Watt

by Samuel Beckett

Book Overview

In prose possessed of the radically stripped-down beauty and ferocious wit that characterize his work, this early novel by Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett recounts the grotesque and improbable adventures of a fantastically logical Irish servant and his master. Watt is a beautifully executed black comedy that, at its core, is rooted in the powerful and terrifying vision that made Beckett one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080215140X
• ISBN13: 9780802151407
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

After a lifetime of reading, one of my five favorites

This book is a joy! Beckett's wonderful English prose, his humanity and sense of humor, shine forth on every page. After forty years and many rereadings, it has only grown on me--the jokes still amuse, the writing is still glorious, the message still enigmatic and profound. This is one of those seminal books that sustain and hearten you, that reawaken your love for suffering humanity. There's no one like Beckett, and nothing (except the trilogy) like "Watt". Buy it. Verbum sat.

Roller-coaster existentialism, and fun, too!

"Watt" is the hilarious story of an itinerant character who walks one day from a train station, like a homing pigeon, straight to the home of a man whom he will serve. He enters the kitchen to take his spot, whereupon the present kitchen worker issues a rambling monologue of stunning length and baffling content, then leaves the household for Watt to stay behind. In the first few pages, we are already asking: Why did Watt just show up? Whose house is this? Who is this man in the kitchen already? Why is he delivering this major dissertation? What does it all mean?The rest of the book concerns Watt's service to the master of the house, some of it conventionally narrated, much of it digressive and odd. To explain this book, however, is to sound ridiculous. A certain number of things happen to Watt, he takes a certain number of actions, he engages in a certain number of conversations, and he ends the story in the book in a certain meaningful fashion. The entire story is told in Beckett's trademark effusive style, a rollicking, bizzare, but highly entertaining profusion.The meaning of the book is also classic Beckett: Don't wait for Higher Meaning, because there is none. All his books portray absurd characters doing absurd things, waiting for life to reveal itself, but ultimately realizing that life reveals itself through the living. To answer the questions posed above, the book is compsed like a circle, just like life. At the same time, it's also completely meaningless, just like life. We go to some place, we stand in some position, we engage with some people, we commit some acts, we turn and commit other acts, and we engage with some other people. Somehow, among all this ballet, the world still turns, and we still live upon it. For all their foolish sounding, Beckett's books do indeed have a meaning, that life is just the living of it.Beckett is a psychological master. His prose style will never be repeated. I'd call him the Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan of literature, a crude analogy, for which we should apologize, but it is one that we hope reflects the major impact of his work on the art, and his primacy among its literary practitioners.Beckett's work is random by no means. It is carefully crafted, and has an internal rhythm all its own. If a reader is willing to take off their shoes and run through the squishy mud of Beckett's life-swamp, so to speak, it is a joy to read and great fun to reflect upon. "Watt" is a good example of his work, relatively short, and relatively simple, but still likely to provoke great consternation among any who are not used to Beckett's gushing and admirable style, but great enjoyment among those who take it on its own life-affirming terms.Beckett is a great writer for those readers who seek a literary puzzle, a semantic challenge, and a story with a surreal whiff, which tells us how wonderful it is just to be alive, enjoying our time on earth. "Watt" is one of Beckett's more accessible and fun works.

Not what you think but how you think

In this novel, and in others, Mr.Samuel Beckett has succeeded (where psychologists and neurologists and neurotics have failed) in illuminating the workings of his own mind and, in so doing, the minds of others (roughly speaking, roughly speaking). The glossy coverings of plot and character, of authority and certainty, have been unscrewed and tossed aside, leaving naked and exposed more primitive and ancient mechanisms (and seeing virtually anybody nude, in certain lights and from certain angles, can be very funny, and so it is here). What is more, the words unfix themselves from their accustomed roles, their unargued meanings, and so become free to associate amongst themselves. I don't know, I'm not sure how to encourage a hesitant reader to buy this book...a quote: 'But our particular friends were the rats, that dwelt by the stream. They were long and black. We brought them such titbits from our ordinary as rinds of cheese, and morsels of gristle, and we brought them also birds' eggs, and frogs, and fledgelings. Sensible of these attentions, they would come flocking round us at our approach, with every sign of confidence and affection, and glide up our trouser-legs, and hang upon our breasts. And then we would sit down in the midst of them, and give them to eat, out of our hands, of a nice fat frog, or a baby thrush. Or seizing suddenly a plump young rat, resting in our bosom after its repast, we would feed it to its mother, or its father, or its brother, or its sister, or to some less fortunate relative. It was on these occasions, we agreed, after an exchange of views, that we came nearest to God.' Part III, paragraphs 15 & 16.

Wait, Watt, What? Beckett and the power of the human brain

The irony of Watt is that the readers are looking for a meaning and Beckett is trying to tell the reader that there is no meaning, but telling this has a meaning. Sense you ask, has it passed me by? No, further you understand read the more make it will sense. The frustration with this masterpiece (gasp) felt by critics and students is an example of the trouble with trying to categorize the novel, which by the way, Beckett intends (I feel). He intends to reveal life cannot be categorized, or at least should not be and the search for meaning is frustrating, but not meaningless. Am I contradicting myself? Good. I believe Watt is immeasurably profound, but I will not go on about it, because I'm sure some/most (close 'em and point) of what I'm saying is just self-interpretation. But. Pay attention, however, to these ideas: Meaninglessness, Circularity, Diminishment, Existence of God (knott (not), dog, etc), the significance of Beckett's form, insertions (whoops) of sex, and the importance of ending the novel with the waiting-room. This is a dense novel that will make your brain hurt, so you must be prepared before you read it, but if you do, it will make you appreciate the beauty and power of the human brain.