Friday, December 19, 2014

Samuel Beckett


Let me begin with an admission: I didn't follow any of Samuel Beckett's Molloy. Not a word. 

OK, some of it - maybe. But by and large, I was lost. Or I think I was. I found Molloy impenetrable, and the few sections of the novel I did follow were so disjointed, so opaque that I had trouble orienting them within the context of Moran's quest for the book's namesake.  

For me, Molloy remains an enigma: both as a work of art - and as a character. Ultimately, I read Becket's book as a mediation on death. The first half of Molloy represented, for me, the slow slog toward a state of inaction, of palliative decline. Meanwhile, the second half, dominated by Moran's search for Molloy, amounted to a meditation on death itself: here was Beckett evaluating, and re-evaluating, his own mortality, wrapped up as it is with Molloy's. 

"The news was bad," writes Beckett toward the end of the book, "but it might have been worse." Which, I suppose, is true. But this is a pretty bleak novel, and what light does shine through, is couched in uncertainty: as if the conclusions Beckett draws regarding death are themselves subject to study, to evaluation. In this way, Molloy seems to be a book in search of certainty - which is something, ironically, only death can guarantee. 

4 comments:

  1. Perhaps your last sentence, Jesse, says it all regarding Beckett, not a writer to whom we go if we want to avoid existential enigma. He remains my favorite modern playwright, but I cannot warm to his prose fiction.

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  2. I just read Molloy myself. I thought the first half was often very funny and sometimes the writing was quite lovely. I found the second part far less satisfying, though occasionally there were some laughs. Moran is very unattractive and his treatment of his son is appalling. And we never really learn anything about Molloy and Moran's search for him.

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  3. FYI...see today's edition WSJ for Jay Cantor article.

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  4. Thanks, as always, R.T.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/five-best-jay-cantor-on-the-wreckage-of-the-20th-century-1419016268

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