Beckett to me is intetesting because it feels like he knows each of his works are failures

I declare to God if I hear that name Joyce one more time I will surely froth at the gob.

Joooooooooooooyyyyyyyyyyyyce

Re Joyce

Was Beckett Veeky Forums?

Is his short prose worth buying?

Yes.

Yes.

"It is an interesting dichotomy to Joyce, who he tried to emulate for so long."

Do you think you're being down-to-earth or folksy by using who instead of whom, user? It's still grammatically incorrect.

Grammar is defined by how the people speak not by abstract concrete laws.

>Playwright Samuel Beckett, a neighbor who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature,[17] bought some land in 1953 near a hamlet around 60 km (40 mi) northeast of Paris. He built a cottage for himself with the help of André's father Boris Roussimoff. When Beckett found out that Roussimoff was having trouble getting his son to school, Beckett offered to drive André to school in his truck, as he did not fit on the bus. When André recounted the drives with Beckett, he revealed that they rarely talked about anything other than cricket.[18]

Always fucking cricket with Beckett. He owned a TV in the small apartment he died in just so that he could watch cricket matches.

That's hilarious. Beckett was such a weird guy.

Do you have a source for that? Is it in one of his biographies?

the theater of the big turd

>weird for liking the second most popular team sport in the world

DESIGNATED

Not weird for liking it, but for having a tv just to watch it. I don't know, perhaps for him and many people it's not weird, but at least for me it's not what I expected of Beckett. Of course, that matters very little.

based beckett

I love this man. The unnamable is one of the best things I've read in my life. A pity that I couldn't find it in French on the Internet though, but still. The utter loneliness and isolation the novel oozes really got to me.

I remember reading someone saying he is the 20th century Dante.
Not really sure what that means, but it seems like a very flattering comment.

Still not an appropriate use of "dichotomy"

He felt disgusted by sex too.

>September 1968.
>The other day I noticed Beckett along one of the footpaths in the Luxembourg Gardens, reading a newspaper in a way that reminded me of one of his characters. He was seated in a chair, lost in thought, as he usually is. He looked rather unwell. I didn't dare approach him. What would I say? I like him so much but it's better that we not speak. He is so discreet! Conversation is a form of play-acting that requires a certain lack of restraint. It's a game which Beckett wasn't made for. Everything about him bespeaks a silent monologue.

Source?

source?
is it love if on that hole or something

>s-senpai..

If he didn't want to speak to people he wouldn't be outside.

that's fucking retarded

Sorry that it has taken me so long to get back to you. I'm an avid Beckett reader and have tried to devour any resources about Beckett's life that I can. So far the best biography I've experienced is Anthony Cronin's "Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist". I have a professor now who personally knew Anthony Cronin and he is, in his own right, an interesting character. Cronin's presentation of Beckett is obviously biased (Cronin is also Irish) and he makes no bones about his feelings on how he presents people involved with Beckett. e.g. There is a story of Beckett with Peggy Guggenheim getting a hotel room together, which leads to Guggenheim assuming Beckett was a homosexual because he didn't want to fuck her, and Cronin makes it clear how fucking stupid and out of touch Guggenheim was in relation to Beckett.

Anyway, I highly, HIGHLY recommend Cronin's biography.

He was not disgusted by sex itself, as implied. What Beckett was concerned about was the tragic obsession with sex and "sexual liberation" being touted by his contemporaries, even people Beckett admired. The common anecdote given is about Beckett's revulsion to Lucia Joyce (daughter of James). Beckett was disgusted by her continual advances on her, but it was mostly because he felt like a relationship with Lucia would deepen his ties to the "Joycean Paris Circle" which Beckett detested. His inability to express romantic entanglement with Lucia, or with Peggy Guggenheim, both of whom were major literary and artistic figures, manufactured the image that Beckett was a sex-hating asexual.

There's almost no doubt, however, that Samuel and Suzanne enjoyed a physical relationship.

That biography is better than Knowlson's?

In addition to what I've said here, I'd also like to add that the Cronin biography has stories about Beckett's experience with prostitutes, which continued to taint his understanding of sex, specifically when in relation to a loving relationship. He was obviously straight, and clearly interested in sex, but his relationship with sexuality was extremely conservative relative to the period that he was living in.

I wouldn't say "better". I apologize for saying "best" as I described it, that's not proper. I'll just say that Cronin's was more of a fascinating read. Plus, I'll say, I read Cronin's first, so I am biased toward finding it more interesting as it was my first time reading about Beckett's life. That said, they each have their merits. But I believe that Cronin's is the more enjoyable to read of the two, if that counts for anything.

Thanks for the reply, user. Beckett is one of my all-time favorite authors, but I have yet to read everything by him (I devoured his complete drama, and go back to it time and again, but I haven't touched his narrative works yet).

I'll read Cronin when I have time, thanks for the rec.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

If you haven't read much of his prose, I'd really suggest Nohow On. It's the most severe selection of his most minimalist reduction when it comes to the relationship between experience and language.

What do you think makes Beckett so unique? Where do you think he sits in the 'canon'?

I plan on reading that too, but I'm going for a more chronological progression. First Murphy, then Watt, then the Trilogy, then Nohow On, short prose, and assorted novellas.

I've already read his Three Dialogues and want to read Proust, but it's impossible to find online and as a book.

I know the boring nature of this response, but I really think that his utter disregard for the canon and all that it "stood for" made Beckett a truly independent voice. He clearly wanted, while he was young and developing as a write, to be associated with Joyce & his 'scene'. Read "Sedendo et Quiescendo" and see how vapid and horribly jejune Beckett used to be. That short story is, unquestionably, for me, the worst piece of absolute shit that Beckett ever produced. It was empty language. And once Beckett was able to recognize how empty that language was he could produce a new language that presented absolutely apparent and also intuitive truths through very simple language: e.g. his masterwork Godot.

What made him have such disregard for the canon? What triggered this 180?

Sorry if these questions annoy you im just really interested

thank you man :)
I also read your recs to the other user and again I'm grateful for it.

I'm absolutely thrilled to have someone who actually wants to talk about Beckett in some depth.

Beckett originally went to school to be a lecturer in modern romance languages. He specialized in French, and ended up getting various positions teaching in Dublin and Paris which were considerably impressive. But Beckett hated it. He couldn't teach it. In Cronin's biography he has quotes from former students who said that he would get unreasonably upset about student questions and would get into arguments that left him depleted. He got attention for translating a portion of Finnegans Wake into French, and started publishing pretentious and angry poetry. But he was still struck by the scene. Eventually he saw the growing hypocrisy of the scene, the vanity of their attempts to harness language properly, and he noticed that their obsession with erudite and excessive diction only undermined their writing. Then he began writing in a more simple and restrained style; ultimately because the actions we take under the guise of free will are just as simple and restrained.

So is this saying that Beckett became disdainful of writers like Joyce and Proust's style?

I don't want to abuse, but do you know where I could download Crion's biography of Beckett?

I live in a third world country and I couldn't find the said biography to buy here, not only there is no translation but the english version isn't sold by the stores (even the biggest chains) or in the case of our amazon it is unavailable to import :(
I also searched in the equivalent of our abe books and still no luck

Not Proust. Proust was dead and gone. And Beckett, according to Cronin, didn't give much attention to Proust after his publication of the same name. Joyce was alive and his 'crew' of followers, with or without Joyce's knowledge, became contentious with Beckett.

I dunno. Not my ish, I apologize. I don't even know how to download books off the 'net really.

:

Two memoirs by friends of Beckett:
Anne Atik - How It Was
Andre Bernold - Beckett's Friendship

This book has extensive quotes from people who worked with Beckett in productions of his theatre works:
John Fletcher - About Beckett: The Playwright and the Work

Beckett's letters are also fascinating reading and the selected edition by Oxford U. Press is now fully published

Read the sticky about how to get ebooks off the internet.

I forgot to mention I already tried the internet.
Was hoping someone had it and would share

i feel as if I'm doing Joyce a favour by reading his shit.
don't feel that way with Beckett tho

Beckett is the true French expatriate genius

So who would you say beckett was most influenced by?

Beckett died in the hotel room he was living out of for years. Also Beckett spend much of his downtime in a Montparnasse bar talking rugby with other Irish ex-pats

Cioran used to have weekly dinners with him until Beckett finally broke it off

You should read John Montague's obituary for him, he paints a nice personal picture of him, a man at odds with so many things attributed to his character

theguardian.com/books/1989/dec/27/poetry.beckettat100

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Why did you stop just when it was getting interesting?

oh sorry, this was the only Beckett part. This is from a wonderful comic called Andre The Giant: Life and Legend. If you want more Andre I can give you the .cbr

What is it with all these writers hating the century they lived in?

mediafire.com/?n6wx5kyquib3idf

Was monitoring this thread. Exhausted all public trackers I know, even my uni library has nothing on Cronin's biography.

You'll probably find it on IRC though, or some private tracker.

>burger logic

"Where do ya want me, mate?"
"By the bins, guv'nor."

you're wrong lmao

Dream of Fair to Middling Women is the only novel of his I've read and I love it a lot. Anyone else read it? I've enjoyed several of his plays and short prose pieces of course.

>potato logic

>Then he began writing in a more simple and restrained style; ultimately because the actions we take under the guise of free will are just as simple and restrained.
kinda like how children act?

Is this meant to be a criticism?

Children are the most philosophically enlightened people on the planet.

Well, we're talking about Joyce here. it's not verbosity for its own sake: what you get instead is a long sequence of words that are all necessary and structural. Each word Joyce's adds only define more deeply and radically elements of the human consciousness that you can only approach through approximation.
Joyce had strong reasons to be so verbose: apparently Beckett was simply not deep enough.

>Joyce had strong reasons to be so verbose: apparently Beckett was simply not deep enough.

Why are you attempting to objectively measure someone's 'deepness' by verbosity? Do you realise how much of a pseud you are?

This post reeks of undergrad.

idk, I've never read him. is his prose childlike?

>Why are you attempting to objectively measure someone's 'deepness' by verbosity?
I've already explained why Joyce's verbosity is something greater than what the term maybsuggest (it is in fact used usually as a pejorative): Joyce used the right amount of words for what he had to say, and what he had to say required a vast amount of particular, emblematic words, since it was a direct result of him deeply delving in his psyche.
What Beckett had to say did not require that many words, too bad that it wasn't that original after all.

:/

You obviously do not realize what you say is arbitrary and mediocre. Perhaps, you even think yoj are being smart and sophisticated by being contrarian, but sadly you only show your lack of self-awareness by using phallacies to pretend to explain Beckett's craft.

Come back after you take a look at yourself in the mirror.

>I've already explained why

If these are the greatest heights of "explanation" that you can scale then I'd suggest you post less and lurk more because you are too undergrad to even warrant listening to.

Don't all writers think that their level of verbosity is appropriate? Would they not increase or decrease that level if they did not?

Yeah ok, Pajeet.

Not indian

and what, youre implying cricket fans are indian when the topic is an irishman living in france?

My husband named his dog Beckett. We read his dramas together but one of these days I'll get around to the rest of his stuff.

>My husband

I have trouble believing you're not a 17-25 year old white male

I haven't read Beckett beyond the requisite high school reading of Godot, but I'd assume that it's meant as an expression of the core of human experience - rather than intentionally reductive, "childlike". I think the idea is that high-minded diction falsely ennobles instincts which aren't nearly as complex as we perceive them to be; it's self-aware, for style's sake.

Well, he could still have a husband.

>brainlet Becket fanboys on suicide watch

>You obviously do not realize what you say is arbitrary and mediocre. Perhaps, you even think yoj are being smart and sophisticated by being contrarian, but sadly you only show your lack of self-awareness by using phallacies to pretend to explain Beckett's craft.

Sure, and the best minuet is as good as the best symphony, right?
Beckett is Philip Glass: he hacked it out. Being the smartest stupid dude in the game he knew that he could have excelled in mediocrity, so he tended towards minimalism.
Joyce, instead, is Beethoven: his symphonies are extremely long, overly complex and filled with quotations, and you know what? They're still a perfect synthesis.
Beckett is good, but not great: he has never reached the peaks of his craft, while still being philosophically, conceptually and emotionally too shallow to compete with someone like Joyce even on his own terms.

Don't talk to me or my husband's dog ever again.

You think How It Is and Nohow On are mediocre and shallow?

Also Mahler fits your musical description better than Beethoven.

>You think How It Is and Nohow On are mediocre and shallow?
The context behind those adjectives is a comparative one (where the superior end, in this case, is Joyce), that's why I've also said that he is a good author.

My posts are not an invective against Beckett, rather a defence of Joyce's verbosity.

His face is so pleasant to look at.