Customer Reviews

How It Is

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Once again, that poet of despair Samuel Beckett puts the reader through purgatory--or, in this case, an endless tract of mud, which our narrator muddles through for about 150 pages. Written entirely without punctuation, and sometimes a little obscure as to exactly what is going on, this book does not make for easy reading. It's worth the effort, though.

I almost didn't get through it myself. "Post-modern hocus-pocus," I thought sourly, as I read the first third. But it becomes oddly compelling, even poetic. Beckett's severely minimalistic style is fascinating; there's nothing in this book except the eerily dehumanized voice of its narrator, a lonely monologue that generates real poignancy. The effect is like hearing a voice from beyond the grave, and it haunts the mind like few conventionally written novels do.

Beckett mastered standing on both sides of the borderline between convention and experiment. How It Is, both immediate in poignancy and resistant to a straight-forward reading, is wonderful testimony to this incredible ability. What is most wonderful about How It Is, and Beckett's late prose works in general, is how the form of the works speak just as loudly as the meanings of the words, if not louder. If anyone is heralding the death of the well-wrought novel, Beckett has demonstrated a controversal but brilliant way forward. We might baulk at its strangeness, but Beckett's is a very generous strangeness, one that requires work on the reader's part but will give the reader a unique experience of what a literary work can do.

I've always thought Beckett's prose has been the treasure of his oeuvre. Beyond his meticulously structured plays or his mysterious narratives, his prose work stands out as solitary entities. Perhaps that's the best way to put it in describing a "novel" like this. He has created a new being, divested of character and author. At most, it's a meditation on all things known and unknown, directly looking inward, reflecting whatever gloss there is on the mirror of what we are (or think ourselves to be), and then seeing beyond that. And yet, one can barely decipher a line of thought, a passage through which all mortals go, a journey. In our days, it's rare for a simple book to do that. Beckett gives himself the liberty of living in the land of illusion, constructed only by language. In doing so, unveiling the fabric of consciousness to its- i'd hate to say it again- primordial essence (if there is one). For all those who love to ask questions, the stream of questioning is multiplied in this perilous work. Hardly will you reconsider ever having been in a state of internal crisis.

Thank you, Samuel Beckett

Beckett does not move past the novel: he predates it. How It Is is a work trapped in the space before language: in the "primordial mud" from which life emerges: from which suffering takes shape. Our Reader from Philadelphia, has only jargon with which to approach a form of literature which can not be read, but experienced, sensed as the torment of having begun.

This is final statement about the meaning of life in the 20/21 st centuries: I can't go on; I must go on; I can't go on; I'll go on. You must deal with this, and you can't live without it.

_How It Is_ is another challenging, far-out epic by Samuel Beckett. Beckett pushes the far outer boundaries of what can be accomplished through literary fiction. _How It Is_ brings us to the most remote frontiers of artistic consciousness, pioneering new ground into the furthest reaches of the human mind. Join us for this epic voyage into the mind of a profoundly disturbed genius.

Down and Out in the Primordial Mud. A perfect poem about cyclic hopeless doom. But you had better be in the mood for it.

Imagine. Wallowing, hoping, despairing, sinking, dreaming... then a phrase:

"the air thrills with the hum of insects"

More mud. Grovelling, twisting, stumbling, crying... then another:

"I listen a good moment they are good moments"

Somehow the mud doesn't seem so dirty, the darkness doesn't seem so bleak. For there is lustre even in the mud. Such is the beauty of Beckett.

and is there not infinite wisdom in the following?

there are moments they are good moments.