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Samuel Beckett
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Dream of Fair to Middling Women: A Novel (Arcade Classics) Paperback – September 1, 2012

by Samuel Beckett (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 17 ratings
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Samuel Beckett’s first novel and “literary landmark” (St. Petersburg Times), Dream of Fair to Middling Women is a wonderfully savory introduction to the Nobel Prize–winning author. Written in the summer of 1932, when the twenty-six-year-old Beckett was poor and struggling to make ends meet, the novel offers a rare and revealing portrait of the artist as a young man. Later on, Beckett would call the novel “the chest into which I threw all my wild thoughts.” When he submitted it to several publishers, all of them found it too literary, too scandalous, or too risky; it was never published during his lifetime.  

As the story begins, Belacqua—a young version of Molloy, whose love is divided between two women, Smeraldina-Rima and the little Alba—“wrestles with his lusts and learning across vocabularies and continents, before a final ‘relapse into Dublin’” (The New Yorker). Youthfully exuberant and visibly influenced by Joyce, Dream of Fair to Middling Women is a work of extraordinary virtuosity. Beckett delights in the wordplay and sheer joy of language that mark his later work. Above all, the story brims with the black humor that, like brief stabs of sunlight, pierces the darkness of his vision.
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  1. Print length
    264 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Arcade Publishing
  4. Publication date
    September 1, 2012
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.66 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1611457580
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1611457582
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Beckett’s signature fierceness and piercing insight into the lurching of the mind are already evident in this early yet adept, high-energy, and boisterously libidinous novel.” (Booklist)

About the Author

Samuel Beckett was born in Ireland in 1906. His plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame revolutionized modern theater, and his trilogy—Molloy, Mallone Dies, and The Unnamable—ranks among the major works of twentieth-century fiction. He died in Paris in 1989.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Arcade Publishing; Reprint edition (September 1, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1611457580
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1611457582
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.66 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 17 ratings

About the author

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Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

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Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He was educated at Portora Royal School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1927. His made his poetry debut in 1930 with Whoroscope and followed it with essays and two novels before World War Two. He wrote one of his most famous plays, Waiting for Godot, in 1949 but it wasn't published in English until 1954. Waiting for Godot brought Beckett international fame and firmly established him as a leading figure in the Theatre of the Absurd. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Beckett continued to write prolifically for radio, TV and the theatre until his death in 1989.

Photo by Roger Pic [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
17 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Bartolo
5.0 out of 5 stars Early, polysyllabic Beckett
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2007
A one-star review should not be allowed to stand alone for this book, though I may provide inadequate challenge. A fan in particular of early Beckett, i.e. of "Murphy," and of the first part of "Watt" which features a certain Mr. Hackett, I found this exuberant, flamboyant exercise in quasi-poetic comic prose almost their equal. There are individual sentences to savor, for words-as-music (if one consider string quartets and oompah bands both musical), that describe outrageously comic situations and personae with an almost ferocious originality. Yes, the work's style, certainly the hero's stream-of-consciousness interlude, owes quite a bit to Joyce, but Beckett's signature dark humor is already richly manifest. Bleakness expressed in richness, buffoonery in elegant phrases, in color and obvious love of the medium. Beckett may have outdone Joyce in a cheeky display of authorial devices whereby he breaks boundaries of fiction and inserts himself, reveals the writing process, etc. All of this scrambles along, full of surprises, without the least pretentiousness but only the enthusiastic abandon of breakneck youth.

This would be a feast for a literary polyglot, but even if, like me, you don't understand much Latin, little French and less German and Italian, and aren't familiar with, or sure of the meanings of words like

catastasis

expunction

emergal

pleroma

erethisms

gedankenflucht

postil

chiappate

mollecone

turbary

dephlogisticate

cang

genau

multipara

pucelle

lanugo

coryza

apodasis

ipsissimosity

ausgeschlossen

exornation

dehiscence

fauces

coenaesthesis

arcitenens

speculum

didcalced

narquois

maneen

lancinated

unprevisible

bawn

pinace

agenesia

or

crassamenta,

you may still enjoy this book tremendously. Such was, is, the infectious work of a young literary and comic genius.

For particulars of plot, consult the editorial reviews above.

The book shines fresh as rainwater. If you haven't yet, read "Murphy" first, then this one.
30 people found this helpful
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Don Quixote
3.0 out of 5 stars First Steps in Prose
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2022
On page 133 of this novel, you’ll read, “The only unity in this story is, please God, an involuntary unity.” Beckett wrote _Dream of Fair to Middling Women_ in 1932, but no publisher would touch it. It was only 60 years later that the novel appeared, roughly three years after the author’s death.

Some will argue that this book is for completists, and that is a sound argument. I am a completist myself. Now that I have finished this novel, I have read everything that Beckett wrote except the miscellaneous texts collected in _Disjecta_. I neither loved nor hated _Dream of Fair to Middling Women_. The first third of the novel I found exquisite; after that, I continued reading because I remain faithful to the book I’ve started. Beyond my subjective experience, I recognize that there is great merit to this novel, especially when we consider that Beckett continued to go back to it as he produced his later work.

This is the novel that introduced Belacqua, with whom you are familiar if you’ve read Beckett’s short prose. We read, specifically, about his relationships with two women: Smeraldina-Rima and Alba. Belacqua’s exchanges with these fair to middling women feature a long chain of absurd and sometimes even hilarious episodes. One conclusion that might be drawn from the events described is that romantic relationships are incredibly dangerous and most often lead to disappointment. As I have said elsewhere, my worldview couldn’t be more different from Beckett’s, and still I love his work because it never fails to make me laugh.

I see three phases in Beckett’s development as a narrator. The first phase, which includes of course the novel under consideration, _More Pricks Than Kicks_, _Murphy_, and _Mercier and Camier_, is relatively traditional and straightforwardly humorous. The influence of Joyce is impossible to miss. I would add _Watt_ to this group, even though it dates from the early fifties. The second phase consists of the trilogy, _Molloy_, _Malone Dies_, and _The Unnamable_. These are experimental novels, associated with the Nouveau Roman movement, which trace a progressive disintegration of traditional narrative as they assert the need to narrate. (I have reviewed these three novels, separately, here on Amazon, if you’re interested in more detailed assessments of them.) Finally, _How It Is_ and the pieces compiled in _Nohow On_ constitute the third phase, which represents Beckett’s most extreme experiments, a veritable anti-literature or literature of the unword.

For Beckett’s most important contribution to the development of narrative, I would explore the second phase, that is, the trilogy. If you like bold experimentation, you may want to go for the later texts. What does the first phase offer, then? Primarily, what you will find in these works is satire and parody; these are the contexts in which _Dream of Fair to Middling Women_ should be read if it is to be enjoyed. This text is a parody of the sentimental novel and of the novel of ideas, and it features wordplay directly inspired by Joyce, who is, among other things, one of the best satirists in the history of literature. One of my issues with _Dream of Fair to Middling Women_ is that does not rank well even within this first phase. These novels are good, some of them are even great, but Beckett simply had more to offer. As far as enjoyment goes, I enjoyed _Mercier and Camier_ (perhaps the novel that has made me laugh the most in my life) much more than I did _Molloy_, but there is no question that the latter is a more “important” novel. To those who have read the trilogy and would like to experience the best of Beckett’s early phase, I recommend _Mercier and Camier_ or _Watt_.

_Dream of Fair to Middling Women_ is a good exercise in style. Beckett did not want to see it published during his lifetime, but those of us who are interested in this author and in the development of his prose should be thankful that the novel is available. This is one of those books that must be read in the proper context. There are great passages in it, and the work as a whole shows promise. Who knows how Beckett’s narrative work would have developed had this book been accepted for publication in the early 30s? As many of us authors know, an initial rejection (which is absolutely unavoidable) may in the long run have better results than acceptance. As Beckett himself put it, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

My next book by Beckett will be the only one I’m missing: _Disjecta_.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the book!
One person found this helpful
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Bachelier
3.0 out of 5 stars Either I forget right away, or I never forget....
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2014
“It was midnight. Rain was beating against the window.” [It was not midnight. It was not raining]

He tossed the book to her.

“Have you read it?

“Yes.”

[He had not read it].

“Shall we review it?

“Yes, let’s review.”

[They do not type].

{What do you expect? A first novel is what one is, partly, at least}.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars ottimo
Reviewed in Italy on April 2, 2016
Verified Purchase
Ottimo stato del volume anche se usato. Vi è anche una dedica sulla pagina iniziale che rende il libro ancor più affascinante.
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Lotte-Lale
5.0 out of 5 stars Dream of Fair to Middling Women
Reviewed in Germany on May 1, 2014
Verified Purchase
The book was ordered as a gift, so I have not read it myself, but it is Samuel Beckett's first novel and that makes it interesting in itself. The packaging was not sufficiently protective and I wrote this to the shipper, who kindly offered to refund half of the price. I was very satisfied with the response of the shipper.
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Richard Warren
5.0 out of 5 stars Better than middling
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 11, 2013
Verified Purchase
Early Beckett is not everyone's taste - showy, obscure, artificially stuffed with recondite allusions, bits of imitation Joyce, etc., and is usually valued merely as a forerunner of the later themes in 'proper' Beckett texts. In this case too, it's often been assumed that all the best bits of this posthumously published novel were ransacked for the published collection of short stories, 'More Pricks than Kicks', making this an unnecessary read. But it turns out not to be so. 'Pricks' was clearly the fall back here. 'Dream' turns out to be a fresh and fully fledged novel, relatively little of it recycled in 'Pricks'. Rather than the loose thread to a series of tenuously related episodes in 'Pricks', Belacqua Shuah emerges as a consistent and rounded tragi-comic hero, and a worthy predecessor to Murphy. Brilliant. And often hilarious. Definitely not to be overlooked.
8 people found this helpful
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Tony Hyland
3.0 out of 5 stars The seed of greatness
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2017
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Entertaining fare and certainly worthwhile for the Beckett enthusiast as it sets the scene for the later,greater prose works-beautiful wordsmithery,gallows humour yet conveying a gravity of voice beyond his years -Joycean influence on display too .
3 people found this helpful
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Alessandro D'Onofrio
4.0 out of 5 stars A crazy enchanting novel (if you can still call it a novel)
Reviewed in Italy on August 11, 2016
Verified Purchase
This is the very first litterary effort by Mr Samuel Beckett. "Of course it stinks of Joyce, since it was written in that period of his life and of course it is naif, he was only 26. But still, if not a good first approach to the author, it's a good way to understand where his imaginary and inspiration you can find in his later novels and plays came from. A reviewer said: "to cope with this book you will need some French and German, a resident exegete of Dante, a good encyclopedia, OED, the patience of Job and your wits about you. [...] It's upphill all the way, but then so was the Calvary, and the view from the top redeems the pains taken."

Speriamo ci sia presto una versione italiana, questo romanzo certamente è un tassello importante che manca alla bibliografia italiana su Beckett.
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