THE UNNAMABLE

by Samuel Beckett ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

By contrast to this agonized monologue, the works of Franz Kafka might seem light-hearted and frivolous. If the author's intent has been correctly understood, (and this is not easy to do because as the Godot enthusiasts will testify, Mr. Beckett has little regard for ordinary word usage or conventional sequence of thought,) we have in The Unnamable, a character who has been reduced to the most abominable and helpless stage of organic existence. Scatology, dissection, and infantile, impotent sex dribble out here from open wounds and severed members. Without the awful awareness of Kafka that life in some forms is a nightmare, Beckett's world lacks even the form of a tortuous dream. There is no horror, no faint basis for a harrowing comparison with a more acceptable existence, no nagging recollection of order. There is only the one amorphous character of the book, who has sunk to that point beyond which even degeneration is impossible, ardently whining and exhibiting his sores. A dreary work which in each breath suggests the lunacy of its character; a dense climate of decay which falls beneath pathos and which is in no way redeemed either by literary form or by artistic distance.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Grove Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1958

Categories: FICTION