Question: have you ever sucked a pebble?
Samuel Beckett’s Molloy is often heralded as a towering monument of modernist literature, though whether it’s a lighthouse of enlightenment or an impassable granite slab is a matter of perspective. This novel, the first in Beckett’s famous trilogy, plunges us into a world where sucking stones takes on existential significance and narrative coherence is as fleeting as a sunny day in Ireland. It’s a work that dares to ask, “What is the point of anything?” and then gleefully declines to answer.
Describing the plot (or lack thereof) of Molloy is akin to summarising a dream you vaguely remember: something about a man looking for his mother, and then another man looking for the first man, with both characters slowly descending into madness, though it’s unclear if they were ever sane to begin with. Molloy, in the first half, wanders the countryside with a single-minded focus on finding his mother, all while grappling with a gammy leg and an unhealthy attachment to his bicycle. In the second half, Jacques Moran, a detective whose initial efficiency would make Poirot proud, takes over the narrative only to find his life unravelling into a farcical stew of doubt, despair, and self-inflicted misery.
Ah, the stones and systems. What other novelist could devote pages to the act of sucking pebbles with such gravity and yet such absurd humour? Molloy’s meticulous system for rotating his sixteen pebbles across four pockets is a masterclass in pointless precision. It’s a bit like a philosophical exercise in entropy, or an ancient meditation practice gone awry. The humour lies in how much attention Molloy pays to this utterly trivial task, reflecting humanity’s desperate need to impose order on a chaotic world. Yet, as he shuffles his stones like an existential juggler, one can’t help but marvel at how Beckett turns the mundane into the profound – or at least into the wildly ridiculous.
Beckett’s prose in Molloy is the literary equivalent of a minimalist painting: sparse, bleak, yet somehow brimming with a peculiar energy – minimalism meets melancholy. His sentences meander like Molloy himself, looping back on themselves, full of tangents and wry observations. There’s a deadpan humour to the way Beckett describes the banalities of life, as if mocking the very idea of a grand narrative. Take this gem: “To restore silence is the role of objects.” It’s equal parts profound and nonsensical, like a fortune cookie written by Kafka.
Molloy and Moran are two sides of a coin that’s been dropped down a drain – they’re the anti-heroes we deserve. Molloy, the wandering vagrant, is simultaneously pitiable and oddly endearing, with his philosophical musings on stones, bicycles, and his dwindling autonomy. Moran, by contrast, begins as a caricature of order and discipline, only to crumble into a Molloy-esque state of absurd dysfunction. Both characters are trapped in a cyclical struggle against their own futility, and while this might sound bleak, Beckett’s humour keeps it from becoming entirely soul-crushing.
At its heart, Molloy is about the human condition – and the abyss, staring back at you: the search for meaning in a world that stubbornly refuses to provide it. It’s a novel of dualities – motion and stasis, order and chaos, meaning and meaninglessness – all played out with Beckett’s trademark wit. The novel’s structure, with its two narratives that mirror and distort one another, underscores the futility of trying to pin down a single truth. If you’re hoping for closure or clarity, you’ll find neither. Instead, Beckett offers the literary equivalent of a shrug, albeit a deeply philosophical one.
Make no mistake, Molloy is funny – bleak, but brilliant – if your sense of humour leans towards the absurd and the morbid. Whether it’s Molloy’s painfully detailed pebble-sucking regimen or Moran’s increasingly ludicrous attempts to maintain control over his situation, the novel is laced with a kind of existential slapstick. Beckett’s humour doesn’t hit you over the head; it creeps up on you, like the realisation that you’ve been laughing at your own impending doom.
Reading Molloy is not for the faint of heart or the impatient. It’s a novel that demands your full attention, only to reward you with a sense of profound bewilderment. But for those willing to embrace its absurdities, Molloy is a rich, darkly comic exploration of what it means to be human – or at least what it means to shuffle stones from pocket to pocket while the universe carries on, indifferent to your efforts.
In short, if you enjoy literature that challenges, confounds, and occasionally mocks you, Molloy is a must-read. If not, you might want to stick to something with fewer stones and more plot. Either way, Beckett’s masterpiece remains a cornerstone (pun intended) of modernist fiction – though one that’s as likely to trip you up as to guide your way.
Finally, I have seen a screen production of Molloy that fascinates me, simply because of the actor that plays Molloy, and I’m certain more than a few of you will know who I mean: Jack MacGowran – if the name doesn’t ring a bell, then the face will – google him.
Jack MacGowran (1918–1973) was the kind of actor who thrived on the quirky, the unsettling, and the outright bizarre. Born in Dublin, he carved out a reputation as a stage and film actor with a knack for Beckettian despair and Shakespearean wit. A frequent collaborator with Samuel Beckett, MacGowran mastered the art of existential puzzlement in works like Eh Joe? and Molloy. On the big screen, he achieved cult status in The Fearless Vampire Killers and as the ill-fated director Burke Dennings in the horror classic The Exorcist – where his character became a memorable victim of pea soup projectile vomiting.
With a career that danced between comedy and bleak tragedy, MacGowran was also a notable Fool in Peter Brook’s adaptation of King Lear (1971), a role that seemed almost tailor-made for his combination of pathos and absurdity. Known for his physicality and expressive face, he left a legacy as one of Ireland’s most distinctive and daring actors. In Lear, he was outstanding, and who better than him to play the Fool!
Wording 