Customer Reviews

An underrated comic masterpiece - By: , 23 Jun 1999
Has a work of literature ever had a more enigmatic (anti-)hero? From our opening glimpse of Murphy sitting nakedin his old rocking-chair to his grimly comic death (he mistakes the gas-tap for the lavatory chain) we find out very little about the main protagonist. He rarely speaks, a sullen presence who often ignores the attentions of his devoted girlfriend & eventually chooses to workin a mental institution rather endure than the stability of married life. All we really learn about is his selfishness (and ennui). Yet around this unattractive hero Beckett has created a comic masterpiece. There is an almost Dickensian gallery of supporting characters, from Murphy's cockney landlady to the dreadful Ticklepenny, not to mention a motley crew of Irishmen pursuing Murphy around London. From the opening sentence ('The sun shone on the nothing new') the prose crackles with invention, &in terms of innovation this work is fully the equal of a Joyce or a Kafka. When Murphy plays chess against a hypomanic inmate of the mental institution, Beckett notates the gamein full; when he introduces his heroine he forgoes descriptionin favour of a table of her characteristics. The humour, always ironic, often descends to the black, while the work also shows a philosophical intent more typical of later works. In fact, the novel is placed at an interesting pointin Beckett's output, where this philosophical concern is beginning to be apparent, but the virtuosic linguistic invention has yet to be abandoned. This means that this tale of 'a seedy solipsist' is rich & yet instantly appealing.