Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnamable

THREE NOVELS BY SAMUEL BECKETT: MOLLOY MALONE DIES THE UNNAMABLE. By Samuel Beckett. 414 pages. New York: Grove Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8021-5091-8 (pbk).There are many good reasons for reading Beckett's Trilogy. There is, in the first place, his beautifully clear and supple prose, a prose that moves with ease from the simple and straightforward treatment of everyday matters through to passages of intense lyrical beauty, or to equally moving outbursts of extreme brutality and obscenity. There is also Beckett's wonderful sense of humor, and readers will often find themselves chuckling at his eccentric characters and their zany carryings on. There is the unique effect produced by the general strangeness of his novels, with their odd characters moving through vividly realized landscapes which seem real enough but in which many of the happenings are either inexplicable or left unexplained. There are also such things as his compassionate treatment of animals, for although Beckett seems most of the time to have little love for his fellow men, the intensity of his love and respect for the humbler creatures of the earth - donkeys, sheep, pigs, bees, birds, etc., - can be overpowering. Here, for example, is Beckett in 'Malone Dies' (p.304) describing, in his powerful and beautiful prose, a grey hen : ". . . this big, anxious, ashen bird, poised irresolute on the bright threshold, then clucking and clawing behind the range and fidgeting her atrophied wings, soon to be sent flying with a broom and angry cries and soon to return, cautiously, with little hesitant steps, stopping often to listen, opening and shutting her little bright black eyes"There is here a total identification with a creature we would normally have difficulty identifying with, and a very real compassion. Like Molloy,Moran, and Malone, the hen is trapped: trapped in the universe - and trapped in a body. Like them, too, it desires happiness and is averse to suffering. It is experiencing the agony of incarnation, the agony of being in a body. It suffers from heat, cold, thirst, hunger, fear, desire, confusion, frustration, loss, pain, injury, terror, and ultimately death. It also endures many of the other afflictions that we too must somehow suffer through and try to survive - all the while uncertain as to how we got here, why we are here, and where we are going, and desperately searching for some meaning, some explanation, some way out.Beckett is not easy to read. His books demand real stamina. They give us a world in which, despite its occasional hilarity, none of us can feel truly comfortable for nothing in it makes much sense. For Beckett, as for the Buddhists, a continuous self is a mere illusion and has no real existence - hence the indeterminacy of his characters, and the melting of Molloy into Moran, Malone into Macmann, etc. Ultimately unreal, and thus without meaning, they move painfully, but also comically, through a world in which the link between cause and ef

Regarding the statements made in samm2's review below, I am not familiar with the school of psychology that deems it valid to judge someone's sanity based on a work of fiction he or she created. Really, this claim is a blatant fallacy, perhaps indicating the reader should spend more time with the text before bombastically labeling the author a schizophrenic. Beckett is no provider of instant gratification -- he teaches us to dig deeper, into the places where both pain and happiness are enmeshed and inseparable. Yes, all his work displays more or less the same themes -- this is what is called artistic vision, and the astute reader will know not confuse it with mental illness.

It's a pity more people don't read Beckett and cannot seem to enjoy him. The trilogy stands right up there with Ulysses as perhaps the greatest work of the century. With Beckett, who needs a plot? Prose has never been more austerely beautiful and never will be again, after Beckett. Yes, there are some maddening scenes in these three inter-related novels and, yes, there is no conventional "plot," but what we have is a distillation of the bare-boned dilemma of existence. When sad, pathetic, tormented Malone (let's not kid ourselves, he's Everyman) lies in his forlorn room watching the sky from his window, there is no more beautiful poetry in the English language. The moon, in Beckett, is truly the moon. At his very greatest, when he is wringing that stark, cold cosmic beauty from despair, Beckett is the finest writer of the century, better even than Joyce. Such a sad shame that this great trilogy will never be read or appreciated except by such few people. It's just the best there is. Period.

These three novels are the best of the 20th century. They contain all the beauty, despair, and spareness that makes Beckett the patron writer of our century. They get at the core of what it means to be a self in the midst of the void, having, against one's will, a self's attendant thoughts, words, stories, and imagination. "I, say I. Unbelieving" says Beckett in the first line of The Unnamable, and you can believe him. These novels are as metaphysical as novels get, asking sincerely what it means to be. And asking just as sincerely if language can ever help us figure that out. Each novel, with Molloy on his crutches, Malone in his death-bed, The Unnamable in his skull, is screamingly funny and cryingly horrible. Beckett's sense of the absurd and the ridiculous are only matched by his encyclopedic knowledge and overwhelming but strangely life-affirming pessimism, which helps us go on as we laugh at the world's collection of whimsies. There are no novels better. There are few funnier. There are none containing more truth.