A Closer Look Book Club meets throughout the year to discuss novels and other works of fiction. To participate in a Book Club conversation, all you need to do is read the book and then join us in the Dorothy Rubel Room at the Poetry Center. Copies of books are available for purchase at the Poetry Center’s gift kiosk. No sign-up is necessary: the Club is free and open to the public, and you’re welcome to participate in as many or as few meetings as you like. For more information, email Cybele Knowles at knowles@email.arizona.edu.

This spring, the Book Club continues reading narratives translated into English.

Molloy, first published in French in 1951 and in English (the translation was by Beckett himself) in 1955, is the stand-alone first novel in a trilogy widely regarded as Samuel Beckett’s most important, nondramatic work and one of the most essential works of twentieth-century literature. It concerns two protagonists, Molloy and Moran, unknown to one another but closely conjoined, both of whom set out on an excursion into the countryside on a mission. Is the mission from God or an agency or some other supervisory author? The Irish author living in Paris invented two characters motivated by curious imperatives, an inevitable course, and a famously remarkable sense of perseverance. It is a darkly comic and often coarse novel, unique and stunning to this day for its accomplishments. Our discussion of Molloy will be led by poet and teacher Brian Blanchfield.