Customer Reviews

The Lost Ones

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This short and unusual novel by Samuel Beckett, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature (this book was the first major puplication of Beckett after the award was announced), depicts a "universe" that is made up of a flattened cylinder fifty meters wide and eighteen meters high containing 200 bodies of all ages. The insides of the cylinder are basicly featureless except for a few niches that can be reached by a few ladders (these ladders are the only inanimate objects in the cylinder). Some of these niches are interconnected by tunnels. The cylinder is lit slightly by a dim yellow light that is everywhere. The temperature changes from 25 degrees to zero in four seconds and then back again. Some of the people are searchers and are looking for an exit. Others are the vanquished. As time goes on, all become the vanquished except one. When I came to the end of the novel, all I could think of was entropy.

I'm relatively new to Beckett, and so my only point of comparison is "Waiting for Godot". Look elsewhere if you want more of the majesty and humor of that work, but "The Lost Ones" does have its own charm.

Give Beckett credit, he creates a world of his own, and unpacks it in exhaustive and minute detail. The complex social patterns that develop among the pitiable inhabitants is perhaps of greatest interest. All of this is described in Beckett's characteristically dense prose.

Despite being serendipitously timed and thus receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, "The Lost Ones" is not itself a major work. Whether this particular experiment is enjoyable to you is probably a matter of taste, but it does have the advantage of brevity; like a Ramones song, if you don't like it, it'll at least be over before you know it.

This is a very short work, but meaningful. I won't try to give a description of it, for that would be thoroughly useless and not do justice to the work. I will say that it is a must for fans of Kafka, and even existentialist writing in general.