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Molloy (The Collected Works of Samuel Beckett)

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"Molloy" is the best of the Beckett trilogy, the whole of which has been sadly ignored by readers in lieu of the (inadequate) texts of Beckett's plays. In summary of the "plot" of "Molloy" I prefer the critic who calls it "a grim revery of empty progress through time and space." The book is a glory. Playful within its leadenness, parodically plotted, it is the perfect and ultimate expression of everything in human experience unencompassed by joy, light, hope, and faith. What remains, however,is, nevertheless, humanity, warmth and...the darkest, keenest, most mordant utterances ever set to the page. Let readers not be deceived by the note that the book has been "translated" from the French. This is a masterpiece of the English language, translated by Beckett himself, who was generous enough to let a youngster have a byline. If it really is better in the French, they sure are lucky.

Having disposed of the third person narrative in Watt, Beckett focused on the difficulties of articulating personal experience in the first person. Beckett is disengaged from the narratives of Molloy by giving them to the character's to write, but is present throughout the text because he doesn't have the answers to give to the characters to explain who they are and what they are to write. The structure that results is an empty frame in that it considers one explanation for a historical occurrence as valid as the next. The space in which Molloy exists is highly ambiguous and therefore the language he uses to narrate does not provide any comfort at all, but aggravates him to the point where he can extract no meaning at all from his existence. Moran begins his narrative in an ordered space and so many of the statements he makes at the beginning are simple, declarative and create a comfortable area for him to inhabit. This is where Beckett finds it necessary to impose the structure of a genre model, but it is only the proposition of a detective plot because the "case" isn't carried out in any intelligible fashion. Moran's task to find Molloy eventually becomes clear to be only an internal one. A separate physical being called Molloy may very well exist within the story, but numerous cross-connections between the characters of Molloy and Moran are illuminated in the structure. This is seen in the similarity of their names and the manner in which Moran takes on many of the characteristics of Molloy. For example, they are similar in their physical disintegration, lack of understanding for their environment and complex internal processes of reasoning which leave them with no clear understanding of reality. This results in a mystification of anything actual in the character's lives because language cannot support the fictional character's lack of substantial being.

If language presupposes a set of initial limitations it is necessary to find a method to breach them. Molloy examines a kind of ontological condition of narrative that suggests more is being left unwritten than is actually being written: Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition. He suggests that it is a human condition to be unable to really express oneself as well as being a fault of language. Rather than see language as a smooth path towards self-expression he sees numerous irregular bumps, the nots, which cut away at the original intended thought. Instead of trying to find an ulterior mode of expression he suggests that expression should simply be conscious of these limitations of language. In this way language is able to delete itself in the midst of its expression. Words are not deleted on the paper, but expressed and then claims are made afterward that the intention of the word does not inhabit the content. A conclusion drawn is that language is inherently muddy and incapable of any pure form of self-expression. This is a dramatic contrast to the use of language by many other Modernists. Unlike Molly's soliloquy in Ulysses where grammar was manipulated in order to simulate thought's form, Molloy's thoughts cannot be allowed to settle so comfortably into words but must be second-guessed and deleted in order to create an appropriate form of expression. This is one temporary solution Beckett makes to illuminate language's limitations and explain how written language can never say what is actually true partly because the actual is never quite a certainty.

Molloy is searching within his narrative to find a purpose for writing. He declares early on in the narrative that he does not know why he writes other than that it is for someone else and if he doesn't he will be scolded, but he does not know to what end the writing is for. It is more an obligation than a wish to express himself or to find a means of communication. Even though Molloy writes every day he never arrives at a sense that his identity has been collected and transcribed into a permanent form: And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. When arriving at a conclusion he immediately negates it by explaining why the opposite is true. Writing does not explain his experience. It only filters his thoughts into a form with a prearranged value attached to it. He is criticizing the false revelation of narrative that seeks to convey a true meaning through dead words. It is commonly and mistakenly perceived that there is a physical attachment between words and things when really as Molloy states there are: no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. The relation between a word and object has no basis in reality, but is merely circumstantial. Because Molloy is unable to explain things without naming them he is only capable of conveying an approximate sense of what he is trying to describe. This prevents the possibility that what he writes will be regarded as a set of absolute truths related from one person to another. It allows reality to be maintained as an open question rather than a closed answer. This seems to be the central point of most of Beckett's work. He makes fascinating statements about the nature of language in Molloy. As always in Beckett's work, it achieves a comic and devastating quality that you will find in no other work.

This is a fabulous dramatic interpretation and realization of Beckett's greatest novel (really two loosely connected monologues). The actors are superbly in character and have the appropriate voices to convey the self-satisfied bewilderment of Molloy and bewildered self-satisfaction of Moran. It's a fitting cliche that this Audiobook brings the novel vividly to life. My only quibble is the recording quality, which is good, but does not attain Naxos' highest standard of transparency.

Molloy is a novel that influenced the writing of novels to come after it. Samuel Beckett was among many of the writers after World War II who experienced "the anxiety of influence" and the shadow of Modernism. It was among many novels written in the 1940's that defined a space for new literature to exist in, where it had never been quite before. Modernism on the whole was perhaps not as experimental as we would like to think, and actually most of its authors were conservatives and reactionaries. James Joyce was not though, that is why he is the most influential writer of the 20th century. Joyce's main contribution was radical literary activity, using some Modernist techniques, creating his own language, and bringing all of history and science and literature into one book.

Samuel Beckett on the other hand was concerned with language itself, its ability to express ideas or to mirror reality, and those concerns have become our own. Molloy is both about the writing of the novel and the search of a character, and perhaps by the end of the novel we still do not know what has happened. Beckett introduces new elements into the serious novel such as the detective story and the self-reflexive narrative. And like a mystery story, Molloy is a search for the self, for truth, for a modern idiom, but unfortunately without arriving there.

Going back further than Joyce, to the 19th century where the bourgeois novel form was more or less firmly established by writers such as Dickens and Eliot, it would be interesting to compare that literary institution with what I will call "the Post-Modern novel" or Beckett's novel. In a standard 19th century novel we look for such conventions and characteristics such as plot, characterization, time, place, linear narrative, character motivation, and excellent use of the English language. If a novel does not live up to these expectations, we refer to it a bad novel or a novel which prattles. These conventions of the novel have fooled us into thinking it mirrors reality and experience. Modernism's achievement in such writers such as Joyce and Proust is to go beyond the 19th century novel and exist as a work of hyper-reality. One can use such a work as Ulysses to be directed through the city of Dublin since it is more real than "real." But one should not make the mistake of "Academic criticism, . . . (which) uses the word "realism" as if reality were already completely established (Robbe-Grillet 155)." Experience is both fictional discourse and fact "and it is never possible to decide which of the two possibilities is the right one (De Man 23)."

If Joyce is going beyond realism, Beckett goes the other way with his literature, which can be called the literature of disappointments. Rather than plot, there is storytelling without progression; instead of characterization, there is lack of character depth; there is no specific time or place, we often wonder where we are, whether months or days or hours have passed; instead of a linear narrative, or progression from birth to death, there is a narrative that goes astray, diverts, digressions, yet these are interesting detours; and instead of a strong literary language, there is the bare essentials of language, sentences out of a primer, or "writing degree zero." Beckett commits these errors or disappointments for very good reasons that I would like to show here.

Beckett's main concerns as a writer are involved with the problems of writing itself, the futility of expression, the power of language, the death of the author in terms of Foucault: these were the problems that many writers dealt with after Joyce. Alain Robbe-Grillet claims that "Before the work, there is nothing: no certainty, no purpose, no message (141)." This was such an attitude of a writer at the time. For Beckett, the "anxiety of influence" is there as well; but for Beckett he will be influenced by Joyce by an extent; he will distance himself and his work from Joyce's; he will deal with other problems. If Joyce is trying to expand the potential of language and literature, Beckett will contract, he will reduce literature down the level of language. He will grow anxious about the writer's position in the world that he will reject, a position which other writers have ignored. Beckett will ask himself "why should I write?" And "what should I write about?" And better yet "how do I write?" The novel Molloy is the result of all Beckett's anxiety to write a novel. "It is also a parody of the novel itself, a middle-class form. . . "(Gontarski 309). The style of it itself suggests all that. The novel is a promise of what literature could be.

Where the human will finishes, the absurd begins. It is also the start of the death of humanity. The task of narrating this disintegration is Beckett's purpose in this novel. It is a purposeless task. "The truth is I haven't much will left", says Molloy. How can a novel ever be sustained on that? The disappearrance of mankind leaves the lonely self, a bag of bones, in front of God's mystery. and God's silence.

With their lack of will, it becomes difficult to distinguish one person from another. Consciousness becomes impossible. It has to be filled with stories. Any kind of stories; true, false, meaningful or not. The writer is somebody standing at an observation post. His mother is the breeder of a foul race, humankind, now nearly extinct. Man is now neither man nor beast. And the writer merely observes this and tries to understand. Which is difficult, because things become nameless just as names describe nothing. What to make with words which are not meanings or references but particles of an ever disintegrating reality? "And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate".

The narrator wonders about his reality, both as an author and as a human being. His lack of command over words destroys the world, which becomes unnamable or "foully named". One solution, if one is passionate about truth, is to speak little. Can it be that we are not free, not free to speak? If human life is a burial ground, the narrator, like the author, has chosen to be a mere spectator. The thing to contribute to life is merely our "presence", only. We can study while we are here: anthropology, astronomy, magic... it is just a manner of killing time. If man is alone, then the world may be at an end. Still, all things in it hang together, as if by mystery. And this, instead of proving a solution, only adds to our sense of wonderment. And it can never be spoken, but there it is.

In this state, thinking is asking oneself questions merely for the sake of looking at them. This is the spirit of the "incurious seeker", the one who is finally prepared to learn.

In Part Two we meet Jacques Moran, a private detective who is to narrate his own experience of pursuing Molloy. Knowing that he has been chosen to perform a unique task, he becomes anxious. As different from Molloy, the detective seems to be an ordered, rational man. Nevertheless, he is beset by the same kind of questions that rouble Molloy. For instance, he is engaged to accomplish a mission that he cannot fully understand. Like Molloy, he has a problem with the purposefulness of life. But while Molloy has surrendered his will completely to the absurd, Moran's is a rationality which is just about to crack, and his process of psychic disintegration is started as he first gets in touch with the Molloy affair. Life becomes inenarrable. People become multiple. Two Molloys Morgan has to follow: the one inside himself and the one outside. Life becomes a stage of mirrors. Which is the true reflection?

Vagrancy can be described as a state of the mind. It is synonimous with the anguish of absolute freedom. As our lives become "worse" year after year, is it not by force of habit that we persuade ourselves that they improve when they actually decline? Moran never finds Molloy, but he un-finds himself. He un-changes his life. The only way forward seems to be a long way back.

Had to read this book for a class. I ended up liking it and keeping it. Make sure you have time to think about it as you read though, not a light book.

In some ways, it might be better just to let this novel explain itself, as it's completely meaningless to discuss "plot" or maybe even "purpose." The second half the novel (which may arguably actually be the first part of the novel) begins "It was raining. It was midnight" and ends" It was not midnight. It was not raining." So, as it turns out, the whole story was probably a lie. Is this important? I can't really make heads or tails of it, to be honest. We follow two men, Molly and Moran, as they struggle with meaninglessness and futility. Of course, since it's Beckett, futility is always hilarious, in sort of a desperate and maddening sort of way. So, while I got a good laugh out of it, I'm not sure what Beckett's ultimate goal was in writing the novel. He did win a Nobel Prize, though, so it must be in there somewhere.

This is quite unlike any book I've ever read. It is composed of 2 parts. The first is a rambling monologue from a decaying man (or is it woman or animal) named Molloy, in search of his mother. The second starts out as a detective named Moran in search of Molloy. In both stories nothing much happens involving any specific time or place, and the identities of all characters are in question. The only thing that really exists is the language, which turns out to not have much true meaning at all.

Read this if you are looking for an unique style of writing to experience. Perhaps you will learn more about the nature of language and identity, or perhaps you will find it tedious and pointless, but all readers will agree it is experimental and unique.

I recently heard Cornell West, a Princeton professor, say during a talk that he would take Chekov over Beckett any day. "Chekov's deeper--Beckett's smarter," he said. Perhaps true (though I don't really know how he's thinking about it). But I tend to think Beckett is both DEEP and SMART.

So in terms of the "greatest novel of the 20th century," I pick this one. Ulysses is sprawling, difficult, experimental, and obviously more influential than this novel. But when you "don't understand" something in Ulysses, it's probably just because it depends upon an obscure reference--or a combination of words you only half know--or something Joyce is simply withholding from the text. When you "don't understand" something in Beckett, it's because Beckett is MYSTICAL.

One of my favorite passages in this book consists of six straight pages of Molloy's describing how he tries to arrange six pebbles ("sucking stones") in his four pockets so that he can suck them in the same order over and over again (eventually, his "solution" is, if you will allow me to quote from my imperfect memory, "to throw away all of the stones but one, which I soon lost, or gave away, or threw away, or swallowed"). What other writer could pull this off?

If you can read only ONE thing by Beckett, read this--above the plays, above any of the early or late novels.

December 20th, 2009: Woke up this Sunday morning to twenty-three inches of snow. Talk about yer White Christmas! A blizzard had blun right through the little cluster of hovels I live among so there I was not much later in a woolly hat with a snow shubble in both hands digging out the drive which is surprisingly long and has this wind tunnel action where the amount of drifting snow that accumulates is twice, maybe even three times, the official figure. About two-and-a-half hours of this honest day's labour roused the severest pains in both my upper and lower halves but at the same time, mysteriously, gradually, had me also experiencing this weird expansive inner glow not unlike waking up utterly recruited in body and spirit after a refreshing night's sleep in your favourite new pyjamas. Decidedly invigorating in the end I needn't add and in consequence of my new-found sense of physical well-being I decided to take a little turn about the neighbourhood, to ogle at my ease this winter wonderland and maybe even drop into the library too, which was closed, natch, on account of the bleeding weather. I should mention here that on Friday on the way home from work on the train I had turned at last the last page of Molloy and this first novel in Beckett's great trilogy had been ever since a most pleasant pebble in the shoe of my mind. I had read Molloy once or twice before but never with such a sense of rapt attention as this time and when I finished I was strictly speaking dumbfounded by Beckett's inimitable voice. The first section of the novel, Molloy's monologue, is it seems to me the literature Jacques Moran, the hero of the second section, eventually gives way to. The story here is about nothing so much as that miraculous and heart-breaking estrangement from conventional life that is the timeless lot of any true artist. Jacques Moran comes to resemble Molloy in several incontrovertible particulars not so much because he is turning into Molloy but rather because he is at last in a position to write, to create from his own experiences, the character of Molloy. The first part of Molloy is if you like Moran's subsequent, finished report on the subject of Molloy. Moran's initial report about his own transformations in search of Molloy is very nicely done but his narrative of Molloy proper, the story told ostensibly by Molloy himself, is simply magnificent. The subject of writing seems always to be uppermost in Beckett's writing. Vagabonds were never more than the unlicensed drivers of banged-up vehicles used to transport us to this subject. Talk your ear off too on the way. That's what makes repeatedly breaking your brain against this dense and meticulously crafted prose so stupendously satisfying. Needless to say I was on my way to the library to type this up on the computer so as not to forget it but as I said the dang librarians were off having a snow day. Luckily for me I was reasonably well clad and shod and had secreted about my person a plentiful supply of little homemade cheroots so I decided to intrepidly forge ahead on foot anyway in this frigid landscape, literally clambering over berms of heaped snow as I made my ludicrously slow progress along Jericho Turnpike. At one point I even used the just visible top of a parking meter to hoist myself over a particularly mountainous lump of stacked and packed snow plough snow. I had never I don't think actually ever gone for a leisurely stroll in the snow before, innocently believing perhaps that it might prove to be a bit of a larf in fact, but honestly it was tremendously, even comically, arduous and I felt not unlike Ernest Shackleton as I laboriously trudged onward. When I espied a bench outside St. Hedwig's Roman Catholic Church, I staggered awkwardly towards it and offering up a breathless thanks be to Jesus I joyfully took a load off. Great love in my heart for all benches as such, they're vastly underrated public conveniences in my estimation, and underused too, although that's more often a blessing than not, but this one here, an old-fashioned wooden affair and unoccupied to boot, was indeed most welcome. Firing up a well-earned cheroot I simply had to marvel at the degree of effort required to stagger about in two feet of fresh snow. I turned round on the bench and eyed the steeple: Don't mind if I smoke, do you God? I know I missed mass this morning but will you just look at all this snow. Have you ever tried walking in it when it's this deep? Impossible, especially at the busier junctions, even for you. So there I was on the bench outside this perfectly placed Polish Church, having a little breather, and frankly beginning to enjoy myself immensely. Immediately behind me was a monument to the fallen Polish-American warrior Casimir Pulaski, a notable casualty in 1779 of the Revolutionary War apparently. I think they have a bridge somewhere hereabouts named after him too. The Skyway. Good for him. Back to this bench though, what a satisfying sit down I was having! I attempted after a few more drags on me stogie to take in my immediate environs more generally. The first thing I see is this felly across the road, on the road in fact, lurching madly forward at speed with the aid of a walking stick. Wasn't really dressed for the cold weather either and something about his banjaxed gait made me think again of Jacques Moran. To be honest this bloke's headlong hobble also reminded me of the clod-hopping of Evans the newsagent in Watt--Evans you will remember limped dreadfully and when he got started he moved rapidly, in a series of aborted genuflections. What a day to be abroad! I exhaled happily. Then out of nowhere a well-dressed old lady in a headscarf passed me by going away from the church and then a minute later came back with her dapper little hubby in tow. Are you waiting for a bus? she asked me. I had been stamping my feet in what might have appeared on the outside to be an attack of petulance but which was in actual fact the simple result of inhaling rather too much cheroot smoke in one go. No, I'm taking a little break, I managed to gasp at last. Who knew walking in the snow would be so exhausting, I added, in explanation. Oh, said the old lady and walked on towards the church. Good for you, chuckled the old geezer good naturedly as he followed after his missus. Happy Holidays to you anyway, the old biddy called over her shoulder. Yes, Merry Christmas to you both, I glady and loudly gave back. After a minute I turned and eyed the steeple a second time: Thanks Old Chap, that did my heart the world of good, that did. Me head too. No fooling, perfumed with the incense of a righteous cheroot, this Beckett-inflected epiphany on the bench in front of a sturdy little House of God--in almost two feet of snow no less!--had me thoroughly beguiled. A small enough moment perhaps but I felt myself nevertheless in the grip of an eternal gratitude. Indeed, I was not ashamed a moment later to freely admit that God himself had been my witness and that between me and my maker the memory of what had just transpired will never be erased. Who was it now who once wrote a minimum of memory is indispensible, if one is to live really? Whoever it was never penned a better line.