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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
"But it didn't happen like that, it happened like this, the way it's happening now, that is to say, I don't know, you musn't believe what I'm saying, I don't know what I'm saying, I'm doing as I always did, I'm going on as best I can."
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Like a long run-on sentence, tho I know I saw some full stops in this soup. Exhausting and confusing. Maybe I spent too much time skimming, but for me this only broke through in bits and waves of interest, and never settled into a whole. Book podcast.
a character aware of its literary death.
cycles everywhere. character loops into characters of previous books as well as the author
it's hard to believe a human being wrote this
cycles everywhere. character loops into characters of previous books as well as the author
it's hard to believe a human being wrote this
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Malone Dies and the Unnameable read like I imagine death throes to feel like.
For me, only after this book some things of Beckett's early works (before this one) fall into place. I see this book as a show of narrator. Book before this one were focused on the characters. We perceive characters as real people, like they could walk out from the pages but the reality is different. Without story, without discourses, they can't exist. I believe that's what is shown in these Beckett's works. This particular book goes a step further, showing how writing works, how narration works, how character become and disappear in the making of the novel, how the narrator is nothing more than a voice, nothing really, it has no body, it is not made of material and since it doesn't exist it can't be killed.
It was fun realising this (interpreting this in this way) and it gave some interest into my reading but is still not a work of art that I wish to read again. It was ok. So... 2 stars.
It was fun realising this (interpreting this in this way) and it gave some interest into my reading but is still not a work of art that I wish to read again. It was ok. So... 2 stars.
It seems like a redundant statement to say that this book is an odd one, but for me, it is the experience of reading the novel that is actually strange. I enjoy losing myself inside the relentless prose, so whenever I put the book down I've had a good time reading it. However, despite the enjoyable reading experience, I spent most (if not all, if I'm being honest) of the novel completely confused as to the point of it all. In some ways I guess this is the point. This is Beckett's conclusion to his loose trilogy, and serves more as an overt contemplation of existentialism as opposed to the previous two that had strands of plot and character. The narrator of The Unnamable is possibly non-existent. The narrator does repeat that they are not 'I', but this is more of a characterisation of existentialism, rather than an erasure of the narrator's tangibility. As a stream of consciousness musing on existentialism, it is a superb read, though as a novel, it is lacking. I did find it enjoyable to read but the lack of anything to grasp made the book too sparse to be a good novel. The preceding novels were a better combination of existentialist musings and novelisation, though taken as a whole, they are certainly an interesting trio.