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Title: Murphy by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0-8021-5037-3 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1970 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Sex, Lies, and Gasjets
Comment: What's most telling is the quote from Beckett to CD producer and San Quentin Drama Workshop Artistic Director, Rick Cluchey, "The book is full of lies." We should not forget that Beckett was teaching literature at Trinity College in Dublin immediately prior to his writing "Murphy" and the book is strewn with false literary and cultural references, the sort that one usually accepts at face value and passes over.
The book starts out with Murphy tying himself, naked, arms and legs included, into a rocking chair. Where the third hand comes from to tie down both arms is the mystery. Is this the same third hand that turns the gas jet on when Murphy and Ticklepenny rig the gas line to the garrot?
We can only imagine how an awkward and diminuitive man like Murphy, who is measured in almost every physical detail, continually has the finest women (from Miss Counihan to Celia) swooning over him so completely.
"Murphy" is full of wry comic bits. It is perhaps Beckett's only novel where he uses accents. Irish, Chelsea, Scottish, Hindi, German, all to great comic effect. He has no fear of inventing words like "Panpygoptosis" or Duck's disease; and certainly, everyone should actually play the chess game that Murphy has with Mr. Endon, enlightening.
There is so much in this recording to appreciate; it's more of a radio play than a reading and the acting is wonderful. These are some of the finest Irish and English voices going. They make the novel accessible, or much as can be with out some sort of complete and unabridged dictionary.
But most enjoyable was the unabashed send up of the theosophy so prevalent in the first half of the 20th century. This one is worth listening to (and reading along with, if you're of a mind) over and over again. What a delight.
Rating: 5
Summary: funniest existentialist post joycean black comedy ever
Comment: not only does this book have the best first sentence of any twentieth century book, its subtle and precise sentences illustrate an author in control of his language. whilst it may not appeal to those who find the interminable boredom of Godot somehow profound, it illustrates that Beckett could write structured narrative within a comprehensible plot if he wanted to. beckett's sympathy for his characters whilst at the same time ridiculing their pretensions in his own quiet way is austenian in its subtlety, and as an introduction to the later trilogy it is unmissable.
Rating: 5
Summary: Murphy
Comment: _Murphy_ is dark, funny, and ponderous. While most Beckett fans know _Waiting for Godot_, this novella takes more of a Modernist bent that differs from the anticipatory post-Modernism of _Godot_. Beckett's black humor prevails, and the intellectual quest for love and its concrete definition develops; this idea carries over from the Joycean tradition begun in _Ulysses_.
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Title: Watt by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 080215140X Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1970 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Three Novels by Samuel Beckett: Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnamable by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0802150918 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho: Three Novels by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0802134262 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: How It Is by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0802150667 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1988 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 by Samuel Beckett, S. E. Gontarski ISBN: 0802134904 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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