Context
Reading Beckett’s Fiction
R. M. Berry
Early in part I of Beckett’s novel Molloy, the following sentence appears: "Now my sick leg, I forget which, it’s immaterial here. . . ." It’s
not hard to figure out why this sentence sounds peculiar. There is a
competing sense or echo created by the unintended reference of the
pronoun "it" to "my sick leg." Although in saying "it’s immaterial" the
narrator ostensibly means to be done with the sick leg, to dismiss
questions of right or left as irrelevant, the form in which he
expresses his dismissal seems to resist or undo his aim, almost to
unsay it. The sick leg returns as an echo. Instead of his intended
meaning, the words literally say that the sick leg has been
etherealized, its physicality dispersed, and this disappearing act
seems to have occurred right "here" before our eyes, in the sentence
we’re reading.
