“I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps.”

The second book of Beckett’s trilogy of novels, Molloy being the first (which I read last year), and The Unnamable the last. It was a great and very particular type of joy to re-enter Beckett’s world. The prose was marvelous: fluid, precise, beautiful, engaging, propulsive; I will dare to say perfect. Being swept along on the tide of Malone’s thoughts and attempts and emotions and failures and observations and persistances was a prismatic experience. What was most affecting for me, in the larger view, was the depiction of the nature of a conscious being to continue contemplating its world and itself, and telling stories to itself and failing and trying again, for as long as there remains even the slightest speck of its ability to do so. At once absurd and deeply familiar, strange and ubiquitously relatable, parading and squirming, funny and crushing, bleak and rich. I look forward to rereading it (upon which I can write about it again, as I have not said enough here), and I look forward to The Unnamable.

Banner image:

“Samuel Beckett Bridge” by Daniel Dudek is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license here.