Murphy |  | Author: Samuel Beckett
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99 (EUR13.20)
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 15,440
Media: Paperback
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0571244580
EAN: 9780571244584
ASIN: 0571244580
Publication Date: May 21, 2009
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Features a work-shy eponymous hero, adrift in London, who realises that desire can never be satisfied and withdraws from life, in search of stupor. Murphy's lovestruck fiancee Celia tries with tragic pathos to draw him back, but her attempts are doomed to failure. Murphy's friends and familiars are simulacra of Murphy, fragmented and incomplete.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Beckett's first novel; darkly comic February 8, 2009
Mark Wallace (West of Ireland)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Murphy is the first novel by Samuel Beckett, published in 1938, before he gained fame as a playwright. The eponymous central character is an enigmatic figure, whose main aim in life is to avoid participation in normal human society and, particularly, employment. When he finally does bow to his girlfriend's ceaseless prodding to get a job, it is in a mental institution, where he derives contentment observing the behaviour of the inmates. Murphy is a silent, shadowy figure, yet the book's other characters are irresistibly drawn to him.
The thing that struck me most about this novel was the similarity of the style to that of the great Irish comic writer Flann O'Brien, particularly O'Brien's first novel At Swim-two-Birds, published in 1939. I can only assume O'Brien read Murphy and was inspired to mimic it, and perfect its unusual style. Or perhaps the similarity is down to the common influence of Joyce.
Murphy is my first experience of Beckett. It is a comedy, though a very dark one. It is an engaging read, far more so than Beckett's reputation would suggest. Murphy's anti-socialness and solipsism is perhaps a little disturbing, yet also intriguing.
Overall: recommended, and if you like it, I suggest you go on to read At Swim-Two-Birds, by a contemporary and compatriot of Beckett's, stylistically similar, also featuring a protagonist pathologically averse to work, and an extremely funny read.
 An underrated comic masterpiece June 23, 1999
25 out of 27 found this review helpful
Has a work of literature ever had a more enigmatic (anti-)hero? From our opening glimpse of Murphy sitting naked in 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 and eventually chooses to work in 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, and 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 game in full; when he introduces his heroine he forgoes description in 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 point in 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 and yet instantly appealing.
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