4thace reviewed Three Novels by Samuel Beckett
Review of 'Three Novels' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
This early novel of Beckett's features two defective narrators who each act according to bizarre impulses, and who have a link to one another that is kept obscure to the end. I listened to the audiobook version produced in the mid-2000s with two different narrators, but I understand that each of these characters has a massive multi-page paragraph through which they ramble on with no regard to the conventions of storytelling.
Both Molloy and Moran tell you how they are obliged to do certain things without any sense that they have an idea exactly why they must do so. For instance, Molloy goes on at length about his sixteen "sucking stones" and the system he has come up to employ them. For his part, Moran has an obsession with belittling his son, essentially driving him off to no one's benefit, almost as though this were more than a matter of …
This early novel of Beckett's features two defective narrators who each act according to bizarre impulses, and who have a link to one another that is kept obscure to the end. I listened to the audiobook version produced in the mid-2000s with two different narrators, but I understand that each of these characters has a massive multi-page paragraph through which they ramble on with no regard to the conventions of storytelling.
Both Molloy and Moran tell you how they are obliged to do certain things without any sense that they have an idea exactly why they must do so. For instance, Molloy goes on at length about his sixteen "sucking stones" and the system he has come up to employ them. For his part, Moran has an obsession with belittling his son, essentially driving him off to no one's benefit, almost as though this were more than a matter of ordinary curmudgeonliness. I feel like the reader naturally gets the sense that they are obliged to fill in the thing not stated from the clues that show up. At the same time, I get the lurking suspicion that this urge is mistaken and that there is no good rationalization accounting for these characters. Both of them have an issue involving a mysteriously bad leg, both go wandering in the countryside apparently at random, have farcical trouble with bicycles, engage in obtrusive thoughts and rituals, exhibit a comic grotesqueness of manner, feel driven to produce reports and writings they believe are not being read, and commit acts of savage violence. Moran is actually on a mission to look for Molloy, but has forgotten or was never told exactly why and what to do if he were to find him.
It is an evasive novel which apparently tries to frustrate any conventional way a reader or critic might try to make sense of it.
Is it a moral book? The two viewpoint characters are pretty nasty pieces of work, not portrayed as governed by any kind of morality, but arguably they are each cast in a pretty poor light by their own words, as though this were an empty kind of existence.
Is it a disturbing book? Yes, profoundly unsettling. It gives you a sense of what it is like to make all the wrong existential choices in life and cling instead to forms which no one else would consider sensible. There are all sorts of things that happen in the course of the story that many people would be bothered by, and not only the kind of people who look for trigger and content warnings.
Is it a well-written book? The characters are careless about language and frequently about thought, but I don't think this means the author is. There are all sorts of loose ends, and doesn't have what one would call a plot.
Is it a funny book? Frequently, and not always in a a nice way. In this way, it's like they author's more famous work Waiting for Godot, where you pity the characters at the same time you're laughing at them.
