King Mob
07-05-2009, 05:00 PM
OK, my first review.:flare:
More Pricks Than Kicks by Samuel Beckett is an often overlooked work. The mad Irishman is better known for his exceptional dramatic works like Waiting for Godot and Endgame, and his trilogy of novels Molloy – Malone Dies – The Unnamable.
The short stories of More Pricks… were written by a twenty something year old Beckett and feature the first glimpses of the forms and ideas he would master in his later works. All of the stories revolve around the adventures and misadventures of Belacqua Shuah, from his student days to his after death. The stories often vary in style yet maintaining an overall consistency, like one that could be found in a really good music album.
Trivial actions are often given much more attention than important events. In this fashion, a couple of pages are given to the meticulous description of Belacqua making his lunch, and in one single paragraph his fiancée is hit by a car while riding a horse, being crippled for life. This game that Beckett seems to be playing and enjoying is what makes each story a fascinating read.
In addition, Belaqcua is a great and errant character: “In respect of this apparent gratuity of conduct he may perhaps with some colour of justice be likened to the laws of nature. A mental home was the place for him.” His motivations are rarely stated and most of them lack explanation: “The simplest course, when the motives of any deed are found subliminal to the point of defying expression, is to call that deed ex nihilo and have done. Which we beg leave to follow in the present instance.”
Some of the passages can be hard to understand on account of the use of difficult words, phrases in other languages and cites to little known works. Still the flow of words retains a beautiful musicality.
Hilarious, absurd, trivial yet profound, the stories of More Pricks Than Kicks are great fun to read even if you cannot get all of it (I had a hard time with some of them, not being an English native speaker myself). Yet, I am not sure if this is a good place to start if you haven’t read Beckett before. Maybe it is, if some of you have read it tell me what you think.
PS: I couldn’t help but remember Naked Lunch (am I crazy?) in a few passages from the story What a Misfortune like:
A student of Plutarch found himself rubbing shoulders with a physicist of the modern school.
“There you have him” said the first “in a nutshell.”
“This bivalve world” said the other.
Their eyes met and filled with tears.
More Pricks Than Kicks by Samuel Beckett is an often overlooked work. The mad Irishman is better known for his exceptional dramatic works like Waiting for Godot and Endgame, and his trilogy of novels Molloy – Malone Dies – The Unnamable.
The short stories of More Pricks… were written by a twenty something year old Beckett and feature the first glimpses of the forms and ideas he would master in his later works. All of the stories revolve around the adventures and misadventures of Belacqua Shuah, from his student days to his after death. The stories often vary in style yet maintaining an overall consistency, like one that could be found in a really good music album.
Trivial actions are often given much more attention than important events. In this fashion, a couple of pages are given to the meticulous description of Belacqua making his lunch, and in one single paragraph his fiancée is hit by a car while riding a horse, being crippled for life. This game that Beckett seems to be playing and enjoying is what makes each story a fascinating read.
In addition, Belaqcua is a great and errant character: “In respect of this apparent gratuity of conduct he may perhaps with some colour of justice be likened to the laws of nature. A mental home was the place for him.” His motivations are rarely stated and most of them lack explanation: “The simplest course, when the motives of any deed are found subliminal to the point of defying expression, is to call that deed ex nihilo and have done. Which we beg leave to follow in the present instance.”
Some of the passages can be hard to understand on account of the use of difficult words, phrases in other languages and cites to little known works. Still the flow of words retains a beautiful musicality.
Hilarious, absurd, trivial yet profound, the stories of More Pricks Than Kicks are great fun to read even if you cannot get all of it (I had a hard time with some of them, not being an English native speaker myself). Yet, I am not sure if this is a good place to start if you haven’t read Beckett before. Maybe it is, if some of you have read it tell me what you think.
PS: I couldn’t help but remember Naked Lunch (am I crazy?) in a few passages from the story What a Misfortune like:
A student of Plutarch found himself rubbing shoulders with a physicist of the modern school.
“There you have him” said the first “in a nutshell.”
“This bivalve world” said the other.
Their eyes met and filled with tears.