Saturday, May 20, 2006

Waiting for Beckett

Ian Brown amends his resolution to read the complete works of Samuel Beckett and then write about them, deciding instead to read them all in a single day. "But having done it, I can tell you this: It doesn't make any difference. I imagined Beckett would approve."

By the sounds of it, Brown could've saved himself the better part of a day and spent an hour or so banging his head against the wall to similar effect.

...by the time he gets to The Unnamable, Beckett is content to simply slam your head repeatedly into the thick planks of linguistic hopelessness, proving again and again how meaningless meaning can be.


I've never read Beckett apart from that little Godot thing, but this essay makes me want to wallow in the whole mess of it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh that Ian Brown! I do like that man. I find him to be quite delish.

And me, Godot is as far as I'll go.