A few months ago, I decided that I would go to a book group
with complete strangers. I wanted to do
something that I could do by myself, allowing me a little freedom from family
life. I joined and then couldn’t find
time to read anything or go for ages.
Ostensibly, every two weeks, the small group meets in a lovely little café,
filled with books, and we discuss…books.
Admittedly, the first week was a bit of a cheat as I had read many of
the possible titles in the past, so didn’t actually read anything new; however,
this week I am working on reading, “If on a Winter’s Night A Traveller,” as we
were given the task of reading any book from the Oulipo group . I had never heard of this before either,
before you feel that you may have to, in your Oulipoean ignorance, retreat to
Wikipedia for a briefing.
I cheated a second time: I didn’t go to the book group alone. I went with my friend, who is almost double
my age, but we are strangely connected; she is hilarious, clever, warm and
pithy. As we sat around the table, there
came a hiatus in the conversation and my friend said, “Isn’t it strange that
sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time, so that it makes an imprint
in your life that it might not have otherwise?” (This is the gist of what she
said, paraphrased, missing out how she qualified it once she read the reaction
from our fellow book-groupies) There was silence, perhaps contemplative, but
more likely she had said something that over-stretched what complete strangers
are willing to discuss upon a first meeting.
It is something which has really stuck with me, however.
I had one project I wanted to work on over the Summer,
before I returned to work in August: I
wanted to read and prepare to teach “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame,” not
realising the enormity of what I was taking on, not just in terms of the
difficulty and complexity of the material itself, but also how reading Beckett
can cause us to question our existence: who are we and why are we here?
I read “Nausea” when I was sixteen/seventeen and I read
Camus, as any young chin-stroker is want to do once on that path. When
I read “Nausea” I understood that the protagonist, in trying to understand his
place and purpose in the world, realises that there is no purpose, just a
disconnectedness from everything. He
questions free-will and how we try to blind ourselves from the purposelessness
of existence. Light stuff. Not a lot of laughs. Despite my seeming irreverence, the ideas
remained with me.
A year later, while
visiting my uncle in Paris, he took me to Montparnasse Cemetery, which is the
one where Jim Morrison is not buried. It
lies in the shadow of Montparnasse Tower, and is smaller and less sprawling
than its Père. It is where the great
literary and intellectual giants are buried: Ionesco, Baudelaire, Simone de
Beauvoir, Sartre, Beckett. On the one
hand, it is odd that these cemeteries are tourist destinations ( maps of where the
famous and influential are buried are available in all good book stores), but
on the other hand, I don’t belittle why people want to visit: I too am intuitively
drawn. Why seek out the local dead? I couldn’t help but wonder what Sartre might
have thought of the German family picnicking beside the grave he shares with
Simone de Beauvoir when I visited with my uncle nearly two decades ago. What were they seeking apart from a decent
bench upon which to feast on Bratwurst and bread? There,
I saw the grave of Baudelaire, covered with messages and poems, held in place
with small pebbles. I recall being drawn
to the intimacies inscribed on these pieces of paper; it was like coming across
an open diary where I wanted to read, but felt like an intruder. Back then, I didn’t know Beckett and as his
grave is so plain and without ostentation, I didn’t visit. I remember the quiet, leafy,
contemplativeness of Montparnasse and the uneasy feeling, being surrounded with
thousands of tombs, gives me: death is final, but visiting a headstone makes it
seem less so.
This Summer, in my quest to understand Beckett, I returned
to Montparnasse. It felt inevitable: I
was in Paris for one day, for my wedding anniversary. Where else would we go? He’s buried
close to Serge Ginsburg, whose grave is strewn with postcards, sketches, metro
tickets, unsmoked cigarettes. As we walked
past, a young, very bohemian-looking couple were talking, taking pictures,
seeking some alone-time with the man they’d come to visit. We left them to it in our quest to find Beckett. Due to an organised grid-system it didn’t
take long to track him down. His grave
is a flat, grey, shiny, marble affair with a space for potted flowers at the
front. There were no letters penned by
the broken-hearted, no tickets or cigarettes strewn on top. It seemed apt that the man, who was embarrassed
by accolades while alive, should have such an unassuming burial plot. I stood, looked, read the inscription (he’s
buried alongside his wife) and thought about him, about what I’d read so
far. There was no epiphany. I would have to work harder to get closer to
this man, it seemed. (If this was a
short story, I would have laboured the metaphor: to find Beckett, there was no map, no
straight route, only death in all its absurdity…)
Walking away, we passed by Serge again, and the young couple
who we had seen on the way to Beckett.
Surprisingly, he had extracted a trumpet from his back-pack and was
preparing to play. As we headed towards
the exit, the poignant, heart-breakingly sad notes followed us, drifting up
into the grey sky. We made a de-tour to
Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, on our way out, my husband feeling increasingly uneasy
as more tourists flocked by us, holding photocopied maps, ticking off the
famous they’d already encountered and making a bee-line for those they had not
as yet. I could no longer hear the notes
of the trumpet player.
Beckett I fear, is not someone anyone can just read for fun
(who would, let’s face it). It is
life-changing. We buried another member
of our family today (another aunt, aunt to the cousin who died only months ago)
and as it is the third funeral I’ve been to in two years, for that branch of
our family, I am still numb. She was a
graduate of English literature: a great wit, a great mind, a great
drinker. I bet she read Beckett and
laughed. “Waiting for Godot” is pretty
funny.
My point is: I am reading Beckett at a time when death has reared his head on too many occasions, when I see symmetries in it, repetitiveness in experiences, and even in Montparnasse, I imagined happening upon Vladimir and Estragon, waiting and waiting. I think I need to read something lighter, for now.
