Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Molloy

MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-1

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Segment 1

[1144] my appetite. [1145] My appetite! [1146] What a subject. For conversation. [1148] I had
hardly any. I ate like a thrush. But the little I did eat I devoured
with a voracity usually attributed to heavy eaters, and wrongly, for
heq [place = overwritten] avy eaters as a rule eat ponderously and with method, that follows
from the very notion of heavy eater [place = supralinear] []eating.
[1149] Whereas I flung myself at the
Eintopf [place = supralinear] []mess, swallowed [place = supralinear] []gulped down the half or the quarter of it in two mouthfuls worthy
of a fish of prey, I mean
without chewing (with what would I have chewed?) [place = inline] ,
then pushed it from me with loathing.

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Segment 2

[1150] One would have thought I ate to
live!
[1151] Similarly I would engulf five or six Imperial pints of porter [place = supralinear] []mugs of beer with
one gulp [place = supralinear] swig, then drink nothing for a week.
[1152] What do you expect, one is what
one is, partly at least.
[1153] Nothing or little to be done. [1154] Now as to the
substances she insinuated thus into my various systems, I could not say
whether they were stimulants or whether they were not rather depressants.

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Segment 3

[1155] The truth is, kinaesthetically [place = supralinear] []coenaesthetically speaking of course, I felt more or less
the same as usual, viz — betrayal! — [place = supralinear] []that is to say, if I may give myself away, so terror-stricken that in a
sense I lost the power
[place = supralinear] []I was virtually bereft of feeling, not to say [place = supralinear] of consciousness, and drowned
in a deep and merciful torpor shot with brief abominable gleams, I give
you my word.
[1156] Against such harmony of what avail the miserable molys of
Lousse, administered in infinitesimal doses probably, to draw the pleasure
out.

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Segment 4

[1157] Not that they remained entirely without effc [place = overwritten] e [place = supralinear] ct, no, that woud [place = overwritten] ld be
an exaggeration.
[1158] For from time to time I caught myself making a little
lep [place = supralinear] []bound in the air, two or three feet off the ground at least, at least, I
who never leaped [place = supralinear] []bounded.
[1159] It looked like levitation. [1160] And it happened too, what
was
less surprising [place = supralinear] []ly, when I was walking, or even propped up against
something, that I suddenly collapsed, like a puppet when its strings are
dropped, and lay long where I fell, literally boneless.

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Segment 5

[1161] Yes, that seemed
to me
[place = supralinear] struck me as less strange [place = inline] , for I was used to collapsing thus, but with this difference,
that I felt it coming, and prepared myself accordingly, as an epileptic
will [place = supralinear] []does when he feels the fit coming on.
[1162] I mean that knowing I was going

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