Molloy - Samuel Beckett

The first novel of Samuel Beckett's mordant and exhilarating
midcentury trilogy introduces us to Molloy, who has been mysteriously incarcerated,
and who subsequently escapes to go discover the whereabouts of his mother. In the
latter part of this curious masterwork, a certain Jacques Moran is deputized by anonymous
authorities to search for the aforementioned Molloy. In the trilogy's second novel,
Malone, who might or might not be Molloy himself, addresses us with his ruminations
while in the act of dying. The third novel consists of the fragmented monologue-delivered,
like the monologues of the previous novels, in a mournful rhetoric that possesses
the utmost splendor and beauty-of what might or might not be an armless and legless
creature living in an urn outside an eating house. Taken together, these three novels
represent the high-water mark of the literary movement we call Modernism. Within
their linguistic terrain, where stories are taken up, broken off, and taken up again,
where voices rise and crumble and are resurrected, we can discern the essential lineaments
of our modern condition, and encounter an awesome vision, tragic yet always compelling
and always mysteriously invigorating, of consciousness trapped and struggling inside
the boundaries of nature.