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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780375400704
ISBN: 0375400702
Label: Everyman's Library
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 528
Publication Date: 1997-09-16
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Product Release Date: 1997-09-16
Studio: Everyman's Library

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

The first novel of Samuel Beckett's mordant and exhilarating midcentury trilogy introduces us to Molloy, who has been mysteriously incarcerated, and who subsequently escapes to go discover the whereabouts of his mother. In the latter part of this curious masterwork, a certain Jacques Moran is deputized by anonymous authorities to search for the aforementioned Molloy. In the trilogy's second novel, Malone, who might or might not be Molloy himself, addresses us with his ruminations while in the act of dying. The third novel consists of the fragmented monologue–delivered, like the monologues of the previous novels, in a mournful rhetoric that possesses the utmost splendor and beauty–of what might or might not be an armless and legless creature living in an urn outside an eating house. Taken together, these three novels represent the high-water mark of the literary movement we call Modernism. Within their linguistic terrain, where stories are taken up, broken off, and taken up again, where voices rise and crumble and are resurrected, we can discern the essential lineaments of our modern condition, and encounter an awesome vision, tragic yet always compelling and always mysteriously invigorating, of consciousness trapped and struggling inside the boundaries of nature.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a brief and subjective review
Review: Sometimes I go through long periods of time where I forget why I'm into books and writing and everything. It all seems so boring and stupid, and then life does, too. Months or years go by before I find a book like one in this trilogy.

I actually haven't finished it yet, but finishing it is the last thing I want to do. I laugh and marvel often when I read this book and often at the same time. I've never laughed at such terrible pronouncements.

It's true what they say about there being no real plot or exposition. It's difficult to find a place for this book in literature. You don't feel quite right calling it a novel, or novels, or poetry. Every page or so there's a sentence, or a pair of them, that's just a singular marvel. It's as though you took a hilarious comedian, gave him eternal life, and then caught up with him a hundred thousand years later when he was ragged and insane and forced him to write a book, which he ended up really giving his all to in spite of himself.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Third's the Finest
Review: Three powerful novels, each unique and perhaps so like (and unlike) the others in style that they stand together as much as apart, and readily stand up to evaluation, even deconstruction. I found, having never read Beckett before, The Unnamable to be the finest of the three; each reader though takes a different view. I appreciated the total lack of concern with the modern conventions of the novel in the last work, and The Unnamable lives up to its title in many ways, but draws the reader in to a world of exquisite minimalism and modernity. If experimental work of a higher order is your goal, you can hardly do better than Beckett.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on.
Review: Sharply influenced by James Joyce, this trilogy by Samuel Beckett is a truly remarkable achievement. It is a poetic descent into complete obscurity, words removed from their subjects, relations with no establishments. The first novel, Molloy, at least bears the semblance of a plot, and is, in my opinion, the weakest of the three. It tells two seemingly unrelated stories through a strict stream of consciousness technique. The second novel, Malone Dies, is much more abstract, bearing only a touching relation with actuality, the decaying stories and thoughts of a man resolved to die, a man trying to find his epitaph, a man in fear of the void in which there is only silence. The third novel, The Unnamable, is a unique piece in world literature. It is a novel about words, words speaking about words, narrated by a voice whose existence is melts and transforms with his ideas, an entity whose being is confirmed only by his speech. It is, to my mind, the most extreme form of stream of consciousness writing, bearing no relation to actualities, to reality, only related to ideas. The story, if one can call it that, is simply the story of the voice that tells it, a voice that wishes for the silence, that wants to find an end, the perfect sentence, the perfect phrase, who wishes to be still but is afraid to be still, who speaks words of no meaning, speaks only to avoid the silence that lies beyond his reach. This last novel is truly astonishing. A warning though: do not look for any sense of plot, character, or even reality in these books, for they are thoughts removed from the objects of thought.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Human Condition Exposed
Review: (old review from April 2005, on "Malone Dies")

This is the story of Malone, an old man about to die who can't do much except breathing. He's in a hospital room, maybe, and he tries to write a story, or stories.

It's a major book and it's a classic. I really loved it. I like Beckett anyway, but this book is truly awesome. Reflections on writing, living, etc. It's very ironic at times and the stories Malone writes can be really twisted. Some of which is really icky ick but unless you mind things that go off the beaten path, you'll dig it.

What else to say... it's a first person narrative, except for the parts that actually are stories written by Malone. The figure of Malone, alone in this strange room, is reminiscent of that of a feotus; and indeed, Malone sucks the corner of his pillow like a baby, and is treated just like a baby, since he cannot live on his own due to his very old age. The walls are also described as bones at some point, like a skull, I think, it's a bit like Malone is trapped in a head, which is the usual condition of our consciousnesses (or souls). The narrative solely comes from malone's trapped consciousness, it's what Genette would call "focalisation zero", if i'm not mistaken, which I could very well be, having skipped that book at uni. Basically, the narrator is far from omniscient and only knows what the character knows; which is logical since the character, Malone, is also the narrator. You get tons of mise en abymes with the fact that Malone, a character-narrator, writes stories. Stories within the story.

Major book of the 20th Century, I totally recommend it for anyone who likes good literature. And anyone who breathes, yeah, if you breathe, you need to read "Malone Dies". By the way, if Malone sounds like Alone, it's not a coincidence. Malone is always alone and yes he does die too, alone. Deep book about the human condition.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A carcass in God's image and a contemporary skull
Review: The trilogy is Beckett HQ. Step right up. When you come back down might I suggest a trip through the anterooms that are Texts for Nothing? Go on, restore yourself to the feasible. Number 7 in particular is certain to unbuckle your trunions. Seriously, it is here we are reminded that heads are only wound up once. And that, as Denis Johnson might say, is almost too beautiful to laugh about.

Has anyone ever had a really good look at the blank page facing Text Number 1? The page in the library copy is blank but for this message:

Translated by the author

I couldn't believe I missed this the first time and actually did gallop back to my hut to double check. It's there alright, franker than ever:

Translated from the French by the author

Still, it's an encouragement though, isn't it? Right there you know you're in good hands. You know another thing I couldn't believe I missed the first time? The name Knott in either Johnson or Beckett.

Reading these two writers puts me in mind of that stunning little poem Emily Dickinson wrote:

The heart asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

And then, to go to sleep;
and then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.

I've just remembered something and boy is my face red. The trilogy right? The Unnamable in particular.

"These few general remarks to begin with. What am I to do, what shall I do, what should I do, in my situation, how proceed?"

Isn't that just as true a twang upon an ancient chord as you are ever likely to hear in print? How proceed indeed.

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