Dream of Fair to Middling Women

by Samuel Beckett

Book Overview

Samuel Beckett's first novel and "literary landmark" ( St. Petersburg Times ), Dream of Fair to Middling Women is a wonderfully savory introduction to the Nobel Prize-winning author. Written in the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559702176
• ISBN13: 9781559702171
• Release Date: May 1993
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Length: 241 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Early, polysyllabic Beckett

A one-star review should not be allowed to stand alone for this book, though I may provide inadequate challenge. A fan in particular of early Beckett, i.e. of "Murphy," and of the first part of "Watt" which features a certain Mr. Hackett, I found this exuberant, flamboyant exercise in quasi-poetic comic prose almost their equal. There are individual sentences to savor, for words-as-music (if one consider string quartets and oompah bands both musical), that describe outrageously comic situations and personae with an almost ferocious originality. Yes, the work's style, certainly the hero's stream-of-consciousness interlude, owes quite a bit to Joyce, but Beckett's signature dark humor is already richly manifest. Bleakness expressed in richness, buffoonery in elegant phrases, in color and obvious love of the medium. Beckett may have outdone Joyce in a cheeky display of authorial devices whereby he breaks boundaries of fiction and inserts himself, reveals the writing process, etc. All of this scrambles along, full of surprises, without the least pretentiousness but only the enthusiastic abandon of breakneck youth. This would be a feast for a literary polyglot, but even if, like me, you don't understand much Latin, little French and less German and Italian, and aren't familiar with, or sure of the meanings of words like catastasis expunction emergal pleroma erethisms gedankenflucht postil chiappate mollecone turbary dephlogisticate cang genau multipara pucelle lanugo coryza apodasis ipsissimosity ausgeschlossen exornation dehiscence fauces coenaesthesis arcitenens speculum didcalced narquois maneen lancinated unprevisible bawn pinace agenesia or crassamenta, you may still enjoy this book tremendously. Such was, is, the infectious work of a young literary and comic genius. For particulars of plot, consult the editorial reviews above. The book shines fresh as rainwater. If you haven't yet, read "Murphy" first, then this one.