How It Is (Comment c’est, 1961; English version 1964) by Samuel Beckett (Type of Work)

 

How It Is (Comment c’est, 1961; English version 1964)

by Samuel Beckett

(Type of Work) 

Type of Work — How It Is by Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett’s How It Is (1961; English translation 1964) resists easy classification within traditional literary categories. While it is published and labeled as a novel, the work deliberately dismantles the formal conventions normally associated with prose fiction. Instead, How It Is occupies a hybrid literary space, combining elements of the modernist and postmodernist novel, prose poetry, existential philosophy, and experimental narrative. Its type of work is best understood as an avant-garde existential prose narrative that challenges the very idea of what a novel can be.

 

At its most basic level, How It Is is a novel of consciousness rather than action. There is no conventional plot, no chronological progression, and no stable setting beyond the abstract environment of darkness and mud. Events do not unfold so much as repeat, fragment, and dissolve. This places the work firmly within the tradition of anti-narrative fiction, a form that rejects linear storytelling in favor of representing the raw flow of thought and perception. Beckett is not interested in what happens, but in how existence is experienced from within a suffering mind.

 

Formally, the work resembles prose poetry as much as it does a novel. The text abandons punctuation, paragraphing, and standard sentence structure. Language appears in rhythmic bursts, repetitions, and broken phrases, mimicking breath, effort, and mental exhaustion. This stylistic choice aligns How It Is with modernist experiments in language, while pushing them to an extreme that anticipates postmodern minimalism. The work is not meant to be read smoothly; it is meant to be endured, much like the existence it portrays.

 

Philosophically, How It Is belongs to the tradition of existential and absurdist literature. Like Beckett’s earlier and later works, it presents a universe without transcendence, moral order, or ultimate meaning. Human relationships are reduced to cycles of domination and submission, and identity is shown to be unstable and reversible. However, unlike traditional existential novels that still rely on recognizable characters or social contexts, How It Is strips existence down to its barest elements: body, pain, memory, and voice. In this sense, the work functions as a metaphysical meditation rendered in narrative form.

 

The novel is also an example of late modernist experimental fiction, marking Beckett’s continued movement away from realism and toward radical abstraction. Earlier novels still retained traces of setting, character history, and dialogue. How It Is largely abandons these remnants, presenting instead a near-total collapse of narrative scaffolding. This places the work at the far edge of literary experimentation, where the novel becomes an inquiry into whether narration itself can survive meaninglessness.

 

In conclusion, How It Is is best classified not simply as a novel, but as an experimental existential prose work—a fusion of fiction, philosophy, and poetic language. Its type of work reflects Beckett’s central artistic project: to explore what remains when plot, structure, and certainty are stripped away. What remains, Beckett suggests, is the voice—fragmented, suffering, persistent—speaking because silence would mean nonexistence.