Molloy by Samuel Beckett

[Inderjit Sanghe]

Hi, have just finished reading Molloy by Samuel Beckett and was wondering whether the two ever came close to meeting, as is written on the book cover. I understand that they move within the same location for a while (Ballyba) but cannot recall a specific passage in which the two of them came close to meeting. Can anybody help?

[Kafka's Crow]

Hi, have just finished reading Molloy by Samuel Beckett and was wondering whether the two ever came close to meeting, as is written on the book cover. I understand that they move within the same location for a while (Ballyba) but cannot recall a specific passage in which the two of them came close to meeting. Can anybody help?

Now that you have read the great book, I must congratulate you. Read the other two as well, it only gets better. I could spend whole day writing here or just copy and paste my whole MA thesis which was titled Narrative Play in Samuel Beckett's Trilogy. You can find it in Senate House Library, Russell Square. Just quote the title and year (2002) and they will dig it out for you. Alternatively we can discuss it here but I am a bit scared now as in another thread I was counted among the participants who, according to one omniscient poster, had 'never read any theory.' Now I am a bit hesitant in discussing things, specially things in which I invested my whole life lest some fresh-faced but omniscient undergrad should inform me that I am among people who have never read anything by Beckett. Now that would get me howling like King Lear, I warn you!

Your question sits at the heart of all Beckett's works in general and at the heart of Molloy in particular. The duality does not 'work' together, the two parts don't fit together, they don't click and run the narrative like the wheels of a bicycle! What is wrong? Perhaps the two wheels of this bicycle lack some vital linking part, perhaps a chain! Easy, I am getting there, getting there. When things don't click and work together, they don't work because of the PLAY between their parts (tarrrrra!) Can you recall the two men in a field who advance towards each other, stop, turn and go back? This is a more understandable miniature of what actually is going on in the book. TWO never meet, they never click. Binaries are susceptible to play instead of working in perfect harmony. This is deconstruction before Derrida. It has something to do with Descartes, dualities, binaries, closures, definitions, rigidity, essentialism, mechanism, regularity, predictability, planning etc. 'Play' negates them all and thus puts the whole foundations of human knowledge (definitions, naming) into question. It clears the way for diverse definitions big and small instead of big all-embracing ones. Play is dynamic, organic, volatile, infinite and indefinite.

The two never meet like word and meaning never quite meet. They are separated which generates play, which, in turn, engenders multiple meanings, diversity, in short 'life'. If the two had met, you would never have the need to write the above post. Your question was generated because of this play. TWO of epistemology is as dangerous a number as one or three of certain theologies. Play deconstructs these self-righteous numbers. The two don't work in unison. There is always distance between them. Numbers can't define things (the so-called Trilogy consists of FOUR independent texts!!!).

[NickAdams]

I'd read somewhere that Moran may be mentioned in the beginning of part 1, but not by name. It's only speculation. I'm still not sure whether or not they're they same person.


Now that you have read the great book, I must congratulate you. Read the other two as well, it only gets better. I could spend whole day writing here or just copy and paste my whole MA thesis which was titled Narrative Play in Samuel Beckett's Trilogy. You can find it in Senate House Library, Russell Square. Just quote the title and year (2002) and they will dig it out for you. Alternatively we can discuss it here but I am a bit scared now as in another thread I was counted among the participants who, according to one omniscient poster, had 'never read any theory.' Now I am a bit hesitant in discussing things, specially things in which I invested my whole life lest some fresh-faced but omniscient undergrad should inform me that I am among people who have never read anything by Beckett. Now that would get me howling like King Lear, I warn you!

Your question sits at the heart of all Beckett's works in general and at the heart of Molloy in particular. The duality does not 'work' together, the two parts don't fit together, they don't click and run the narrative like the wheels of a bicycle! What is wrong? Perhaps the two wheels of this bicycle lack some vital linking part, perhaps a chain! Easy, I am getting there, getting there. When things don't click and work together, they don't work because of the PLAY between their parts (tarrrrra!) Can you recall the two men in a field who advance towards each other, stop, turn and go back? This is a more understandable miniature of what actually is going on in the book. TWO never meet, they never click. Binaries are susceptible to play instead of working in perfect harmony. This is deconstruction before Derrida. It has something to do with Descartes, dualities, binaries, closures, definitions, rigidity, essentialism, mechanism, regularity, predictability, planning etc. 'Play' negates them all and thus puts the whole foundations of human knowledge (definitions, naming) into question. It clears the way for diverse definitions big and small instead of big all-embracing ones. Play is dynamic, organic, volatile, infinite and indefinite.

The two never meet like word and meaning never quite meet. They are separated which generates play, which, in turn, engenders multiple meanings, diversity, in short 'life'. If the two had met, you would never have the need to write the above post. Your question was generated because of this play. TWO of epistemology is as dangerous a number as one or three of certain theologies. Play deconstructs these self-righteous numbers. The two don't work in unison. There is always distance between them. Numbers can't define things (the so-called Trilogy consists of FOUR independent texts!!!).

Is this the mind-body separation (Molloy being the body and Moran the mind)?

I couldn't find your thesis.

[JBI]

I personally think both of them are the same character, Malloy as a later manifestation after brain deterioration of Moran.

[Kafka's Crow]

Beckett must be laughing at all these assertions. As he said about Waiting for Godot, it is too simple for us whose lives are too complicated. Molloy is Molloy, Moran is Moran, Moran Jaques, to be precise. Can you see the difference in similarities? I can be JBI, I have two arms, two legs, I love reading and I am on a forum which happens to be Lit.net. But we are not the same person! Beckett portrays a detective and we all become detectives, oh what a circus!

In his movement towards Molloy, Moran gradually turns into a being suffering and continually perishing like the object of his search. The two narratives gradually move towards each other, always stopping short of totally merging into each other. This tentative movement keeps the narratives separate and produces immense complexity that puts many narrative conventions in play. The mimetic nature of this movement makes no effort to hide that Moran’s narrative is reflecting Molloy’s narrative. But these roles can be reversed, especially in the readings that give ontological and teleological precedence to Moran’s tale. The whole concept of mimeses and reflection is played on here. The concept of character is also put in play in this instance because if Moran is Molloy or vice versa then one of them is the other. He is not a constant, complete and autonomous entity. He turns into the other, he is the other. This foreshadows the theme of deconstruction of the self or the convention of character shown in The Unnamable. The two narratives in Molloy “supplement” each other in the Derridean sense of the term. Thus they construct and deconstruct each other. Two narratives go alongside and move towards each other. Their movement is reflected in the movement of two characters simply named A and C. A and C appear both in Molloy’s and Moran’s narratives. These two characters move towards each other, stop short of this meeting and go their way. Thus Molloy is a text in which two narratives are at work with two further narratives embedded in those two narratives, the narratives of A and C. But are A and C Molloy and Moran?

The books of the trilogy increasingly foreground, parody, and problematize the desire for origin and destination. I am deeply skeptical of all readings that try to prove that Moran and Molloy are one character. Another interesting point can be raised here. If Moran and Molloy are two characters in two different narratives then how wrong can one be while asserting that the trilogy under discussion is not a trilogy but a quadrology? How can the trilogy retain its name when it is a quartet? A “quartet” would make things too explicit as the Trilogy is a play of voices. This movement towards the purity of voice and the death of everything else is made more and more explicit as the Trilogy moves towards it end. The most important activity that the characters are indulged in is the activity of listening. Moran is moving towards this end, all the rest have reached this end in various degrees with The Unnamable being nothing but a voice.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

Thanks for the erudite and informative reply, Kafka's Crow. You seem to know your trilogy, or tetralogy, or whatever it is. :)

I did read the Trilogy before, but was just re-reading it. I think that Molloy is the strongest part of the book; it is brilliant, whereas the Moran and Malone Dies section were brilliant for the large part they do not have the ubiquitous, fantastical quality of Molloy. I do not really like The Unnameable.

I agree with your assessment, Kafka's Crow. I think it would be simplistic, glib and somewhat clichéd to assert that Moran and Molloy are the same character, and Beckett is far from being clichéd or simplistic as you have show. I think that this is an intentional trick from Beckett, his description of various similarities between the two characters: how they both murder another individual, how Moran eventually degenerates physically and mentally and turns into a Molly-esque figure, the unreliable narrator who invents the pitter-patter of rain on the window. Beckett is drawing the readers along, making them believe that Malone and Molloy are the same person, focusing on Malone's knee, just as Molloy focuses on his own large, decrepit knees. As I mentioned before, it is far to easy to simply ascertain that Malone is Molloy or Molloy Malone. Beckett employs a similar 'trick' in Malone Dies when he intentionally confuses Malone with himself and makes us think that Beckett can be associated with Malone. (i.e. when he refers, somewhat disparagingly, to other character from his oeuvre)

I think that Molloy (and the trilogy in general) is one of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century. Beckett, for his trilogy alone, deserves to be mentioned with his old master, the old master of the English language, James Joyce.

I also enjoyed Beckett' short stories, but never got into his plays. I don't really like plays very much.

[Kafka's Crow]

My earlier intention was to write on Beckett and Joyce. Still can be a good research topic but my supervisor found it unfocused and too wide a topic. He wanted me to write on "a" work, so I chose the Trilogy and what a bargain! Four for the price of one!!! I strongly believe that Beckett achieved greatness by going against the Joycean tide in every sense possible. He knew very well that Joyce and Proust had totally exhausted the possibilities of the 'big' artistic novel. He wanted to play small:

For I who loved the image of old Geulincx, dead young, who left me free, on the boat of Ulysses, to crawl towards the East, along the deck. That is a great measure of freedom, for him who has not the pioneering spirit. And from the poop, poring upon the wave, a sadly rejoicing slave, I follow with my eyes the proud and futile wake. Which, as it bears me from no fatherland away, bears me onward to no shipwreck.

Everyman's edition (1997) Page 54
I love to read Beckett's books as the opposite of Joyce's work. The only thing that's common between them is the absolute command of the English language. It does wonders in their hands, but very different kind of wonders. These are two polar extremes of how far you can go with a language. Have you read that short piece called Ping. I think reading whole Finnegans Wake is easier than reading page and a half of writing that Ping consists of. Have a glass of water, take a deep breath and read it here:
http://samuel-beckett.net/ping.html

Molloy is, to quote Umberto Eco, more "readerly" without doubt. As in all Beckett's major works, the characters seem to move away as the action progresses. Characters dissolve, the unities of time and space disappear, the plot evaporates, the ever reducing canvass gradually becomes more and more "writerly". Joyce expands, Beckett contracts. Finnegans Wake is about everybody (HCE or Here Comes Everybody), Ping is about nobody, it is just a consciousness reflected through its environment. The Trilogy shows this operation more clearly. From Molloy to the Unamable, it is a long journey towards total annihilation.
Anybody looking for the thesis, will have to shoot an email to The University of London Library or the Library Services at the Royal Holloway College of the Uni of London. They have the copyrights, I can't distribute it :(

Just changed my signature. The complete quotation goes like this:


The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the **** the more I am grateful to him.
He’s not f---ing me about, he’s not leading me up any garden path, he’s not slipping me a wink, he’s not flogging me a remedy or a path or a revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs, he’s not selling me anything I don’t want to buy — he doesn’t give a bollock whether I buy or not — he hasn’t got his hand over his heart. Well, I’ll buy his goods, hook, line and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty.
His work is beautiful.
-- Harold Pinter

[quasimodo1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/books/review/ONeill-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bua1

[Kafka's Crow]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/books/review/ONeill-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bua1

Thanks Quasidmodo! What a way to lure me back to this forum. Been waiting for this collection for five years now. Expensive but worth it. Ordered a copy right away. Thanks, once again!

[Kafka's Crow]

Beckett is beckoning me again! My master calls me , I must not say no. How to get my back side back in a university? Been looking at the internet for studentships for last two days. What should I do?

[dfloyd]

I burned Ulysses, then read a good book called Treasure Island.

[Kafka's Crow]

Just spent a fortune on recent publications on Beckett, renewed my long-expired membership of the Samuel Beckett Society and wrote to Endinburgh University to renew my subscription of the Journal of Beckett Studies. Something must happen now.

dfloyd I could never finish reading Treasure Island. Is it more interesting than Ulysses?