In these novels, there is scant or even no dialogue at all. Malone Dies is a solemn soliloquy where one or two indistinct characters make an appearance. And in the other two, the page remains unbroken save for an occasional questionnaire. Place and time hold no significance; towns bear peculiar names such as "Bally" or "Hole". The past is dimly recalled, the present seems non-existent, and family ties are few and far between. All the characters are deformed or hideous and move within a terrifying atmosphere of rejection, abandonment, and guilt.

Molloy commences with Molloy secluded in his deceased mother's room, writing steadily. Each week, a stranger pays him a visit, takes away what he has written, and gives him money. What he has penned is a long, unproductive odyssey in search of his mother. Molloy begins by crouching in the shadow of a rock, observing two men, A and C, approaching each other across a plain. Molloy isn't certain whether they are travelers or mere strollers. The two meet briefly and then part ways.

Malone Dies leads us further into the darkness: one voice, less of a plot, an old narrator who persistently harps, with pride, on his impotence. There is a peace of total personal negation; nothing remains. In The Unnamable, even this begins to falter. If Malone Dies retains some meager shreds of plot, incident, and character as it is an attempt at an ending, there is none of it in The Unnamable because Beckett's pessimism is too profound to permit him to believe that death would be an end or even a relief. Voices would carry on beyond the grave, into the "pit" where the Unnamable is trapped.

There is no single way to read this trilogy; one could approach it in several different manners. As Beckett stated in his prose masterpiece, Worstward Ho! six years prior to his death in 1983: "No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

It's simply not feasible for me to pen a more polished review of Beckett's peerless trilogy at this juncture.

As I delved into its pages, I gleaned little in the way of enjoyment or catharsis. However, I remain in awe of its unadulterated rawness.

You won't find yourself falling head over heels in love with Beckett as he emerges from the mire of words that is The Unnamable.

Yet, it isn't always the futile endeavor you might anticipate. His determination to make this literary experiment succeed appears so audacious and sincere that you can't help but feel a profound sense of respect for it.

There is truly nothing quite like it in the entire realm of literature.

Modernism could have very well closed its chapter right here, with Beckett's remarkable and challenging works.

They stand as a testament to his unique vision and unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the written word.

Each of these novels merits its own in-depth review.

However, at this moment, there are two extremely distracting birds fluttering back and forth around the Columbus airport.

Moreover, the simple truth is that Beckett's human or post-human or pre-human comedy is meant to be read as a single, extended descent.

Except that the terminal station was reached with Watt, a book that stretches its audience's tolerance much further than these three.

So, why the pullback? Why return to Purgatory, as if Beatrice and the flower-drain of circling angels had never existed?

My speculation is that, like many experimenters, Beckett needed to reach his endpoint before he could go back and synthesize it into the less punishing Molloy, which is truly an incredibly beautiful book, and perhaps the one novel of B's that I can take completely seriously.

Beckett attempts to reduce the novel to its essentials, but the novel is inherently inessential and resists. Malone Dies is interesting on a sentence-by-sentence basis (Beckett is always interesting in this regard). The Unnamable, not as much.

Our author is unforgiving, or at least has created a theater of unforgivingness (a legitimate word: I just looked it up).

An inquisitor lurks, a thinner man within the thin one. B battles him to a draw in numerous places but cannot achieve a decisive victory.

I really am not capable of doing this book anything like justice. Read it if you consider yourself at all a reader. Beckett's works are truly a complex and profound exploration of the human condition.

Beckett provides fuel for an academic industry, much of it completely over my head. However, I did come across one review that really struck a chord with me. The reviewer tried to answer why she reads Beckett. There was some grand stuff about his words soaking into you. That's precisely why I would recommend the trilogy to anyone who enjoys the activity and texture of reading. It left me quite pensive, and I'm eagerly waiting on Texts for Nothing to turn up in the post today.

Molloy follows on from Watt and Murphy, featuring Beckett's standard cast of transient, despairing men. The two narratives (not stories) of Molloy and Moran have a beautiful symmetry. As they stumble around a desolate landscape, becoming progressively more damaged, we really feel the dejection and hopelessness of them both.

Malone Dies echoes many novels about prison and psychiatric wards in its misery and unremitting settings of vague, terrible institutions. Malone is the ultimate hard case to get through to, cynical to an infinite degree. But we can revel in Beckett's language as he drags his character around a little loop to a surprisingly dramatic ending, as if the author is tired and just wants to finish the damn thing off (and we're in on the joke).

It took me a long time to work my way through The Unnamable. A reviewer said it's Beckett moving from modernism to postmodernism, and that sounds about right. The Unnamable is Descarte's evil demon hypothesis subjected to even more doubt. Here, "I think, therefore I am" becomes "I think, so there are thoughts", and then progresses to questions like is there an I, are there thoughts? The Unnamable struggles to confound a They and their suppositions about living, about identity, occasionally remembering previous Beckett characters and spinning off small, contemptuously built stories. The Mahood stories in particular seem to presage many of Beckett's later plays with their disembodied actors and endless rants. But there is great gallows humour on every page, and Beckett's language cycling on, making reading this book an experience like no other.

Told you I couldn't describe it. It's quantum metaphysics, read it!

Beckett is truly a remarkable author who definitely earns a 5-star rating from me. However, it's important to note that his works are not suitable for everyone.

Nor are they appropriate for every mood. In fact, this particular book sat on my shelf for years until I found myself in the right mental and emotional state to give it a read.

Once I began "Molloy" and started to understand and appreciate it, it quickly ascended to the top of my "most brilliant and personally influential reads" list.

I was so moved by it that I actually shed tears while reading, and I find myself thinking about it almost every day.

Yes, perhaps I'm a bit of a dork for having such a strong reaction, but I can't help it.

I don't consider myself as cynical or as dry as Beckett and his antiheroes, but for some inexplicable reason, I really embrace them.

"Malone Dies" and "The Unnameable" do present a bit more of a challenge, but in my view, it's actually a relief to have some additional material to explore and decompress with after the sheer brilliance of "Molloy".

Overall, Beckett's works have had a profound impact on me and continue to fascinate and inspire.

**Molloy**

Molloy, an old man now without legs, one-eyed and with many wheels out of place, writes ceaselessly in the room that was his mother's. Like a swollen river pouring onto the pages, he writes what he remembers, or what he believes he remembers, or what he wants to remember in his own way about the journey he undertook in the last year to reach his mother's house (with whom he had an issue to resolve). This journey, which lasted about a year, Molloy conducted within the confines of a county just 5 square kilometers large. First on a bicycle, then on crutches, and finally crawling.

It is a narrative full of reticence, confusion, lies, outbursts of hatred, indifference, frustrated and useless introspection, observation of his own progressive decline, self-complacency in the description of his own filth and dirt. It is capable of fixating for a long time, obsessively and persecutorily, on completely useless details and at the same time of completely overlooking other aspects for no reason at all. It wants to shed light on nothing because it has no interest in clarifying anything. Rather, it aspires to an ideal condition of happiness, of absolute peace, that is, to know that one cannot know anything.

Molloy, of course, fails in his purpose. He does not reach his mother's house until after she has already died and been taken away. But in the end, Molloy had no purpose and his actions had no motivation or explanation. So his river of words suddenly stops in a ditch at the edge of the forest.

**Malone Dies**

Remember the Adorno's dictum about the impossibility of poetry after Auschwitz? Well, regardless of what one may think of that statement, it is inevitable, as one progresses through these pages, to think of it again, impossible not to reflect on it and read the present narrative in the precise perspective of no longer being able to write narratives as before, because Malone's progress towards death is the embodiment of this.

"Malone Dies" (1951) is an important work in Samuel Beckett's oeuvre. Its writing follows "Molloy" in rapid succession and practically without interruption and precedes that sort of endpoint that will be "Waiting for Godot" (1952), immediately following and preceding the third novel of the so-called trilogy, "The Unnamable" (1953).

If the enormous carnage of World War II marks the creative turning point of this author - the difference between the first Beckett and this one is so obvious, so enormous, that one can speak of two clearly distinct periods - and "Molloy" perhaps represents the best testimony of this turning point, "Malone Dies" represents the point of no return.

Malone awaits death with neutrality. He does not want to accelerate or slow down this event that he defines in the very first lines as "payment". Malone begins with a peremptory "I owe nothing to anyone", followed by a wish for an atrocious life for all. He arbitrarily estimates a residue of 15/20 days before dying and plans to fill this time gap with the description of his current situation, with the narration of three stories (in a masterful anti-climax: a first story with "human" protagonists, a second story with "animals", a third story with "objects", stones) and with the writing of an inventory of his possessions.

**The Unnamable**

The important thing is to continue, to go forward, it doesn't matter with what. One goes forward. A voice, a monologue. In the end, we clearly have to face an insoluble problem of personal pronouns. But who invented them? Who is the artificer of such a misfortune? There is an "I" opposed to a "they", but why not a "he", then? They taught him some things, he never paid attention or perhaps paid particular attention not to pay attention, to forget everything, but inevitably, against his will, the things remain, persist, one never gets rid of them completely and so one uses them. Take, for example, the words they taught him: how many combinations are possible with all these words, what discourses, what sentences, what stories come out of the combination of these words! No, no story comes out of the combination of words, what do these words mean he doesn't know, he uses them because he was taught them but he has no idea what they mean.

The problem is actually a little more radical. Certainly this voice seems to take on substance, matter, it even gives him a name, Mahood, then another, Worm, but was he really at one time Mahood and then became Worm? And after Worm, again, this voice is here and it is not known if it comes from him or from elsewhere. And Molloy? And Murphy? And Moran? And Malone? And... Mercier! Isn't that Mercier? It's like this, every now and then someone passes in front of him, that is, enters his field of vision from one side and exits from the other. Do they orbit around him more or less regularly? Will they eventually collide with each other? Or is it he who rotates? What the devil are we talking about, celestial bodies? Am I at the center with these (they) rotating around me or am I rotating around them? Or are they there, behind the wall, observing my every move through holes to watch me. What the devil have I (does he have?) that is so interesting? Do they watch me become human? Am I the one who observes the effects of everything they taught me?

Yes, the problem is really a little more radical. What can the words at our disposal, which they taught us to use, say? What can I say about myself? And this teary eye, whose is it? Or, who is it? What is it that cries?

For me, I stop here. And I assure you that I am fine. There is already this book that goes on in my place and perhaps there is me who can read it infinitely. I know that one should continue, I know, but I stop anyway.

"The Unnamable" is a dynamite work, marvelously extremist. It is a river of words endowed with a strange, extremely strange power: that of keeping you glued to the page, of not allowing you to take your eyes off these crazy lines for a moment, despite the fact that you continuously get lost, despite the fact that you don't understand anything - but this is not true because there is nothing to understand, in reality everything is very clear.

The experiment begun and carried forward in the two previous stages reaches its destination, that is, nowhere, or rather right here where I am jotting down these my poor impressions. The dissolution of the character is definitive, to the point that as I was reading, while I was on guard and thought I could glimpse here and there some identifying signals, suddenly I realized the uselessness of what I was doing, indeed that I was completely wrong, that I could not read as usual, that the discourse had now gone far beyond any possible reflection "on the character". There was only a voice left, the character was no longer there and I was observing something similar to the movement of celestial bodies, or that of electrons around the nucleus of the atom. A rambling, inconclusive, stuttering, completely superfluous and useless voice, although these are a series of completely inadequate adjectives to describe this voice, because they are precisely adjectives, they claim to evoke certain qualities! Bah!

Could it be that this voice, this continuous background noise that is this book, is the thing most adherent to reality that you have ever had the chance to read? Yes, just like in "Malone" but with something more, there is a secret ingredient that Beckett has poured into these pages. He has, in some mysterious way, something to do with geometry: as if it were the orthogonal projection of the words contained here that, intersecting the plane of the pages, jump out in the form of a solid. Wow! Maybe it's like this! Yes! Give me a five!

Language is pure convention, it has no contact with what surrounds you which, in fact, is without a name. And then what the hell are you talking about with this language at your disposal? Well, maybe you do something like this, like this book, which perhaps gets a little closer (to what surrounds you) than any other deceiving little story to read.

I stated in my review for Molloy that I desired an additional 400 pages of it. And, in a sense, that's aaaalmost what I received. However, I felt that the other two novels seemed to have lost their power. In fact, it's really just one long, continuous novel, but still.

The mood of this work is truly fantastic. It is surprisingly approachable, with a lush and surreal quality that draws the reader in. It is well worth taking the time to read and explore. The unique style and atmosphere created by Beckett make this a captivating and unforgettable literary experience.

Overall, while the other two novels may not have had the same impact as Molloy for me, the entire collection is still a remarkable achievement. It offers a deep and thought-provoking exploration of the human condition, and I would highly recommend it to any lover of literature.

I rated 'Molloy' four stars. It's a work that has its own charm and qualities.

However, 'Malone Dies' only got two stars from me, mostly because this middle novel doesn't seem to work on its own. It lacks the cohesion and impact that one might expect.

On the other hand, 'The Unnamable' received a full five stars. It is simply one of the most hilarious, original, weird, and beautiful books I've ever read. The way it plays with language, ideas, and the very concept of storytelling is truly remarkable.

These three works do blend beautifully in some ways, but 'The Unnamable' is so overwhelmingly brilliant that the first two are somewhat overshadowed.

And the ending? "…I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." Yesohyesyes. It's a powerful and thought-provoking conclusion that leaves the reader with a sense of both confusion and determination. It makes you question everything you thought you knew about the story and about life itself.

In conclusion, while all three works have their merits, 'The Unnamable' stands out as a true masterpiece that will be remembered and studied for years to come.

Amazing and awe-inspiring. This is a description that truly befits this remarkable piece of work. It is not an easy read, by any means. In fact, it is the sort of book that makes you actually feel your brain churning and struggling as you attempt to grapple with its profound ideas and complex concepts. However, despite the initial challenges, it is so worth it. The effort you put in to understand and absorb its contents will be richly rewarded. You will find yourself enlightened, inspired, and perhaps even changed in some small way. This book has the power to expand your mind, open your eyes to new perspectives, and leave a lasting impression. It is a must-read for anyone who is seeking intellectual stimulation and a deeper understanding of the world around them.

If you don't approach this book as a typical one, then you have the potential to truly engage with it. In fact, you might even rate it 5 stars. Why? Because this is not an ordinary book; it is, in essence, a work of art within the realm of literature.

Perhaps it was also beneficial that I read it in Romanian, with a truly fantastic translation from French.

Starting from "Molloy," which is somewhat bearable, and progressing to "Malone Dies," which begins to feel claustrophobic, you then encounter "The Unnamable." This latter part is practically a claustrophobic exploration of a self trapped inside a body, attempting to express itself through the mouth, ears, and eyes. Imagine stirring a soup of words within a skull that has openings, and sometimes these words emerge as sentences, parts of sentences, or just individual words. This is the vivid image that came to my mind as I read the last part. I even went so far as to use a pencil, trying in vain to make sense of it all. I couldn't, yet it was still utterly fascinating. After all, it can be difficult to make sense of some paintings by Miro, so why wouldn't we have something similar in literature? To be able to write something like this is truly remarkable - hats off!

I didn't even read the entire third part. Here's a piece of advice for this part (and actually for all three chapters, but especially for this one): you can read it as the pages turn, or you can read the pages (or blocks of pages) randomly. Just as you would approach a painting, moving your eyes around, lingering here and there for a while longer, do the same with this book.

Once again, the translation into Romanian was excellent. It was a huge challenge.

I only half-read "Molloy," so I cannot rate this book. The book consists of 2 chapters, both written from a self-perspective.

The first part is hypnotic and engagingly written. You actually feel as if you are participating in Molloy's journey. Some paragraphs are quite witty, and the story progresses at a nice pace.

The second part, however, is unbearable. I mean it. The same perspective of writing continues. Perhaps I need to read more and cultivate myself further to understand the true wittiness and genius of Beckett's story. But page after page of what seemed like nothing (from my point of view) made me stop reading the second part. Is it that Beckett wanted to convey that his writing is synonymous with the nothingness of life? Maybe. But that doesn't justify my spending so much time trying to decipher some strange meanings. No way.

A venomous spate of reviewer’s block has truly incapacitated me, making it impossible for me to form opinions on all novels over the past few months.

So, I shall keep this simple. I am now a convert to Beckett. Oh, the prose! The prose! Samuel, dear Samuel. It has taken me some time to relapse into the charms of hardcore modernism, being so accustomed to postmodernism as I was.

However, this trio of existential novels that question the very essence of narrative itself (and of life itself) has opened my eyes to the power of that movement. Perhaps it is because these novels, especially in the self-referential The Unnameable, paved the way for postmodernism.

On the whole, I prefer not to repeat the same remarks that countless millions of Beckett lovers have made before. So, I will confine this to ecstatic superlatives. Molloy: It has hilarious, surreal, and simply fucking brilliant prose. It is infinitely re-readable and fabulous.

Malone Dies: It is darker, more baffling, yet still hilarious, with that fucking brilliant prose and is also infinitely re-readable.

The Unnameable: It is maddening, insane, and has that fucking brilliant prose that is enough to leave one squirming on the floor in all kinds of priapic fits of pleasure and pain. The prose, the prose! Samuel, O Samuel!

Brilliant. If you have read Waiting for Godot, Beckett’s famous play, you will recognize his style of writing in these three novels.

Beckett was the most renowned of the existential playwrights/writers who composed the Theatre of the Absurd genre. In all of these novels, we are submerged in existentialism. His writing is more minimalist compared to Joyce, with whom he was frequently contrasted. Beckett once remarked that instead of augmenting the descriptions, he eliminated words so he could pursue a different course than Joyce. Here is a very concise synopsis of the three novels. I don't believe I have disclosed any spoilers as the stories are all existential and a bit absurd, and open to a considerable amount of interpretation.

In the first novel, Molloy, we witness the ruminations of what appears to be an elderly man confined to his room. He is at times fixated on his mother, who is presumably deceased, and other memories. Later, we observe a thread emerging through the eyes of a detective who is traversing the countryside. It seems that by the conclusion of the story, the detective and Molloy might be the same individual. Five stars. This story elicits a fair amount of empathy.

In the second novel, Malone Dies, a man is confined to some sort of asylum and is taken with other patients on a day trip to an island. Traveling by a horse-drawn wagon, some strangers are picked up. An accident occurs, and they are ultimately transferred to a boat, and several people are stabbed. They eventually continue on to the island. Five stars. A very vivid story. It reminded me a little of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

In the last novel, the Unnamed, we see a thread that is largely a stream of consciousness filled with contradictions and absurdity. There isn't much of a story as such here. This was not my favorite story, but the theme was true to the title.

So there is a quality to Beckett’s writing that resounds with me. He is at his finest when writing about nothing significant or simply the mundane, such as in Malone Dies when he describes the importance and the appearance and shape of a pencil.

“So little by little my little pencil dwindles, inevitably, and the day is fast approaching when nothing will remain but a fragment too tiny to hold. So I write as lightly as I can. But the lead is hard and would leave no trace if I wrote too lightly. But I say to myself, Between a hard lead with which one dare not write too lightly, if a trace is to be left, and a soft fat lead which blackens the page almost without touching it, what possible difference can there be, from the point of view of durability.”