‘How It Is’ is yet another of Samuel Beckett’s unique works in the form of a novel published initially by Les Editions de Minuit in 1961 as Comment c’est in French.
Table of Contents
Production
Written by Beckett, the translated English version was published in 1964 by Grove Press (New York). L’Image, of Comment c’est is an early version published in X: A Quarterly Review (1959), the British arts review. This is also the debut appearance of the work.
The third part of the novel being an advanced text made its appearance in the 1962 issue of Arna, the Australian literary journal.
How It Is Writing Style
The work defies the expectation of readers, and conjectures regarding this ‘novel’ fail at all points. The novel has undergone four revisions as stated by critic Édouard Magessa O’Reilly in the introduction to the novel. He elucidates how Beckett get hold of the right words and format for what he had intended to say.
‘How it is’ is written in the form of a monologue narrated by the narrator, crawling perpetually in the mud, invoking moments of his life which are further divided into periods separated into three periods. Evidently, monologues are an intrinsic part of Beckett’s gripping style. “Through monologue, Beckett uses the technique of the stream-of-consciousness to attack the audience’s sense of time, place, and order,” says Su-Lien Liao.
Critics like to name How It Is as “post-trilogy prose”, beginning with the novel How It Is (1961). The second part is All Strange Away (1964), and the third part is Imagination Dead Imagine (1965) and the Ping, Beckett goes on to describe a series of geometrically distinct spaces (cubes, rotundas, cylinders) where white bodies lie, or hang alone or in pairs. The novel and its succeeding works make use of the environment as a metaphor, thereby making it surreal to a different level.
Plot of How It Is by Samuel Beckett
Literally speaking the title translates to comment c’est (how it is) by playing a pun on the French word commencer which means ‘to begin’. Visibly, the text is divided into three sections -” Before Pim”, “With Pim”, “After Pim”
“before Pim” features the narrator who is alone throughout the novel begins his venture in the mud- until he meets with another creature much like himself thereby forming a duo or a “couple”. His journey entails recollections of his early life, which includes memories of a lady and those of his parents.
“with Pim” features the narrator lying in a state of inertia in the mud till such time he is abandoned by Pim.
“after Pim” shows how the narrator gets back to his previous state of solitude but again in a motionless state in the mud. What remains is the mud, it’s darkness and limitless obscurity.
How It Is Themes
The structureless present manifests itself through the syntax to reveal deeper themes revolving around formlessness using mud to be the core of the world in which the protagonist lives as in Leopardi’s E fango è il mondo where he uses mud to reveal his sense of the world and therefore, a kind of purgatory is seen manifesting, even in Dante’s eerie image of souls devouring mud in the Stygian marsh of the Inferno.
Conclusion
Alan Pryce-Jones recalls the novel as “A wonderful book, written in the sparest prose. . . . Beckett is one of the rare creative minds in our times.”
It is built out of beautifully composed phrases and has a tightly knit structure. Critics appreciate how the language, style and expressions are brazen with deliberate redundancy to accommodate and adapt intense meaning even as they seem to be emptied of it.
FAQs
How it is the synopsis?
Visibly, the text is divided into three sections -” Before Pim”, “With Pim”, “After Pim”, “before Pim” features the narrator’s solitary journey in the mud-dark until he encounters another creature like himself and “with Pim” features the narrator in a motionless state in the mud. “After Pim” shows how the narrator returns to his earlier state of solitude.