Samuel Beckett
The latest New York Review of Books carries a fine piece on Beckett, Happy Birthday, Sam!, by Colm Toibin. At one point, Toibin offers a quote from Beckett: ‘I realised that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more… He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding.’ Which made me think of J.M. Coetzee who is our contemporary master of subtraction. I was reminded of a section from Coetzee’s Youth; the young protagonist has bought Beckett’s Watt from a second-hand bookseller off Charing Cross Road, and lies in bed reading with the light pouring in through the window:
Why did people not tell him Beckett wrote novels? How could he have imagined he wanted to write in the manner of Ford when Beckett was around all the time? In Ford there has always been an element of the stuffed shirt that he has disliked but has been hesitant to acknowledge, something to do with the value Ford placed on knowing where in the West End to buy the best motoring gloves or how to tell a Medoc from a Beaune; whereas Beckett is classless, or outside class, as he himself would prefer to be.
Here’s the complete script of Beckett’s 35-second Breath, published recently in the Toronto Star (thanks, Arts and Letters Daily):
Curtain.
1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold about five seconds.
2. Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum together in about 10 seconds. Silence and hold for about five seconds.
3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in 1) in about 10 seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold about five seconds.
Curtain.
