Malone Dies, but where does he shop?

Beckett’s trio of novels, published from 1951 to 1953 and featuring Malone Dies as its second installment, is famous for its removal of several fundamental elements of traditional novels, including characterization and a conventional plot structure. This dislodging of common tools makes him a difficult author for most readers to approach, and earned him a reputation of density and inaccessibility. But despite his omissions, despite his boiling down of his narratives to their purest essential components, a novel like Malone Dies still has a lot to tell us—if we attack it appropriately. Through his abstract degree of characterization of Malone, shown through his frustrated and disjointed internal monologue, as well as the tales about Sapo that Malone constructs within his own frame narrative, we are able to glimpse a few important points of departure from which to explore Malone Dies more effectively—and, indeed, less frustratingly.

Our biggest clue into the goings-on of Malone’s mind comes near the beginning on page 183. Up to this point, we have been introduced to his hobby of constructing stories as a form of “play” to entertain his bedridden mind, but one passage in particular illuminates these creations specifically: “What tedium,” he says, “And I call that playing. I wonder if I am not talking again about myself. Shall I be incapable, to the end, of lying on any other subject?”¹ Here it is suggested, of course, that perhaps the exploits of Sapo, of which we only see the beginnings in this first segment of the novel, are in fact reflections of Malone’s on life experiences, perhaps even approaching memoir. Could it be that a dying man is merely immortalizing his biography over the course of the novel, crystalizing his personal history in this creative endeavor even as his physical form gradually deteriorates? This would shed something of an optimistic light on a rather morbid novel, the reversal of a man’s decay through the creative literary process.

But what purpose does his invention serve? At points, Malone seems concerned with how his creation will be received, interjecting “This is awful” just before beginning a fresh passage on Sapo.¹ It would appear, also, that Malone aims to project a certain image of Sapo, as he alters his narrative when referring to the character’s friends: “Sapo had no friends—no, that won’t do. [. . .] Sapo was on good terms with his little friends.”¹ Could his stories then be viewed as a kind of revisionist history, a collection of his own life experiences that have been suitably polished to affect a certain image with his anonymous readership? And stranger still is his continual admission that his work is “tedium”—would not a man constructing stories for “play” enjoy the process?¹ It would appear that Malone is working on some kind of pseudo-biographical history, forming his story and characters in the interest of some unknown audience.

While I confess that Malone Dies has presented something of a challenge for me, over a few repeat readings of the assigned section I was able to better glean some of its purpose. Beckett wishes to dignify this man in death by portraying his penultimate acts—his ultimate act being death itself—and exploring the innermost workings of his doomed mind. While in the first few paragraphs of the novel Malone adopts a flippant attitude towards his inevitable demise, speaking in rather matter-of-fact terms on his probabilities to survive to certain Church holidays, there are moments when the reality of the situation dawns on him. “Nothing is more real than nothing” he famously intones, perhaps briefly allowing a window into the fear inherent in the act of dying. Beckett gives voice to his haphazard psyche, and in the process lends legitimacy to his humanity.