Rating: 
Summary: "...these expressions mean nothing..."
Review: "Lemuel is in charge, he raises his hatchet on which the
blood will never dry, but not to hit anyone, he will not hit
anyone, he will not hit anyone any more, he will not touch anyone any more, either with it or with it or with it or with or or with it or with his hammer or with his stick or with his
fist or in thought in dream I mean never he will never
or with his pencil or with his stick or or light light I mean never there he will never never anything there any more"
Rating:
Summary: The truth about the unnamable: Ma(n)hood and the Worm
Review: Beckett's commentary on the human condition, with all its loneliness, apparent inanity, and futility is full of humor. When Moran is dispatched to find Molloy, he never sees him even though Molloy contemplates him as A and C on the first few pages of his own monologue. The Unnamable only makes sense (and it makes perfect sense, in fact much more than Molloy and Malone Dies) when you realize what the unnamable is. It is always three feet away from Malone, sees him only from the waist up, is forced to go in and out until it repeatedly vomits, associates himself with Ma(n)hood, and weeps continously with waste from his one eye. It is a male reproductive organ convinced that it is human, making up stories to attempt to understand its existence, and it actually seems more alive than Molloy, Moran, and Malone! It explains everything that happens (the strange shifts in night and day, hard and soft, the lack of limbs that it thinks it has lost) in the Unnamable. This brilliant technique shows mans ultimate ignorance of himself and his attempt to rationalize an existence he cannot understand. As the genitals serve man in a purpose they cannot understand and consider torture in creating life and removing poisons from the body, so does the irrational suffering of the human condition serve a higher purpose even though we cannot comprehend what it is or even what we are from our vantage point.
Rating:
Summary: 4 1/2 stars?! A pinnacle of consciousness. Black joy.
Review: Blurbs and paeans tend to fall into the trap of imitating Beckett himself. Simply put, Beckett is the one writer who writes solely about meaninglessless in the ripest yet bleakest English ever written (Don't worry -- it's not really "translated" from the French). Thankfully, he spares us more often than not meaningless' corollory, madness. What is left is keen, honest blackness within the straightjacket of rational ratiocination. Beckett is sheer, black joy. If I had to pick two writers to spend eternity with (I won't have this luxury, I'm sure) it would be Beckett and Tolstoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Artistic, Abstract, and Modern
Review: I am subtracting one star only because of the weakness of the middle novel, _Malone Dies_. The middle novel serves only to help set up the final novel, _The Unnamable_, which is one of the most intense epic jam journeys in the history of English ficticious literature. _The Unnamable_ is so awesome, so intense, that I almost forget what the first two novels were about. In some ways I don't even care. All I care about is _The Unnamable_. I vaguely remember that _Malloy_ was about some..guy riding around aimlessly on his bicycle; as for _Malone Dies_, I don't remember much at all, exept that it was lackluster. But the third novel more than makes up for all of this. It must be remembered that _The Unnamable_ is an abstract, far-out work of art. It is not exactly a clearly written guide-to-life, or anything like that. It is an epic poem of unbelievable profundity, an enjoyable and invigorating journey into the farthest depths of abstract madness.
Rating:
Summary: Artistic, Abstract, and Modern
Review: I am subtracting one star only because of the weakness of the middle novel, _Malone Dies_. The middle novel serves only to help set up the final novel, _The Unnamable_, which is one of the most intense epic jam journeys in the history of English ficticious literature. _The Unnamable_ is so awesome, so intense, that I almost forget what the first two novels were about. In some ways I don't even care. All I care about is _The Unnamable_. I vaguely remember that _Malloy_ was about some..guy riding around aimlessly on his bicycle; as for _Malone Dies_, I don't remember much at all, exept that it was lackluster. But the third novel more than makes up for all of this. It must be remembered that _The Unnamable_ is an abstract, far-out work of art. It is not exactly a clearly written guide-to-life, or anything like that. It is an epic poem of unbelievable profundity, an enjoyable and invigorating journey into the farthest depths of abstract madness.
Rating: 
Summary: I Couldn't "go on"
Review: I need to write this review quickly so I don't lose some of the thoughts that I am having. I feel empty inside. I have just put down _The Trilogy_ without finishing the last 80 or so pages of "The Unnamable." I feel as if I have wasted the last week trying to find meaning in a book that from its very outset proclaims it has no meaning. Each section ("Molloy," "Malone Dies," "The Unnamable") gets progressively worse. It is an obvious gradual progression from life to death. This sounds as if it would make an interesting read until the plot is qualified. Nothing can be taken as literal truth throughout the entire series. Each "narrator" is constantly complaining that they don't remember certain things, and that it is "tedious" for them to be writing them down. "Molloy" is basically displays the idea that life has no logical order, and that it is futile to resist this notion. This is the best section. Still though, I felt that it was a poor pastiche of Franz Kafka. "Malone Dies" is about the despair that one feels as they die. Malone (maybe?) occupies his time by writing stories that have no meaning or truth to them. "The Unnamable" is, to an uneducated dilettante like me, an incompressible load of ramblings. I didn't finish this section, but I did read half of it, certainly that should be enough time for Mr. Beckett to begin and explain his point. But wait...that's just it...there is no POINT! Yes that's right. He wrote a trilogy with no plot, dialogue or structure, in order that you would realize that life has no meaning. This is a fine artistic statement; however, it must be defended or displayed in a manner in which the reader wants to "go on." Mr. Beckett could have done this in a novella, not a 400 page trilogy. Furthermore, he already displayed this same concept, the endless search for meaning and the impossibility of finding it, in _Waiting for Godot_, in a much more artistic and compelling way. I have not read enough of his work to pass judgment on Mr. Beckett as an artist. However, this is not really a book I feel guilty about not finishing. Post Script- I hate to do this, but I must wax philosophic for a moment. Although it seems more intelligent to say otherwise, life is not pointless. Regardless of your religious or moral footing, you should feel lucky. How can one say life has no point, when life is all there is? What exactly are you comparing it to? What would have a point? It isn't impossible to love, and if you've felt that for anyone, a parent, grandparent or lover, wasn't the love you felt for them worth the more unpleasant things we all have to deal with? Art should affirm life, not deny it.
Rating:
Summary: Not a collection for the impatient
Review: I was reading parts of this book while my Grandmother was dying in the hospital, so you can imagine my state of mind after I reached the end of a paragraph. Actually, sections of this trilogy are howlingly funny, especially Molloy, easily the most accessible of the trio. Malone Dies and The UnNamable both start out coherently, then drift onwardly into a sea sick like eulogy which might drive a reader mad. Stick with it for the language however and let yourself wander along with Beckett even if you find yourself on the brink of collapse. The literary equivalent of being on a raft, lost in the ocean
Rating: 
Summary: THE TRILOGY THAT DESTROYS ITSELF
Review: If one has read the early poems, the stories in More Pricks Than Kicks, plus Murphy, Watt and the three stories that precede the trilogy, one feels flooded with sameness in Molloy and Malone Dies, surfeited with hate, doubt, distrust and incomprehension. The sameness of Beckett's themes alters only with the withering of Beckett's talents. Malone, like Sam in Watt as well as the narrator in "Stories" as well as Moran and Molloy, creates plots only to destroy them. In this respect, the narrator-artists are identical to Beckett himself. For more depth, see The Insanity of Samuel Beckett's Art on Amazon.com.
Rating:
Summary: The most essential work of fiction since Ulysses
Review: In the Trilogy Beckett finds the only means to silence: to have never begun.
Rating:
Summary: the quest for silence
Review: In these three stories Beckett takes us inside the mind of the genius in a way that no other writer has done. He is a genius who knows that he is, but knows also that only he, if anyone, can know what that means. It cannot be told, or shared, so he is locked away in perpetuity with the only thing he knows, and everything else he does, or says, is by proxy.
The characters in his other stories and plays are about as wretched as it is possible to get, and in The Unnameable, Beckett allows us some insight into his relationship with these obsessions. Beckett looks at what has come out of the mouths of his characters and is as astonished as the reader. He has no idea where it came from, except that it came from him. In the end, he is forced to investigate what 'him' is, and this leads him to confront some of the deepest questions of life. To an ordinary mortal it is almost impossible to believe the level of intellectual activity in Beckett's brain, which can subtend simultaneous parallel streams of words in the way that one imagines Bach and Mozart were consciously able to conceive of polyphonic music of the most fearsome comlexity.
It does not make for easy reading, although there are passages that may be taken alone that are austere and terrifylingly astringent, such as the depiction of the gruesome Moran and his hideous parental role, but for those who see reading as something you can get better at as you go on, then this trilogy is the reading material beyond which few would need to aspire.
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