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A review by donato
L'Innommable by Samuel Beckett
5.0
As I was reading this, my seven-year old said one day, apropos of nothing, You know Dad, if we didn't have ears we'd lose our balance and fall down. I thought of Molloy slithering on the ground, I thought of the head (Mahood, Worm, Beckett, me, you?), stuck [1] staring in one direction perceiving reality as if it were in a Bill Viola video. Experiencing the entire universe through words (voices inside), and thought. Even without ears, we'd feel the sound of the universe.
Is this about what cannot be named, as the title would have it, or is it rather about that which has many names? One, no one, one hundred thousand . Where are we? Inside the narrator's head, the whole time [2]. But who is the narrator? I becomes he becomes we becomes they. Murphy becomes Watt becomes Mercier becomes Molloy becomes Moran becomes Malone becomes Mahood becomes Worm becomes me becomes you becomes everyone. This is literature in its pure form, as found in (our) nature. Most writers (including Beckett himself pre-L'innomable) craft and cut and mix it into shape, giving it a pleasing aesthetic, something that can be contained and understood; but here it's been left in its pure state: liquid gas and solid, all at the same time, and at different times, constantly in flux, (shape) shifting, part of the universe, part of all lived experience, not containable, but definitely nameable: Literature.
[1] And to anyone who thinks Beckett is some sort of absurdist nihilist (apparently some on the Nobel committee thought so), please read this to the end (and then read it again and again and again...).
[2] Apparently, the Japanese writer Minae Mizumura, has said: fiction is "about characters making choices" but the novel (as separate from fiction) "celebrates the superiority of individual interiority over society" (Minae Mizumura's linguistic mission). While that quote initially made me think of Beckett, I now have second thoughts. I don't think Beckett was for "interiority over society" as much as (like Bernhard) interiority = exteriority and vice versa.
Is this about what cannot be named, as the title would have it, or is it rather about that which has many names? One, no one, one hundred thousand . Where are we? Inside the narrator's head, the whole time [2]. But who is the narrator? I becomes he becomes we becomes they. Murphy becomes Watt becomes Mercier becomes Molloy becomes Moran becomes Malone becomes Mahood becomes Worm becomes me becomes you becomes everyone. This is literature in its pure form, as found in (our) nature. Most writers (including Beckett himself pre-L'innomable) craft and cut and mix it into shape, giving it a pleasing aesthetic, something that can be contained and understood; but here it's been left in its pure state: liquid gas and solid, all at the same time, and at different times, constantly in flux, (shape) shifting, part of the universe, part of all lived experience, not containable, but definitely nameable: Literature.
[1] And to anyone who thinks Beckett is some sort of absurdist nihilist (apparently some on the Nobel committee thought so), please read this to the end (and then read it again and again and again...).
[2] Apparently, the Japanese writer Minae Mizumura, has said: fiction is "about characters making choices" but the novel (as separate from fiction) "celebrates the superiority of individual interiority over society" (Minae Mizumura's linguistic mission). While that quote initially made me think of Beckett, I now have second thoughts. I don't think Beckett was for "interiority over society" as much as (like Bernhard) interiority = exteriority and vice versa.