Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Watt by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0-8021-5140-X Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1970 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.53 (17 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Occupation novel
Comment: "Watt" is probably the most difficult text of Beckett's to get through-the apparent banality of plot and theme, the confusion of voice and later of language(by Watt at least, if not the reader), the rhythmic yet maddening combinatory inventories of personal posessions (a hallmark of "Molloy" in the trilogy to come) that comprises much of the dense often paragraphless prose, the fundamental personality-lessness of the titualar character, the novels appendix that hints at what might have been included but was not(except, of course, as an appendix, which ultimately includes it), all make the experience of Watt at times incredibly trying to get through. But it has beautiful, wise, and enigmatic passages enough to goad continued reading. Written while Beckett was active in the French Resistance during WWII, often while in hiding or on the run and always at night, the peculiarly drawn out trivialities of the life of the servant Watt become zen reflections on a life that cannot be lived with introspection, for that might yield the madness that is for this reader suggested by the seeming (if shadowy and vague) incarceration of Watt and Sam the narrator. Beckett is often accused of being too negative in his art, of aligning himself with the dread of the existentialists who shared his experience and context in midcentury France. I find that Beckett's dread is not some heroic answer to a banal and futile existence, but the only honest response one can have to an acknowledgement of "existence-in-itself"(whatever that means):to record a life of unknowing, to fail to represent it faithfully, to record the tension between the necessity of the record and its failure to be faithfully displayed, all with the "mirthless laugh...,the saluting of the highest joke,...the laugh that laughs--silence please--at that which is unhappy"(Watt,p.48). Desparate expression, with only the will to laugh, if lacking the joke.
Rating: 5
Summary: I dunno about the guy below me.
Comment: I can't go along with this being one Beckett's more difficult novels, or for completists only, and not just because it's my personal all-time fave rave. From a biographical point of view, Watt marks the point where Beckett pretty much threw off the influence of Joyce, but before he self-consciously turned himself into the anti-Joyce. This brief state of affairs resulted in a fantastic, hilarious book that has everything - semi-vigorous ambulating, crack-up dialogue and rock-throwing action! This is Beckett's funniest work, and also contains some of his best discriptions and most memorable speeches (particularly Arsene's monologue), and is one of the easiest to read (allowing that Dream/More Pricks and Murphy are a tad insufferable, and thus a bit of a slog).
The impression that Wattis difficult may stem from the idea that there is some enlightenment within the text that the hapless reader is obliged to decode, deconstruct or otherwise deduce, but the book is more likely a dramatization, and an inflicting, of confusion. If this is found acceptable, the book is an intense pleasure to read and just maybe exceeds the Three Novels in this aspect.
Rating: 5
Summary: WATT: Haunting Echoes Receding Infinitely In All Directions
Comment: There are so many aspects of this remarkable novel - one of the most important ever written - deserving exploration that it would be impossible to touch on them in this small space. So, I would like to focus on how this novel approaches the fundamental problematic challenge of narrative technique and person.
Before turning directly to WATT, let us note that a given in Beckett's work is that the conventional approaches to this challenge are simply too lacking in reality to be acceptable. The 'goal' of Beckett's art is to find the point at which all the divergent elements that make up a literary work become one and this goal is reflective of and inseparable from the search to find the point at which all the divergent elements that make up a human being are one. In MURPHY this is called the "search to find home." For Beckett, art ( as he sees it ) is the closest thing known and available to an acceptable 'religion', that is, a means of coming to some kind of meaningful terms with existence. But it is also a given in Beckett's work that this goal, both artistic and spiritual, is apparently impossible to attain. And yet it is the only thing worth seeking. This contradiction accounts for the tragicomic character of Beckett's work and Beckett's own mysterious and remarkable character accounts for the unique and profound pathos of his work. So, to WATT.
First of all, please note that the strangely beautiful, pedantic ( almost paranoid ) concern with exactitude and utter thoroughness in the narrative style resonates so deeply, almost perfectly, in relation to the character of Watt himself. It is impossible to imagine Watt presented to the reader in any other way. The narrative technique ( form ) coincides with the content of Watt's character and world with rare and astonishing precision and yet this narrative is the voice of another character in the novel called Sam ( ! ) whereas Watt himself never addresses the reader directly. There is both first and second person narrative utilized in the novel, but they are both apparently the voice of Sam. We, of course, immediately relate this name to the author himself and are tempted to see this as merely an example of an author having found a felicitous solution to the problem of balancing form and content, that is, of finding a narrative technique that resonates deeply with the content that makes up his central character. But Beckett himself rejects this as a solution, as an attainment of the sought point of union, and to see it this way is to miss a crucial aspect of the novel. The character Sam both is and is not the literal author of WATT. In fact, in a profound sense, Sam can no more be identified precisely with Beckett than can Watt himself, though they can both be imprecisely identified with Beckett. The subtle issue here is that the author's attempt to set himself as a foundation in the novel merely results in another mere character in the novel. Beckett could have chosen to not give the narrative voice personification in the form of Sam and just presented the narrative as the true voice of the author himself, but Beckett is too aware ( painfully aware ) that reality ( simply ignored by conventional novel writing ) is not so simple as that. So what we have is that the author, Beckett ( whoever that is ) creates Sam and Sam's narrative creates Watt and Watt creates the sense in us of tragicomic wonder and the haunting echoes recede infinitely in all directions. The point here being that the deep and remarkable perception on the part of Beckett concerning narrative technique and person reveals a reality that is somehow both more understood and therefore unified and yet more fragmented than ever.
I know of no figure who has moved further into the distance of the artistic frontier than Beckett. WATT is a crucial work of art that any lover of art must be familiar with.
And finally I would like to make an incidental note that the current Grove Press cover of Watt is very poor when compared, contrasted rather, with the cover of it's original 1959 issue of which I am very happy to still have a copy. Very small matter. Get this book.
 |
Title: Murphy by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0802150373 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1970 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
 |
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 |
 |
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 |
 |
Title: How It Is by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0802150667 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1988 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
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 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
