william_kent

Well-known member
It totally resists being "worked out" too. It doesn't even feel like that's an option. Any possible interpretation you come up with will be lacking.

It doesn't stop people trying - there used to be a joke that there were more dissertations written about Beckett than any other author
 

catalog

Well-known member
I just started reading molloy this morning. Only a few pages in but it's pretty strong.

It's like he's doing apophenia but with words, taking generic basic elements and spinning mythologies out of them.

Sort of this wrong footing thing going on as well, you get these jolts where he suddenly says something a big distressing or profound.

I like it a lot already, its definitely reminiscent of Joyce but much more basic and easy to follow.
 

version

Well-known member
It's somehow both basic and incredibly dense The constant corrections and cancelling out of things has a strange effect, like what's been said about simultaneous opposites in Finnegans Wake, e.g. a character that's both short and tall.
 

catalog

Well-known member
The few pages from this morning also had this quality of being really funny for a bit, thought provoking, but then you get a really sad bit, like when he stops to talk to one of the loitering guys and all of a sudden the guys in a hurry, when he wasn't before. He's good at delivering the crushing blow. Or turning the good laugh into the crushing blow
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
It's somehow both basic and incredibly dense The constant corrections and cancelling out of things has a strange effect, like what's been said about simultaneous opposites in Finnegans Wake, e.g. a character that's both short and tall.
Think he got the simultaneous opposite bits from Vico Giambattista, who I've read is crucial to understanding the Wake. 'Contranyms' or 'Janus words', more common in ancient languages better suited to ambiguity.

Dont fret the run time, if youre interested the contranym talk it comes up within the first ten minutes.
 

version

Well-known member
Think he got the simultaneous opposite bits from Vico Giambattista, who I've read is crucial to understanding the Wake. 'Contranyms' or 'Janus words', more common in ancient languages better suited to ambiguity.
You read this yet?

 

catalog

Well-known member
not listened to that podcast yet but...

do you both know about

enantiodromia

/ɪˌnantɪə(ʊ)ˈdrəʊmɪə,ɛˌnantɪə(ʊ)ˈdrəʊmɪə/

noun
RARE

the tendency of things to change into their opposites, especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and of psychological development.
"the remorseless enantiodromia between good luck and bad"

i'm sure i first read the word in VALIS by PKD, or possibly the exegesis which i tried to read a few years ago...

similar thing no?
 

catalog

Well-known member
also i read a bit more beckett this morning and the opposition of him to joyce brought to mind this observation by luka:

I a,ways think of miles and Coltrane as an archetypal dyad with miles on a horizontal axis and Coltrane on a vertical. Coltrane trying to bust through the ceiling and transcend, miles exploring the territory

so in this same schema, joyce is like miles, "exploring the territory", literally walking the city and feeling it out, going into all the nooks and crannies of it (and his mind).

whereas beckett is like, fuck that, i'll sit in this room and look at one cloud and two people in the distance and it will all come to me that way - not so much busting through the ceiling as diving down into hell?

i had another idea related to it, to do with nietzsche... which one of them is inside and which is outside? or is it like a quadrant: inside to outside as the binary limits of the horizontal.
 

william_kent

Well-known member
i had another idea related to it, to do with nietzsche... which one of them is inside and which is outside? or is it like a quadrant: inside to outside as the binary limits of the horizontal.

My memories of the Trilogy is that it is a journey inward, each book moves further into the interior of the mind, the outside becomes more distant with each volume - there are hints at this before the Trilogy as Murphy ties himself to a rocking chair in an attempt to enter a state of nothingness..
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
I read Murphy not too long ago. At times it was great, other times it didn't completely connect. Its played more straight than Molloy- traditionally comic, semi sensible plot- and I think that was the disconnect. At times the humor felt too urbane and of the times to register. Very short and, for the most part, easy to read, so Ill probably give it another go some time.
 
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william_kent

Well-known member
I read Murphy not too long ago. At times it was great, other times it didn't completely connect. Its played more straight than Molloy- traditionally comic, semi sensible plot- and I think that was the disconnect. At times the humor felt to urbane and of the times to register. Very short and, for the most part, easy to read, so Ill probably give it another go some time.

It's probably as near to a conventional novel as you're going to get with Beckett, unless some earlier attempts are unearthed
 

catalog

Well-known member
My memories of the Trilogy is that it is a journey inward, each book moves further into the interior of the mind, the outside becomes more distant with each volume - there are hints at this before the Trilogy as Murphy ties himself to a rocking chair in an attempt to enter a state of nothingness..
Right. I feel like Joyce was saying fuck you to the modernist literary establishment by telling them that heaven and hell could also be found in Dublin.

And beckett extends the fuck you and says all you need is a room, but inevitably some kind of pessimism rules him.

I think possibly the historical context is worth considering: Joyce is writing after michelson-morley discredit aether as a fifth element, humanity is riding high before the madness of the first total war. Alan Moore talks about how 1888 birthed the 20th century, people thought they had worked it out.

Whereas beckett is interwar, he's seen what's happened and can see whats to come and he knows its worse. So he's gutting the culture from inside out, revealing the facade. I love that line early on where he says he came out of a hole in his mother's arse and his first taste was shit. He just drops it in, amongst the flowery prose. Deadly.
 

william_kent

Well-known member
have you read the three novels?

A long time ago - I read Murphy, Watt, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, How It Is, Mercier and Camier, plus some of the short fiction and plays.. some bits I've forgotten, others stuck with me, but I feel that the time is drawing near where I will re-read them as I'm sure that I will appreciate them more second time around...
 

william_kent

Well-known member
And beckett extends the fuck you and says all you need is a room, but inevitably some kind of pessimism rules him.

I seem to remember he takes it further - Molloy only needs a room, Malone Dies only needs a bed, and The Unnamable doesn't need a setting at all..
 

catalog

Well-known member
Beckett is clearly the inside, Dionysus, will etc. Joyce is Apollo. They are even basically father son.

Im sort of seeing a globe and beckett is tunnelling inside it, from North Pole to South, trying to get out the other side.

And Joyce is bezzing round the surface, planes, trains and automobiles all over the place.

So if it was atomic behaviour, beckett would be the proton in the middle and Joyce would be the electron round the edge
 

version

Well-known member
Samuel-Beckett.jpg
 

version

Well-known member
Beckett is clearly the inside, Dionysus, will etc. Joyce is Apollo. They are even basically father son.

Im sort of seeing a globe and beckett is tunnelling inside it, from North Pole to South, trying to get out the other side.

And Joyce is bezzing round the surface, planes, trains and automobiles all over the place.

So if it was atomic behaviour, beckett would be the proton in the middle and Joyce would be the electron round the edge
Who's the neutron?
 
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