Beckett’s Unnamable: Not I, not Mad.

To cede the initiative to words is the task of the artist according to Mallarmé. In a more sinister context this dictum could also be said to describe the obscure directive which immobilizes the psychotic. In the last part of his great trilogy 'Molloy', 'Malone Dies', 'The Unnamable', Samuel Beckett has managed to subsume this second terrible imperative within the first, artistic one, and in doing so has created a novel which is one of the most extraordinary achievements of our time.…