Customer Reviews

The Unnamable

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This is absolutely fantastic
a beautiful performance.
thank godot the actor is irish.
in my humble opinion an american accent would not have worked

Its the best book I have heard scince Jeremy Irons reading Lolita

but dont forgeot to get the other two in the trillogy as well

Tired in the end of his puppets and dummies, the ventriloquist interrogates his gift. I mean his curse. It's not certain. In this dense matter of voices nothing is certain. Except perhaps for the reader the certain exhilaration of getting lost in Beckett's most sustained and vertiginous wordy-gurdy. The Unnamable may very well be the closest old Sam ever came to writing his autobiography. Mayhaps too begob the last and purest yield of prose from that famous siege in the room. In any event there's nothing quite like this novel in the realms of the written word. Beckett even includes a bit where one of his vice-existers, the first one, Mahood I think, the character with only the one leg to stand on, but maybe it's the second felly, I can't quite keep them all straight in me head, but this particular lump anyway speaks of being liberally supplied with painkillers, which he never hesitates to take. The detail seemed a throwaway, an unimportant aside, but it snagged on my combat jacket. The notion of painkillers crops up in one or two other places in the stories and novels. I've always wondered about Sam's line of thinking here. Of course it goes without saying that repeated and unimpeded recourse to a temporary palliative is in most cases devoutly to be wished, shades of Emily Dickinson's little anodyne and all that, but there's something more here I think. Does Beckett mean that pain kills art or that art kills pain? Or both? Or, God help us, neither? Personally I'm going with both. I was just this past minute mooching about in a gazebo, sheltering against the rain as it happened, just like Mercier and Camier in fact, waiting for the library to open and miserably failing yet again in my ever ongoing effort to be finally shot of cheroots. Still, ten odd smokeless days is not too shabby this go-round. In any event, Beckett's painkillers suddenly came to mind like a revelation riding to the rescue. Here's what I eventually supposed in this connection: Painkillers do sometimes kill pain, that's why they're called painkillers, surely. They do on occasion actually work and should not be sneezed at by anyone who's ever had the inestimable gift of life rammed down their gullet. Nice one Sam, you do pose some elegant little teasers, don't ya? And no more so than here in The Unnamable--an unforgettable conclusion to your confounded trilogy.

It's an amazing work of genius, but very difficult and slow going. It's more of a modernist prose poem than it is a traditional novel, and if it's read in that way, taking time to savor each of the dazzling ideas that pack each page, then the task is a little easier, but still not easy. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the other two novels in the Beckett Trilogy, but that doesn't mean that it was any less great as a work of literature.

Not available on iTunes, this is a must read for anyone who needs more Beckett than just Waiting for Godot. A thrilling audiobook read, that can be maddening, exhausting, remarkable, and memorable. Very well narrated. Great product. Excellent service. Quick delivery. You cannot go wrong with buying this audiobook if you like Samuel Beckett.