I've just found out Beckett garnered a mention in Wisden.

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack obituary wrote:Samuel Barclay Beckett, who died in Paris on December 22, 1989, aged 83, had two first-class games for Dublin University against Northamptonshire in 1925and 1926, scoring 35 runs in his four innings and conceding 64 runs without taking a wicket. A left-hand opening batsman, possessing what he himself called a gritty defense, and a useful left-arm medium-pace bowler, he had enjoyed a distinguished all-round sporting as well as academic record at Portora Royal School, near Enniskillen, and maintained his interest in games while at Trinity College, Dublin. Indeed, Beckett, whose novels and plays established him as one of the important literary figures of the twentieth century, bringing him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969, never lost his affection for and interest in cricket.

Not Crap!

I saw four of his later monologues when I was in Dublin last year. I'm not a big fan of theatre, but this was something else. So sparse.

The use of blackout was insane. It was so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, so it had this very physical effect as your eyes adjusted. And then a lamp ever so slowly comes up on stage, and for the next forty minutes a man talks and occasionally shrugs his shoulders. It was incredibly intense. I've never seen anything like it.

And then there was 'Breath'. It's a 35 second piece which involves the lights coming up startlingly quickly on a stage "littered with miscellaneous rubbish", in this case bits and pieces of shop dummies stacked on top of each other.

Sure, it was pretentious, but it was jaw-dropping.

Beckett worked in a mode that proved to be pretty revolutionary. Taking inspiration from Racine, he would cut away everything apart from the bare bones of the dialogue and leave the reader to put together the ideas developed from it.

Since "minimalism" is applied to artists such as Tony Conrad, it would just as well be applicable to Beckett's style.

An interesting point is that he consciously chose to do this as a reaction against his early work, which was heavily influenced by Joyce's feasts of language. Joyce was a sort of father figure to him, and he must have felt the Freudian urge to murder the father!

I think is plays are fascinating. Not Crap.

Fascinating fellow with a incredible body of work. A lot of great, provoking, challenging stuff.

Holy fuck this guy has become my absolute favorite writer in the time between my posts on this thread. I now have a Beckett shelf of miscellaneous Beckett-related books and the collected works of the man. I don't think I've ever been so overwhelmed and impressed by a single writer. Not a bad line in the bunch. The later "trilogy" of short novels will not release its influence over my most recent writing, which is why I consistently have to force myself to not read anything Beckett-related even though otherwise I probably would. Really infects someone trying to write or even read another writer's work, at least in my eyes. Best/worst thing to happen to literature.

Got the Beckett on Film boxset recently. Very nicely handled, considering Beckett never wanted anything but Film on film. Done with care and true admiration rather than profit, the box set is on the whole an excellent representation of Beckett's theater work, especially if you haven't seen any or as much as you would have liked to.

Plus, John Hurt as Krapp? NOT CRAP.

Seek it out, worth the coin.

N/C

I've only read the earlier prose so far. 'Dante and the Lobster' is my favourite short story by any author.

I'm looking forward to working my way through to the more minimalist stuff.

Steve V. wrote:Got the Beckett on Film boxset recently. Very nicely handled, considering Beckett never wanted anything but Film on film. Done with care and true admiration rather than profit, the box set is on the whole an excellent representation of Beckett's theater work, especially if you haven't seen any or as much as you would have liked to.

Sounds like a good nudge in the direction of buying it. Holy shit, is it expensive, and I was kinda worried about it.

I'd hit it.

Cranius wrote:A friend of mine used to have a great record of two Beckett monologues. One of the monologues is a guy on a beach explaining about passing stones between his pockets via his mouth. Intermittently, he breaks off into incoherant mumbling about his mother. I have absolutely no memory what this record was called or who was performing the piece...I just looked it up and the monlogue is called:

Molloy's Sucking Stones

Not Crap.

god, i love that book. i recorded that passage for my brother once in a kind of cassette letter.

man, that's one of the funniest goddamn books i've ever read. i remember when molloy is on his way home, almost there, & he's listing all of these philosophical dilemmas he's run through his mind to keep himself busy. i loved:

might not the beatific vision become a source of boredome, in the long run

thank you, thread, for putting "three novels" back in my lap.