What do you think?
Rate this book
Novels II of Samuel Beckett: Volume II of The Grove Centenary Editions
Edited by Paul Auster, this four–volume set of Beckett's canon has been designed by award-winner Laura Lindgren. Available individually, as well as in a boxed set, the four hardcover volumes have been specially bound with covers featuring images central to Beckett's works. Typographical errors that remained uncorrected in the various prior editions have now been corrected in consultation with Beckett scholars C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski.
"A man speaking English beautifully chooses to speak in French, which he speaks with greater difficulty, so that he is obliged to choose his words carefully, forced to give up fluency and to find the hard words that come with difficulty, and then after all that finding he puts it all back into English, a new English containing all the difficulty of the French, of the coining of thought in a second language, a new English with the power to change English forever. This is Samuel Beckett. This is his great work. It is the thing that speaks. Surrender." — Salman Rushdie, from his Introduction
"A man speaking English beautifully chooses to speak in French, which he speaks with greater difficulty, so that he is obliged to choose his words carefully, forced to give up fluency and to find the hard words that come with difficulty, and then after all that finding he puts it all back into English, a new English containing all the difficulty of the French, of the coining of thought in a second language, a new English with the power to change English forever. This is Samuel Beckett. This is his great work. It is the thing that speaks. Surrender." — Salman Rushdie, from his Introduction
536 pages, Hardcover
First published March 13, 2006
6 people are currently reading
95 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Beckett
919 books6,582 followersNovels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include
Murphy
in 1938 and
Malone Dies
in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as
Waiting for Godot
in 1952 and
Krapp's Last Tape
in 1959, and he won the Nobel Prize of 1969 for literature.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 1, 2014
I am now in Book 3 of this 4-volume
set of works by the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). I have completed reading all of his 7 novels: (1)
(5 stars) Murphy is about an aging man who plays pacifist chess. I swiftly finished this because my brother liked this so much too; (2)
(4 stars) Watt is a servant in an apartment and I stalled reading this for a few months because I could not understand what was going on. Hard-to-follow plot but I did not know it was Beckett's style to confuse you; (3)
(3 stars) Mercier and Camier is this "pseudocouple," who tries to leave the city they are in. It is confusing and you don't know who they are really; (4)
(4 stars) Molloy is the bicycle-riding boy and that explains why there is that wheel on the cover of this Book 2 who commits murder while traveling. I really liked the story. I like Beckett more if he has a plot; (5)
(5 stars) Malone is this dying old man in the cell who writes about a boy and then the boy has his own story outside the cell. It is inventive and the prose is haunting I could not help wonder how brilliant an author could be. This is my favorite of all the seven novels of Beckett; (6)
(3 stars) is "The Unnamable" so you see, it is the last book in the trilogy (#4, #5 are the first two) and it is not named after his character because there is no character here and it is just like a lamentation or thoughts of an aging person reminiscing or recalling, in random, the characters in the earlier books. This is my least favorite of all the seven novels; and lastly (7)
(4 stars) is like the final "evaluation" of ones life as you pass from being a child/teenager to adulthood then finally to your final years on earth as the story is divided into three parts like the transition in Virgina Woolf's To the Lighthouse(4 stars) that is also peppered with stream-of-consciousness and written by an equally brilliant novelist.
Did I get anything good about completing Samuel Beckett's seven novels? Definitely yes. Beckett showed me how conventional novel writing can be broken. How brilliance can make things different. We all want variety on things, right? His novels are not for everyone. In fact, there were times in my reading that I felt sleepy trying to understand what was going on. In fact, there were times that I wanted to give up. But I did not. I was thinking, Beckett could not be a Nobel awardee if the more intelligent people (compared to me) did not see the merits of these words. So, that prodded me to go on and I am glad I completed reading these wonderful seven novels of Beckett.
On to his Dramatic Works (Volume 3) and I am reading and liking
(currently reading). Me too is waiting for Godot. Is that a euphemism for God?
set of works by the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). I have completed reading all of his 7 novels: (1)
(5 stars) Murphy is about an aging man who plays pacifist chess. I swiftly finished this because my brother liked this so much too; (2)
(4 stars) Watt is a servant in an apartment and I stalled reading this for a few months because I could not understand what was going on. Hard-to-follow plot but I did not know it was Beckett's style to confuse you; (3)
(3 stars) Mercier and Camier is this "pseudocouple," who tries to leave the city they are in. It is confusing and you don't know who they are really; (4)
(4 stars) Molloy is the bicycle-riding boy and that explains why there is that wheel on the cover of this Book 2 who commits murder while traveling. I really liked the story. I like Beckett more if he has a plot; (5)
(5 stars) Malone is this dying old man in the cell who writes about a boy and then the boy has his own story outside the cell. It is inventive and the prose is haunting I could not help wonder how brilliant an author could be. This is my favorite of all the seven novels of Beckett; (6)
(3 stars) is "The Unnamable" so you see, it is the last book in the trilogy (#4, #5 are the first two) and it is not named after his character because there is no character here and it is just like a lamentation or thoughts of an aging person reminiscing or recalling, in random, the characters in the earlier books. This is my least favorite of all the seven novels; and lastly (7)
(4 stars) is like the final "evaluation" of ones life as you pass from being a child/teenager to adulthood then finally to your final years on earth as the story is divided into three parts like the transition in Virgina Woolf's To the Lighthouse(4 stars) that is also peppered with stream-of-consciousness and written by an equally brilliant novelist.Did I get anything good about completing Samuel Beckett's seven novels? Definitely yes. Beckett showed me how conventional novel writing can be broken. How brilliance can make things different. We all want variety on things, right? His novels are not for everyone. In fact, there were times in my reading that I felt sleepy trying to understand what was going on. In fact, there were times that I wanted to give up. But I did not. I was thinking, Beckett could not be a Nobel awardee if the more intelligent people (compared to me) did not see the merits of these words. So, that prodded me to go on and I am glad I completed reading these wonderful seven novels of Beckett.
On to his Dramatic Works (Volume 3) and I am reading and liking
(currently reading). Me too is waiting for Godot. Is that a euphemism for God? 
September 9, 2007
The three novels - Molloy, Malone Dies, and the Unnamable - are considered one of the greatest trilogies written in the 20th century. I must disagree.
When assessing a work of art, I think, one ought to consider at least three things: 1) style; 2) story; and 3) artistic merit against a backdrop of the historical, cultural, and artistic trends of the day.
Did Beckett create a new genre, a new way to write novels and dramas? Undoubtedly yes. 521 pages of constant, disconnected, meaningless blabber, acutely expressing the painfulness of existence nearing and struggling against death, is something I have never encountered before. But it is, and will be, the most difficult of all the books I read, and will have read, in the past and the future. The difficulty is,not that of, say, Joyce's Ulysses, or Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. It's the difficulty of sheer boredom, of staying focused on the drivel that keeps going without purpose or meaning.
In a sense, it does what I think it purports to do; namely, to express life struggling against death in its death throes. I, the reader, had to really struggle through the reading as life struggled against death. The whole book is a murmur, a voice that keeps murmuring for the sake of murmuring. "I can't go on," it says, "you must go on, I will go on." It did go on, and I had to actually read the text aloud in order to focus; otherwise I'd have been reduced to half-consciousness. Ironically, the voice on the page came alive - it really became voice - through my mouth. I murmured the words on the train to stay focused, murmuring the meaningless murmur that was disengaged from its source.
Artistically, then, I concede him the medal, for his boldness in stripping the novel of its traditional elements, and his lyrical prose. But my tribute stops there. Regardless of its artistic merit, it was maddeningly and frustratingly - and one might even say meaninglessly - boring. And for that, I did not in the least enjoy reading it. Even his humor, which numerous reviewers find "hilarious," I found it dull. There were maybe one or two places I found mildly funny, and aside from that, the book was, in my opinion, devoid of any kind of hilarity.
So for all the reasons above, I give it 1 star, because, after all, I did not like it, and although I do appreciate his artistic originality, I didn't think it offset the hellish unfun-ness of it all.
When assessing a work of art, I think, one ought to consider at least three things: 1) style; 2) story; and 3) artistic merit against a backdrop of the historical, cultural, and artistic trends of the day.
Did Beckett create a new genre, a new way to write novels and dramas? Undoubtedly yes. 521 pages of constant, disconnected, meaningless blabber, acutely expressing the painfulness of existence nearing and struggling against death, is something I have never encountered before. But it is, and will be, the most difficult of all the books I read, and will have read, in the past and the future. The difficulty is,not that of, say, Joyce's Ulysses, or Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. It's the difficulty of sheer boredom, of staying focused on the drivel that keeps going without purpose or meaning.
In a sense, it does what I think it purports to do; namely, to express life struggling against death in its death throes. I, the reader, had to really struggle through the reading as life struggled against death. The whole book is a murmur, a voice that keeps murmuring for the sake of murmuring. "I can't go on," it says, "you must go on, I will go on." It did go on, and I had to actually read the text aloud in order to focus; otherwise I'd have been reduced to half-consciousness. Ironically, the voice on the page came alive - it really became voice - through my mouth. I murmured the words on the train to stay focused, murmuring the meaningless murmur that was disengaged from its source.
Artistically, then, I concede him the medal, for his boldness in stripping the novel of its traditional elements, and his lyrical prose. But my tribute stops there. Regardless of its artistic merit, it was maddeningly and frustratingly - and one might even say meaninglessly - boring. And for that, I did not in the least enjoy reading it. Even his humor, which numerous reviewers find "hilarious," I found it dull. There were maybe one or two places I found mildly funny, and aside from that, the book was, in my opinion, devoid of any kind of hilarity.
So for all the reasons above, I give it 1 star, because, after all, I did not like it, and although I do appreciate his artistic originality, I didn't think it offset the hellish unfun-ness of it all.
November 12, 2009
If you want to experience 'the stream of consciousness' in novels, as far as I know, Beckett's works may interest your curiosity. His narration is simply unique. "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust is of course another famous series.
I've read this volume since 2007 & been busy working till I forgot to open it; the page reached then, p. 143.
I've read this volume since 2007 & been busy working till I forgot to open it; the page reached then, p. 143.
March 30, 2008
I just wanted to recommend these new Grove Centenary editions for their beauty, quality and readability. The trilogy is so much easier to read in this form than in that horrid little old Grove paperback.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews