Reply to comment

Hey Katie,

I don't think knowing the plot to a book before reading it makes the book "non-narrative" because it has the same narrative whether you've read it or not. No need to be intimidated by authoritative critics -- plenty of critics are not this way and take them on. Beckett tried to write in a style that would fool them, a style that does in fact contradict what they, and consequently we, expect in a book, yet then they give the work authoritative interpretations that to me clearly go against the text. Opinions can't be "wrong" but they can be off the mark, or "wrong to me" and plenty of critics are, to pun, absurd when approaching Beckett. Beckett trumps them in the end with his prose-poem "Comment c'est" or "How it is" -- a little-known work because, well, critics can't write about it. It's practically incoherent, except that certain somewhat incoherent leitmotifs repeat throughout the three parts, so readers can develop a personal interpretation, but they cannot prove it the way they would need to if they were to write literary analyses with arguments other people can follow.

Bisous,

Marquise de Merteuil