beckett: C or D, S/D

Search also the remarkably good The Whole Thing's Coming Out Of The Dark.

Lucky's monologue from "Godot" is one of my favorite things I learned in high school. I still use the beginning of it ("Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattman...") as a microphone check.

the stories are fantastic. fantastic.

I'm interested in how far you got before you decided that it is like Finnegan's Wake and unreadable.

See, it makes me laugh that the whole trilogy is my favourite work - it really is - but I have never managed to finish it. I've read 'Molloy' and 'Malone Dies' and half of 'The Unnameable' several times but I never get to the end exactly. The thing is, with any other writer I'd feel like a fraud saying it was my favourite book, but here it seems appropriate.

(I have probably read right up to the end of 'The Unnameable', on the toilet, reading random pages. What I mean is when I start from page 1 and deliberately continue I never make it to the last page. But I have read the last page, and nearly every page that comes before it, if not every page that comes before it. I do think that the book is designed to prevent you being able to reach the last page, as it is partly about the human inability to countenance, or observe, the idea of 'a last page' even when it is the thing most desired etc.)

So my question is: at what point did you give up? The first time I read it, although I was loving it, I kind of petered out towards the end of the first part, Molloy, cos I was young and confused enough to be wondering "What is the point? Why does someone have the job of following Molloy?," looking for allegories and clues that weren't there.

that and the pleasure of reading the prose close up. I mentioned the finnegans wake thing before also because of some other piece of criticism I read, maybe in the 'I can't go on' anthology intro, that likened what beckett was doing in the novels and elsewhere to what he praised joyce for in his essay on the wake: sort of making the language concrete (er I have restated it incredibly poorly but).

That would be great embroidered on a pillow.

the moran half, on the other hand, went by fairly quickly.

I seem to have stopped in 'malone dies' in much the same way I did in 'molloy'.

coincidentally, I am also stopped somewhere in 'watt'. and 'waiting for godot', which I feel seriously unaffected by. I would really like to go on to 'endgame' or 'krapp's last tape', but I insist on finishing fucking 'godot' first, it would hardly take much.

the forest section at the end of the first part of 'molloy' is so brilliant that I intend to someday make my students read it alongside descarte's discourse on method.

search: 'endgame' and 'mercier and camier' and 'now ho on' (or something) the latter being a collection of short stories. this is all i have read. hopefully will be able to find a copy of the trilogy second hand.

D: I never much got into the very early stuff -- More Pricks than Kicks, Watt (although I was intrigued by the "maths" stuff that someone above complained about), etc. I haven't read most of the plays because i prefer seeing them to reading them.

the texts for nothing: sheesh. when I first got stuck in molloy I thought to go on from the pre-trilogy stories to the texts for nothing, but just couldn't make myself go on.

!!!

going on happens in halting spasms, kind of like molloy walking.

Godot works much better watched. Get a video.

http://www.beckettonfilm.com/

I'm thinking about saving up for this, as I'll probably never see most of them performed on stage.

A Genius friend of mine swears by "How it is" being his greatest work though i have never been able to read more than a few pages - a novel narrated by a man as he sinks into quicksand and struggles for breath? too much for me.

The trilogy is one of my all-time favourite prose works, taking Cartesian doubt to its absolute extreme. I didn't find it particularly hard going, not even The Unnameable.

Of the film series mentioned above, Krapp's Last Tape was OK, Godot better.

plus stole his ideas from schopenhauer (who was funny).

Happy Days, Not I, and Krapp's Last Tape more or less convinced me to give up playwriting. I've seen a brilliant performance of Act Without Words I, and seeing it is really the only way to "get" it.

(yeah i agree Morbs--the performances can make the difference)

The novel I mentioned, Murphy, is really bitchily clever (and the "harder," more serious novels that make up the "triology" are loaded with good ol' irish bawdy scatological humor -- esp. "Molloy"), full of wordplay and sarcasm.

And obv. Godot has the rhythms/characters of a vaudeville routine (the excitement with which they decide to hang themselves is classic) (and the introduction of Pozzo always makes me laugh -- I generally imagine him played by Jon Lovitz and continually saying "I'm Pozzo!"). To an small extent, the impact of the second act is derived from its repeating the first act but with the funny bits sucked out.

anyway, i dropped outta theater school so's i wouldn't have to think about this stuff anymore. but i make an exception for Beckett.

"

I also saw Godot w/ Steve Martin (good Didi) and Robin Williams (better Gogo).

i saw a video of the martin/williams Godot and I think i had the opposite reaction (willaims was a bit too "robin williams-y" while martin had the right level of pathos) (i also thought the stage was too cluttered but that's sort of unrelated)

As the blod sez 'Words and music' has a later version scored by Morton Feldman, which is pretty classic - its quite diff to anything he ws getting up to back then (and yet its still Feldman).

Please note: I'm not prepared to argue this very strongly.

the thing w/'words and music' is the music is sounds so much better (only given one listen to the '62 versh so far) (i know im comparing morton feldman w/Beckett's cousin but still) and i ws never annoyed by the acting although it sounds v erm, precious. xp

there ws an item on "the culture show" by Alastair Macgowan that ws about this relationship between comedians and Beckett - "Bottom" ws one of the examples used.

And who was the only actor featured in his only film?

(Film is kind of a failure in that it def. requires additional texts to "understand" or "appreciate" it, but i still like it)

ha, wrestle with? you're getting beat over the head with it (hey, just like...)

aside from the fact that i could barely keep my eyes open, i felt sort of the way i might at a dave matthews concert - i don't really belong here anymore

I made my class read "Dante & The Lobster" last fall and they were in stiches by the time we got to the end. It helps if you're reading it aloud.

Though it's been a little while since i saw it, and i could definitely be wrong. hence the cop-out scare quotes.

Actually, I probably am wrong, but i think you'd at least have to already like and know Beckett's work to enjoy Film.

Film is available for download on UBU now.

But Beckett isn't a philosopher, he's an artist. I wouldn't apply T.S. Eliot's judgment of Henry james ("He had a mind so fine no idea could violate it") to Beckett, but anyone extracting higher significance from his work besides life-is-shit-so-let's-crack-sour-jokes is clearly majoring in the wrong field.

Special Beckett centenary section in the Guardian (complete with quiz):

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/beckett/0,,1751466,00.html

"Well done: you clearly know your Beckett, well enough to know how meaningless such achievements are"

"Well done: you clearly know your Beckett, well enough to know how meaningless such achievements are"

Christ, what a planet!

http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/images/2006/04/16/2EyhgCSU.jpg

but ask me in september.

Watched the Beckett On Film version last night -- never read or saw the play -- and liked Gambon OK, even more David Thewlis and the pair playing the parents in the trashcans. They got all the laughs that were there. (As a sad counterpoint, both Gambon and Thewlis are in the Omen remake that comes out today.)

Surprisingly good among the disc's shorts was Anthony Minghella directing Play, with Alan Rickman, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Juliet Stevenson as a potted love triangle. You'd never know from the pixillated, jagged style that A.M. had done those last few crap big movies.

there are a couple gems on that Beckett on Film set, but a lotta duds.

Welcome to 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWY3wuYiTM8

The delightful utopian joy of Beckett is a welcome bit of escapism from 2020 tbh.

There are a lot of laughs in there tbf.