{"id":836,"date":"2020-08-10T14:08:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T21:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=836"},"modified":"2026-07-20T20:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T03:19:07","slug":"molloy-malone-dies-the-unnameable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=836","title":{"rendered":"Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnameable"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnameable<\/em>, by Samuel Beckett<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the recurring threads in Charlie Kaufaman’s Antkind<\/a><\/em> is mid-20th century comedy duos like Abbott and Castello. Kaufman’s version are Mudd and Molloy, with a nod to Samuel Beckett, whose trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnameable<\/em>, I read next. Kaufman even name drops Beckett’s novel in one chapter of Antkind<\/em> when the film critic recovers in a hospital room. Vladimir and Estragon from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot<\/em> are often interpreted as a comedy duo. Beckett sometimes displays a similar kind of low-brow, slapstick humor. But Beckett’s novels are the opposite of Kaufman’s. Beckett is a minimalist. His trilogy strips away where Kaufman piles on. Kaufman spins out, unbounded. Beckett pares down until nearly nothing is left, no character, no story, barely even a setting, just the author’s voice searching for a reason to write and wondering whether there’s any difference between the literary characters he invents and their stories, and the invention of his own “self” and the “story” he lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Molloy<\/em> is in two sections. In the first, a man, Molloy, recalls the story of journeying home to see his mother. In the second section a man named Moran is given an assignment to track down Molloy. Neither journey comes to a conclusion. In Malone Dies<\/em>, Malone lies in a bed in a room that might be a hospital and spins stories while he waits to die. In The Unnameable<\/em>, an unnamed man gives a stream-of consciousness monologue which after a few pages of standard paragraphs becomes over 100 pages with no break. It’s a tough read. But it’s no joke. I love modernist fiction but I prefer the maximalism of Joyce (Proust, Wallace, Kaufman). I’m not personally attracted to Beckett’s nihilism, but there’s something there. The trilogy has been on my list of novels I need to read someday for a long time. I’m glad I finally did<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write a diary entry like this after every book I read, mostly novels, mostly the best of nineteenth and twentieth century literature.  To see what else is on my reading list click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnameable, by Samuel Beckett One of the recurring threads in Charlie Kaufaman’s Antkind is mid-20th century… Read more Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnameable<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-diary","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5137,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions\/5137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}