Uriah Marc Todoroff’s Reviews > Three Novels: Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable > Status Update

Started The Unnameable

a few notes on Malone Dies: Molloy is set in a fantasyland (Ballyba); this one is technically more grounded (ref. to Bastille Day, London, modern airplanes, "fuck"). it might be darker. Molloy & Malone are both writers. Beckett famously tried to eradicate plot, but it remains: Sapo/Macmann must be in the same hospital as Malone. similar to Molloy/Jacques melding, at the end I wonder if Lemuel/Malone meld, too.

finished Molloy. along with Bernhard's The Loser, this is way up there in my canon. I did not detect masculinity as a theme, even with the father/son dynamic (I only mention because I detect that theme everywhere). the work is not grounded in that way: it's Kafkaesque, fantasy; I can see how it was popular. even saying It's about mental illness isn't right, because the characters are basically goblins.

crazy that the genre conventions & characters of part 2 are more astonishing than the monologue of part 1. it's because of that context that they hit so hard: Molloy has characters?? a plot??

description of sex is the first time i was able to lock into the text. description of the sucking stones is when i really began to pick up what he's putting down.

wth is this