Published in French in 1961, and in English in 1964,
'How It Is'' is a novel in three parts, written in short
paragraphs, which tell (abruptly, cajolingly, bleakly)
of a narrator lying in the dark, in the mud, repeating
his life as he hears it uttered - or remembered - by
another voice. Told from within, from the dark, the
story is tirelessly and intimately explicit about the
feelings that pervade his world, but fragmentary and
vague about all else therein or beyond. Together with
''Molloy'', ''How It Is'' counts for many readers as
Beckett's greatest accomplishment in the novel form. It
is also his most challenging narrative, both
stylistically and for the pessimism of its vision, which
continues the themes of reduced circumstance, of another
life before the present, and the self-appraising search
for an essential self, which were inaugurated in the
great prose narratives of his earlier trilogy.She sits
aloof ten yards fifteen yards, She looks up looks at me
says at last to herself all is well, He is working my
head, Where is my head, It rests on the table, My hand
trembles on the table, She sees I am not sleeping, The
wind blows tempestuous, The little clouds drive before
it, The table glides from light to darkness, Darkness to
light. This title is edited by Edouard Magessa
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