumscribe, to connect, and to unify: language, that body of concepts that defines the world and allows us our intersubjective relations, is the final thing maintaining their being. But the narration is cut apart, broken with comma upon comma upon comma splice, by ambiguity and rapid contradiction. Like everything else, it is crumbling.

The second of the trilogy begins at the existential level where Molloy ends, telling a tale consisting solely of the ramblings of a dying man lying alone in a room. The man wonders where he his and what he’s doing there. He speaks in “quarter-truths, quarter-inclinations.” He tells of the objects that define his being by being his: a stick and a notebook, for example. (He ponders how to define what belongs to him; this is as important as anything else.) He tells a story to amuse himself. His story makes little sense. Its protagonist changes names willy-nilly. By the end, it becomes poignant, telling of the rise and fall of a love affair and its grotesque physicality. By the end, the narrator and the character can’t be distinguished. By the end, it matters little whether they are one and the same, because the narrator creates himself, exists as a pseudo-permanent thing, only in his telling, in his creation, of his own story.

In this final book of the trilogy, not even characters remain. The movement toward stasis found in Malone Dies is complete: there are only thoughts thinking themselves, ever rambling but never moving. The unnamable narrator tells brief tales of himself sitting, forever immobile and incommunicative, in a chair, other people orbiting as planets about him; he tells of a character living in a jar in front of a restaurant, and the joys of having a tarp placed over one’s jarred head; he tells of a pile of mush with an eye, alone in a room, others peeking in. He is obsessed with the vacuity of words. They are always the words of others. Their meaning is questionable. But they keep spilling out. In one of the greatest stylistic moments I’ve ever read, the novel ends with dozens of pages of great seas of run-on sentences sliced into horrifying, headlong rhythms.(less)

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Oct 20, 2011 Nadyne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, novel, fiction, philosophical, psychology, read-in-2011, 1900-s, irish

First sentence: "I am in my mother's room."

P. 99: "That we thought of ourselves as members of a vast organization was doubtless also due to the all too human feeling that trouble shared, or is it sorrow, is trouble something, I forget the word."

Last sentence: "... I'm waiting for me there, no, there you don't wait, you don't listen, I don't know, perhaps it's a dream, all a dream, that would suprise me, I'll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again dream o...more First sentence: "I am in my mother's room."

P. 99: "That we thought of ourselves as members of a vast organization was doubtless also due to the all too human feeling that trouble shared, or is it sorrow, is trouble something, I forget the word."

Last sentence: "... I'm waiting for me there, no, there you don't wait, you don't listen, I don't know, perhaps it's a dream, all a dream, that would suprise me, I'll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs, I don't know, that's all words, never wake, all words, there's nothing else, you must go on, that's all I know, they're going to stop, I know that well, I can feel it, they're going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn't last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my own story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."

Pfft, this was a very heavy read... I hadn't read these books before and I didn't even buy them; they were my grandfather's and they had been on my shelves for more than 10 years. So when my eye fell on them a few weeks ago, I decided to read it. The first two books, Molloy and Malone dies, I started to like after reading about 20 pages. Major theme are death and dying but Beckett plays a lot with time and identity (e.g. he changes the name of the protagonist in the middle of a story, or he switches from 'I' to 'he'), and most of the time I like books on these subjects. The only problem I had with them was the absence of paragraphs. I find it always hard to read sentence after sentence without being able to pause a little at the end of a paragraph.
:
But the last story, The Unnamable, was too much for me, I just couldn't get in to it. I kept reading because it seemed so silly to stop at that moment, but I kept counting the pages. The sentences were so long (see the last sentence, where I only typed about a fifth of the sentence), and I didn't get what it was all about.

I am glad I have read this trilogy, because I don't like to have books on my shelves I haven't read, but I don't think I will reread them any time soon.

Great review of the 1st book Molloy
http://www.eveningallafternoon.com/20...(less)

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Jan 13, 2011 Henry added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-novel

just Molloy for now. saving the other two novels for another year or lifetime... give me Ulysses' resounding hope in progress instead of this constant self-negation. yet beckett is immensely charming, and so carefully successful in evading readers' wishful need for neatness and aphorism.

1:

"And what do I mean by seeing and seeing again? An instant of silence, as when the conductor taps on his stand, raises his arms, before the unanswerable clamor."

"I found alight switch and switched it on. No res...more just Molloy for now. saving the other two novels for another year or lifetime... give me Ulysses' resounding hope in progress instead of this constant self-negation. yet beckett is immensely charming, and so carefully successful in evading readers' wishful need for neatness and aphorism.

1:

"And what do I mean by seeing and seeing again? An instant of silence, as when the conductor taps on his stand, raises his arms, before the unanswerable clamor."

"I found alight switch and switched it on. No result. What a story!" (39)

"For all things run together in the body's long madness, I feel it." (60)

2:

"Translating myself now in imagination to the present moment, I declare the foregoing to have been written with a firm and even satisfied hand, and a mind calmer than it has been for a long time. For I shall be far away, before these lines are read, in a place where no one will dream of coming to look for me." (174)

"Anyone else would have lain down in the snow, firmly resolved never to rise again. Not I. I used to think that men would never get the better of me. I still think I am cleverer than things. There are men and there are things, to hell with animals. And with God. When a thing resists me, even if it is for my own good, it does not resist me long. This snow, for example . . . I forged my way through it, towards what I would have called my ruin if I could have conceived what I had left to be ruined. Perhaps I have conceived it since, perhaps I have not done conceiving it, it takes time, one is bound to in time, I am bound to. But on the way home, a prey to the malignancy of man and nature and my own failing flesh, I could not conceive it." (187)

"I had to suffer other molestations than this, other offences, but I shall not record them. Let us be content with paradigms. I may have to suffer others in the future. This is not certain. But they will never be known. This is certain." (195)

"I have spoken of a voice telling me things. I was getting to know it better now, to understand what it wanted. It did not use the words that Moran had been taught when he was little and that he in his turn had taught to his little one. So that at first I did not know what it wanted. But in the end I understood this language. I understood it, I understand it, all wrong perhaps. That is not what matters. It told me to write the report. Does this mean I am freer now than I was? I do not know. I shall learn. 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." (199)(less)

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Dec 04, 2012 [P] rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bitchin

Old age: the decaying of the mind and body; counting down to death in weeks, days, even hours, rather than years...you have to laugh. Beckett is the shizz, and these three are the pinnacle of his achievements. I have a theory that they are all connected, that they present in three distinct stages the deterioration of the human mind and body, maybe even of the same man; only Beckett himself denied that this is a trilogy and felt that the novels stand alone. Spoil sport.

The thing about Sam, howev...more Old age: the decaying of the mind and body; counting down to death in weeks, days, even hours, rather than years...you have to laugh. Beckett is the shizz, and these three are the pinnacle of his achievements. I have a theory that they are all connected, that they present in three distinct stages the deterioration of the human mind and body, maybe even of the same man; only Beckett himself denied that this is a trilogy and felt that the novels stand alone. Spoil sport.

The thing about Sam, however, is that, post-Murphy, all his novels are interconnected. They all deal with the same themes and often cross reference each other. Furthermore, the three in this volume naturally follow each other, even if that wasn't the writer's intention. Molloy's protagonist is mentally on the slide but is still able to physically move around his environment and still has some idea of his purpose, is still able at some level to engage in life. In Malone Dies, the central character is bed bound, has lost most of his physicality, and is mentally less stable. The Unnameable, on the other hand, is completely disembodied, is pure consciousness. For this reason I would advocate reading them one after the other, despite that being a daunting prospect.

Molloy is often cited as the favourite amongst a majority of readers, perhaps because it is the most conventional. It certainly has the most fully developed plot, featuring the titular character and his peregrinations around a somewhat barren landscape in the first half, and Moran, who is tracking Molloy, in the second. As an aside, I, perhaps wrongly, feel as though Molloy and Moran are possibly the same person. Next up Malone Dies, which is more of a challenge; Malone for the most part engages in 'mental play,' i.e. telling himself stories to pass the time until death. Finally, The Unnameable is, with a titanic lack of wit, often referred to as The Unreadable, which gives an indication as to what you are getting yourself into when picking it up. It isn't unreadable of course [I have read it], but is a fractured, occasionally tiring and often near-impenetrable novel.

All this may sound harrowing, and it sometimes is, but the most impressive feather in Beckett's extravagantly plumed cap is his ability to mine humour from the slagheap of human existence. All three novels, if you are in the right frame of mind, are tremendously funny. In fact, a good proportion of his work trades in Chaplin-like slapstick and an impressive series of sardonic one-liners. By making you laugh in the face of death Beckett pulls off a nifty trick: he makes what could potentially have been the most depressing trilogy of novels in the history of literature strangely uplifting.(less)

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About Samuel Beckett

Samuel 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.

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“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.” — 38 people liked it

“The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never. ” — 24 people liked it

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title link	preview: Three Novels: Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable
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