How It Is

E117446

How It Is is a late experimental novel by Samuel Beckett that explores fragmented consciousness through disjointed, minimalist prose and a mud-bound narrator’s monologue.

All labels observed (1)

Label Occurrences
How It Is canonical 1

How this entity was disambiguated

Statements (45)

Predicate Object
instanceOf experimental novel
novel
adaptation radio adaptation
stage adaptation
author Samuel Beckett
centralCharacter unnamed narrator
countryOfOrigin Ireland
criticalReception regarded as one of Beckett’s most challenging works
followedBy Texts for Nothing
form prose
genre modernist literature
postmodern literature
hasCharacter Pim
hasTranslation English translation by Samuel Beckett
influencedBy Samuel Beckett’s earlier trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)
language French
literaryMovement avant-garde
modernism
postmodernism
medium print
motif darkness
mud
voice and voicelessness
narrativeForm first-person monologue
narrativeStyle fragmented prose
minimalist prose
stream of consciousness
notableFeature absence of conventional punctuation
elliptical syntax
repetitive phrasing
originalTitle Comment c’est
partOf Samuel Beckett’s late prose
philosophicalAspect existential questioning of self and other
publicationDate 1961
publisher Les Éditions de Minuit
setting indeterminate mud-bound landscape
structure three-part division
unpunctuated blocks of text
subjectMatter human existence in extremis
inner monologue of a crawling figure in mud
theme communication and its breakdown
fragmented consciousness
isolation
memory and its unreliability
suffering

How these facts were elicited

Referenced by (1)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Samuel Beckett notableWork How It Is