Malone Dies in Reading 1001

Jan 17, 2016 Jen rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1001-challenge, 1001

I'm clearly missing something since this is considered to be a masterpiece. Very tedious in my experience. Malone is dying. He muses about a variety of random things, memory, human nature, aging, loneliness. The whole book is told as if it were an inner monologue.

It is very well written. No one can claim that he wasn't an extremely skilled and intelligent writer but I disliked the experience reading this book. Beckett is not my cup of tea. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 07, 2015 Diane Zwang rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, irish-literature

My first Beckett book and the second in a trilogy thanks to the randomizer. I could tell from the first page that Samuel Beckett liked language and vocabulary struck me as something important to him but this was the longest 120 pages of my life. We learn on the first sentence “I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all”. The rest of the book is the meanderings of being in Malone's head. There were thoughts that really stuck with me “Words and images run riot in my head, pursuing, flying, ...more

Like · see review

Apr 03, 2013 Patrick Robitaille rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001, 1001-challenge, en-français

***

In the central work of his trilogy, Beckett depicts the long agony of Malone, who tries surreptitiously to create some fictions in a notebook he hides in his death bed. In this reflection of the act of writing and the relationships between the writer, his writing and his characters, fiction and reality become slightly blurred towards the end, leaving the reader to ponder whether Malone is also Macmann. The novel starts somewhat confusedly, going in several directions, until the story becomes

...more

Like · see review