The Unnamable

I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any…it will be the silence, where I am…you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

The final part of the trilogy is the toughest to take in. Beckett examines conventions of fiction like narrative sequence, characters, the narrator's voice and the world he exists in, and finds that he has lost faith in the lot of them. We are left with what seems to be a foetus in the womb, struggling and failing to make sense of its existence. The text teases us with all kinds of false starts that look as though they are going somewhere but actually lead us into blind alleys where they are arbitrarily abandoned or redirected. Unless you're writing a show more dissertation about it, this is probably a book you will read for the pleasure of its approach to language, its endless questioning and reduction of what the words it is using could mean. And it is worth it for that: I'm happy to leave the philosophical puzzles to those who still have exams to take and enjoy the sound of it. show less

Oh Literary Modernism, how everyone adores you, your shapeshifting, your tea soaked madelines, the ebb and flow of your seas, the sailors caught underneath of it all, little rivers running to and fro, vast libraries teaching us the fear of tomorrow in a singular image. What a great wall you have built for yourself, universities love it, can't get enough of it because isn't it so grand, such a spectacle, your such a show-off Literary Modernism, forget 'God is dead', 'Zola is dead'! You seem to disturb the temporality of the present as I hear there are still writers writing to preserve you, to reanimate you, that isn't very modernist, very gothic though isn't it meddling with the dead. And, oh, here he comes, sledgehammer in hand, he's show more been crawling up Rue de Martyrs naked clutching this thing and here he goes...BOOM! Take that Literary Modernism, good luck rebuilding that!

1910(or thereabouts)-1953 show less

When you're reviewing an author like Beckett, it's hard to decide if you should rate a book according to pure readability or in consideration of its themes and ideas. Since this is a work of fiction and not an academic treatise, I have to err on the side of readability...and in those terms, The Unnamable rates a star and a half at best. Still, if you're looking for a full, unalloyed dose of Samuel Beckett, this is definitely the book to read. Waiting for Godot was amusing and all, but this disordered rant thinly veiled as a novel goes way, way beyond that. The only thing that's even remotely comparable is The Room by Hubert Selby Jr., which likely would not have been written if Beckett hadn't vomited up this book two decades earlier. show more (His wife Suzanne feared for his health while he was writing it.)

Again, this isn't really a "novel" in any recognizable sense; after the first fourteen pages, there aren't even any paragraph breaks. It helps to have read some of Beckett's more accessible work, of course, but even if you've made your way through Molloy and Malone Dies (the first two books in the so-called Trilogy), nothing can fully prepare you for the strangeness and difficulty of The Unnamable. Beckett had something important to say, unquestionably, but it's not for everyone. (If you want to dip your toe in before tackling a book like this, I recommend Beckett's short story "The End." You'll either hate it or wonder, in stunned amazement, where this guy's been all your life.) show less

Sean Barrett's narration made it possible for me to read this - and I did read it as well as listen to it (doing an 'immersion' read). I found the previous books in this trilogy (Molloy and Malone Dies) challenging but they were not a patch on this one! Yet, despite the fact that it was very difficult to understand, Beckett still makes it somehow compelling.

Because I had such difficulties understanding this novel (?!), I did a little digging on the internet to see if I could find anything to help me. I knew that Beckett was considered an exponent of absurdism (the idea that there is no meaning in the world beyond what meaning we give it) so I started with that:

"Absurdist fiction is a genre of fictional narrative (traditionally, literary show more fiction), most often in the form of a novel, play, poem, or film, that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value." (from Wikipedia)

And that is a good description of the first 2 novels of the trilogy but didn't seem to really fit this one. The term that occurred to me to best describe The Unnamable was surreal:

"Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation."

That well describes the kind of writing one encounters in this book! Beckett has written about identity before but in this book, he seemed to me to be taking Descartes' idea "I think therefore I am" to its extremity. The main character is asking "who is thinking?" When you hear that voice in your head, who is it? And if the one speaking is "you" then who is listening to it? Is that you too?
A illustrative passage:
"How many of us are there altogether, finally? And who is holding forth at the moment? And to whom? And about what?"

and to hark back to Descartes' reductionism in trying to find a basis for reality, Beckett rejects any use of externals to help identify self:
"Ah yes, all lies, God and man, nature and the light of day, the heart's outpourings and the means of understanding: all invented, basely, by me alone (with the help of no one, since there is no one), to put off the hour when I must speak of me. There will be no more about them."

Add to this the fact that language, words, were something that was learned, then who were you before there were any words? He calls the version of himself that existed before words (in the womb & possibly after) "Worm" and other older versions "Mahood" and sometimes "Molloy" & "Malone" (!) and seems to be trying to get back to Worm's state of wordlessness. But questions arise about the nature of silence & if it is possible to still his current version's voice...

"Your thoughts wander, your words too - far apart. (No, that's an exaggeration: apart.) Between them would be the place to be: where you suffer, rejoice (at being bereft of speech, bereft of thought), and feel nothing, hear nothing, know nothing, say nothing, are nothing. That would be a blessed place to be: where you are."

This whole aspect of trying to achieve silence reminded me of yoga meditation. I wonder if Beckett was familiar with that? show less

The third book of the trilogy and we find out who created Molloy, Murphy, and others... kind of anyway. Disjointed, rambling, a man trapped, crippled, and in the dark shares his thoughts. What someone described as “reality examined to the point of madness” or perhaps, I believe, the onset of dementia.

Well, this one is even faster than Malone Dies. And that was a quick one. Luckily it is a short one.
I must admit, that I didn't like it very much. Again a book full of ranting, raging. To me it didn't make very much sense, to be honest. The narrator did a very good job, nothing to say about that.

Hated it. No characters, no plot, no PARAGRAPHS, no sense. In fact, nonsense.