Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable: Unreadable?

[JackTres]

I love Beckett, especially his novels and novellas. I believe him to be one of the greatest dark humorists and visionaries of all time and I've greedily gobbled up his work and been to see his plays four times. That said, The Unnameable is killing me. It lapses into such disjointed abstraction that I'm left confused and numb and feeling quite foolish.

Like many of you, perhaps, if I don't understand a sentence, I plug away at it until I've make at least simple sense of it. With this novel, I feel I've had to relax that rule and just read as fast as I can, hoping to absorb tone or mood or something nebulous in lieu of the standard rewards a novel offers.

How about you folks? Anyone tackle this phantom of a novel?

 

[Polly Parrot]

I've read half of Molloy and Worstward Ho so far. I think he's very confusing at time but I do like a puzzle. Never tried The Unnameable.

When you don't immediately understand a sentence, do you keep reading or start puzzling and looking things up first? I sometimes read a book just once without looking at the notes or anything, just to get the feel of the language and then, when I'm rereading it, I go and try to figure out what certain passages mean.

 

[eclair]

^ I put the book down and spend some time thinking about it, otherwise all the thoughts brought about by the puzzlement get in the way of the rest of the book.

JackTres, you shouldn't have cause to feel foolish.
I got through The Unnamable by giving up all expectations of linearity and embracing its inherent existentialism. Instead of continuously asking 'what does this bit mean' I instead asked 'what does it mean to me?' Yes, there is a difference between the two.
Beckett made me self-obsessed. : |

 

[JackTres]

Polly, the trouble with The Unnamable isn't its vocabulary; it's the feverish flitting thoughts of the narrator. Time and time again I come across entire strings of sentences which seem to have no connection to what proceeded and what follows. It's very tiring, feeling so adrift. (For those who've never seen the book, there is one 100 pg. paragraph, followed by a 30-page "sentence." Rough stuff.)

Eclair, I'm going to try to let go and just let it wash over me. However, I have trouble silencing the part of myself which insists upon complete comprehension. At times, I feel 100% sure that the writer is too opaque, but immediately I second-guess myself (like a Beckett character) and say I should try again, try harder. Makes for slow progress.

 

[Peder]

I was able to make my way all the way through How It Is only with the aid of a pencil, to mark divisions between separate fragments in the blur. Finding dividing points helped concentrate my attention on the actual words and thoughts I was reading. After a while, my reading (and marking) speed actually picked up, to where it was not such a chore. Just a thought. :flowers: