murphy (beckett)

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just finished reading this,and i was wondering what people thought of it
normally if i don't follow exactly what's going on in a book it pisses me off and i don't bother,but in this there were long passages where i had no real idea what was going on but i persevered
some of the writing is genuinely beautiful,some fucking hilarious
looking back i suppose i know what was going on in a very basic sense,but it was quite confusing at times
so anyway,did anyone else find themselves perplexed by it?
what did you think in general
etc

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

beckett: C or D, S/D

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 14:34 (twenty-two years ago)

"on this basis the patients were described as "cut off" from reality,from the rudimentary blessings of the layman's reality,if not altogether,as in the severer cases,then in several fundamental respects.the function of the treatment was to bridge the gulf,translate the sufferer from his own pernicious little private dungheap to the glorious world of discrete particles,where it would be his inestimable prerogative once again to wonder,love,hate,desire,rejoice and howl in a reasonable balanced manner,and comfort himself with the company of others in the same predicament"

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 14:39 (twenty-two years ago)

i know yeah julio,not much about murphy though

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 14:40 (twenty-two years ago)

"he was a low-sized,clean shaven,grey-faced,one-eyed man,triorchous and a non-smoker.he had a curious hunted walk,like that of a destitute diabetic in a strange city.he never sat down and never took off his hat"

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 14:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember starting to hate it violently when I read it, but I can't remember why.

― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 14:57 (twenty-two years ago)

"had he any further questions before he was passed on to ticklepenny?

there was a silence,bim liking the look of murphy less and less,murphy racking his brains for plausible curiosity"

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 15:03 (twenty-two years ago)

everything is so beautifully described,at times its almost smart arsed,but he gets away with it

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 15:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I loved it, and I think it's where I'd probably recommend anyone to start with SB.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 20:36 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.studiofoglio.com/1.graphics.products/buck/buckshirt.gif

― Dada, Thursday, 10 July 2003 00:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah I loved it too, it's fun to read sentences that repay instant rereading

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 10 July 2003 01:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Guy Beckett / Beckett Guy to thread

― the pinefox, Thursday, 10 July 2003 14:08 (twenty-two years ago)

seven years pass...

"the sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

― Phelan Nulty (Local Garda), Thursday, 12 May 2011 10:55 (fourteen years ago)

I love that line

― corey, Thursday, 12 May 2011 11:17 (fourteen years ago)

two years pass...

http://shihlun.tumblr.com/post/53258987417/samuel-becketts-working-manuscript-for-murphy

― 乒乓, Tuesday, 18 June 2013 11:24 (twelve years ago)

wow, cool.

― Shamrock Shoe (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 18 June 2013 11:27 (twelve years ago)

I loved this book but I can't remember a thing about it

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 18 June 2013 11:32 (twelve years ago)

probably by design

― 乒乓, Tuesday, 18 June 2013 11:37 (twelve years ago)

the chess player towards the end has stuck with me. sort of anticipates the rise of computers, maybe.

i think there's probably a good essay to be written on the appeal that the game of chess held to modernist writers, how they never lived to see the advent of the computer, maybe surmise what they might have made of it.

― 乒乓, Tuesday, 18 June 2013 11:50 (twelve years ago)

Depends on the modernist writer. I can see Eliot thinking, "Computer? Pshaw. I've got God."

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 18 June 2013 11:53 (twelve years ago)

Hugh Kenner's The Counterfeiters gets into turing - games - automata - modernism (along with a lot else) but I don't think uses chess directly. (i might be misremembering; seems perverse to miss out the mechanical turk).

― woof, Tuesday, 18 June 2013 12:27 (twelve years ago)

aw i love kenner, i will have to check that out

― 乒乓, Tuesday, 18 June 2013 12:28 (twelve years ago)

oh, Beckett's in there too.

I def would if you're into Kenner - he called it his favourite of his books, and it's got an amazing amount going on in a small space. It makes me sad there aren't more books like it.

― woof, Tuesday, 18 June 2013 12:33 (twelve years ago)

elias canetti's auto-da-fé has some bits about chess, i can't remember exactly in what way he discusses it though.

― Shamrock Shoe (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 18 June 2013 12:49 (twelve years ago)

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