Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

I have to read this for my postmodern Literature course. I don't want to throw required reading under the bus, because I truly feel that required reading is a good thing. But that in no way means I have to like what I have to read. This collection of books clearly falls under the umbrella of disliked.Molloy is broken into two parts, neither of which are interesting. The first part is from the perspective of the character Molloy, a crazed old man who rambles on about nothing. How does Beckett accomplish this? By having an 85 page chapter contain two paragraphs, one of which is 83 and a half pages long. It is quite literally painful to read. The fact that there is a page and a half of fart jokes only adds to the groanworthiness and juvenility that is the story Molloy. The second part of Molloy is equally uninteresting, though not even really worth mentioning.When it comes to Malone Dies, it becomes painfully apparent that Beckett lacks the ability to characterize. Malone is essentially the same character, with the same style of writing, as the characters in the previous story in the trilogy. His ramblings are equally pointless, long winded, and in paragraphs that are unnecessarily long (though truthfully no where near as long as Molloy). For a story about a man on his death bed, he sure takes his sweet time to die. A fact that Beckett even makes fun of at points, though honestly were the book anywhere near worth reading the comments would be funny. As it is, the book is painful and the comments on Malone taking his time to die feel like Beckett's attempt to recover from a very bad joke that no one found amusing. The feeling of a joke gone wrong, coupled with the long winded commentary by Malone about the time he ejaculated on his own face and proceeded to defecate his bed makes me honestly wonder how mature Samuel Beckett was when writing this story. It wasn't funny, it wasn't evocative; it was contrived and, for lack of a better word, juvenile.I am thankful that I do not have to read The Unnamable. I will giddily sell this book as soon as the course is complete.

In his trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Samuel Beckett explores the frailty of existence.In the first novel, the unreliable narrator recounts his decline but through the monologue, the reader learns not so much his past as declining state of mind. From his phrases and sentences, we realize how far he has departed from reality and how little we can trust his words. And even Molloy couldn't trust his recollection of events and his perception of world. In the second part of the first novel, the narrator Moran, a private detective searching for Molloy, follows a similar decline into delusion and his world becomes as unreal as Molloy's. As if they are the same person.In Malone Dies, an old man confined to an asylum recounts his story and that of a boy named Sapo. But here, as in Molloy, the unreliable narrator conveys not so much the events as his delusion and decline. And we see Malone's death on the last page of the novel through the paragraphs and sentences distorting into fragments to reflect the narrator's last thoughts.“Lemuel is in charge, he raises his hatchet on which the blood will never dry, but not to hit anyone, he will not hit anyone, he will not hit anyone any more, he will not touch anyone any more, either with it or with it or with it or with oror with it or with his hammer or with his stick or with his fist or in thought in dream I mean never he will neveror with his pencil or with his stick oror light light I meannever there he will nevernever anythingthereany more ” from Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies.In The Unnamable, the narrator asks " What am I to do, what shall I do, what should I do, in my situation, how proceed?" As if only a nameless person, perhaps a nonexistent person, can seek to act and to live. The narrator claims to have created Molloy, Malone and other characters in Samuel Beckett's novels, and like them, he also struggles to communicate reality and follows the same path toward non-existence.Beckett's trilogy is a postmodern fiction, not a meta-fiction but a story where the plot collapses and character and, even more so, style dominates. Through the narrators' babbling and occasional insight, through the fragmented thoughts and distorted sentences, we learn about their psyche, isolated and delusional. And we realize Beckett is describing postmodern men and women.

An amazing book with a stylish touch that explores the paradox of the self that can never know itself; in the very act of observing itself the self splits in two, an observing consciousness and an object that is being observed. The self perceives itself as a stream of words, a narration. Each time it tries to catch up with itself, it merely turns into another story, thus putting before the reader a succession of storytellers. A must-read for anyone who cares about literature and who think that it still matters.