Malone Dies

To cap off this weekend of logging, I had just enough time to squeeze in part two of Beckett's Three Novels collection: Malone Dies. Malone Dies is pretty similar to Molloy in both content and style, but thankfully I found it to be much better. The protagonist, Malone, is in a similar situation to Molloy- he's on his deathbed, very confused as to his past, and is faced with nothing but the tedium of waiting to die. Like the previous novel, Molloy eschews most of the standard literary techniques like plotting and character development, and is entirely made up of stream-of-conscious rambling. Luckily the rambling actually makes sense and is readable, unlike many parts of Molloy. Most of the story revolves around either the everyday life of Malone, and a story he feels the need to tell that may or may not be his autobiography. After reading two thirds of the Three Stories collection now, I can see why he's had a pretty big effect on the world of literature. Molloy and Malone Dies have both felt a lot like James Joyce's epic Ulysses (which I still haven't finished! Perhaps later it will show up on the Back-blog.) That said, I'm still not sold on liking him much myself. I'm all for a challenging read now and then, but this might be a little too far out there for me. I'm really struggling to find deep meaning in either of the stories, and it might be a futile search. Both of them feel more like experiments than attempts at an entertaining novel. Perhaps the final story, The Unnameable will tie the whole thing together, but I'm not counting on it.