Mercier and Camier is a novel by Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

.
Written immediately before his celebrated 'trilogy' of Molloy

Molloy (novel)

Molloy is a novel by Samuel Beckett. The English translation is by Beckett and Patrick Bowles.-Plot introduction:On first appearance the book concerns two different characters, both of whom have interior monologues in the book. As the story moves along the two characters are distinguished by name...

, Malone Dies

Malone Dies

Malone Dies is a novel by Samuel Beckett. It was first published in 1951, in French, as Malone Meurt, and later translated into English by the author....

and The Unnamable

The Unnamable (novel)

The Unnamable is a 1953 novel by Samuel Beckett. It is the third and final entry in Beckett's "Trilogy" of novels, which begins with Molloy followed by Malone Dies. It was originally published in French as L'Innommable and later adapted by the author into English...

, Mercier et Camier (1946, translated in 1974) was Beckett's first attempt at extended prose fiction in French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

. It features the 'pseudocouple' Mercier and his friend the private investigator Camier, and their repeated attempts to leave a city (a thinly disguised version of Dublin) only to abandon their journey and return. Frequent visits are paid to "Helen's Place", a bawdy house modelled on that of legendary Dublin madam Becky Cooper (much like Becky Cooper, Helen has a talking parrot). A much-changed Watt

Watt (novel)

Watt was Samuel Beckett's second published novel in English, largely written on the run in the south of France during the Second World War and published by Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press in 1953...

makes a cameo appearance, bringing his stick down on a pub table and yelling 'Fuck life!'.

Beckett withheld the novel from publication until 1970. The English translation that followed in 1974 featured substantial alterations and deletions from the original text.

External links

• Keith Ridgway on Mercier and Camier Guardian 19 July 2003