My Year With Beckett.

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.

We salute the semi-colon!

I assessed Advanced Creative Writing for the first time this year and before I commenced this task, I wondered how anyone might ascribe a mark to something so…well… creative, but once I’d started, it became patently clear what we were really looking for: there are those who have control of language and then there are those who do not.  With great pieces of writing, there’s a sense of purposeful shape, carefully crafted, each word exceptionally chosen and placed just so.  I must have read about two hundred pieces and have to say that they ranged from the sublime ( and I mean sublime-I couldn’t believe the insight and imagination of some seventeen year olds) to the down-right awful.  What was made clear to me was that there is no tool in the writer’s toolbox which is superfluous in the quest to find the authorial voice. 

I remember a boy-David-who was seventeen and trying his best to get an A in his Higher English in order to get into Medicine at a prestigious Scottish university.  He asked me a question that I mulled over-and am still mulling over-nearly five years later, enough time for David to have graduated.  He asked me if it was important to know “big words”.  For “big words” read, “Words that I do not currently have in my vocabulary.”  My instinct was to say, “Yes” and explained that language is the only thing we have to make our thoughts, our ideas, concrete, to facilitate communication, which is as true and meaningful as it can be.  The more words we know, the better we can be in expressing those experiences, ideas and so on.  It is something I do believe: perhaps in a near existential way, as we search to acquire enough language to express ourselves, experience can be limitless.  Luckily we never have to come to the end of learning, acquiring, expressing, so we don’t fall into that existential abyss, like the man who reads all the books in the library in order to attain complete knowledge.  I also said that beyond the concrete language that we have at our disposal, we also have metaphor, which makes our expression infinite.  Imagine that our feelings and thoughts are a muddle of intangible threads.  When we feel extremes of emotion, we often say, “Words cannot express how I feel” and the knotted threads are pulled tighter. 

The great writers  of this world have and did experience the same kinds of loss, love, elation, and used metaphor in order to come closer to a true representation of it.  Mostly it was impossible, but in striving to find meaning in experience through metaphor, those tight knots untangled somewhat, or not: the journey tells us so much about the human experience, endurance, hope, bloody-minded stamina.  I think of Yeats who tried to unravel his love to Maud Gonne; Plath who tried to find meaning in her father’s death.  These writers return again and again to the same subjects trying in different ways to find sense, to come to a clear and rational understanding.  Sometimes we don’t know what we think or feel before we write it down, before we place it in the box of language.  There’s a reason “stanza” means “Room” in Italian.  We strive to place ideas in a room and walk into another. 

I read a great article in the New York Times today, which inspired me to sit down and write this.  It was about the semi-colon. (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/semicolons-a-love-story/) It turns out that there's a lot to say about it actually.  The real language Geek inside me read the article with absolute relish; she figuratively rubbed her hands together with delight.  (Note the semi-colon joining the two sentences together?  I couldn't resist trying her out.  It's only right that she be present while I discuss her.  She's not an Oxford comma; I wouldn't talk about her behind her back!)

The writer begins the article by quoting Kurt Vonnegut, who said:  "Do not use semi-colons.  They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.  All they do is show you've  been to college."  To  me this is Vonnegut defying convention, asserting that to deny rules is somehow to pare away pretension in the literary form.  In other words: leave out the semi-colons to show that you're more interested in substance over style.  It's understandable that the NY Times writer bought this completely, so eager was he to fit into the Vonnegut/Hemingway imaginary dinner party, come cook-out with lots of protein and definitely no vegetables.  To him, all other punctuation marks were acceptable for use, even the colon which is like a non-identical twin to the semi-colon.  It lives on the same key on the keyboard, next door to the ampersand and upstairs to the full-stop and question mark (which shares a room with the slash, thus making me imagine two college buddies: one questioning life and the other constantly drinking too much and having to use the conveniences on a regular basis.)

But, like a good writer should, he came to reject Vonnegut's inverted snobbery about the punctuation mark, finally finding its use incredibly liberating, facilitating expression rather than hindering it.  One comes to wonder if the thinking process changes when we understand the use of punctuation or if punctuation merely fits into thought... "What does it do?" a young David may have inquired.  "It can divide up items in a complex list, or it can be used in place of a full-stop when two sentences are related closely in meaning.  If you link them using a semi-colon, you're showing a relationship between sentences.  That's when things get interesting...."My eyes would sparkle; his would be dulled with a pitiable, "I wish I hadn't asked," look.  Ahh well.   

To me, it is a necessary tool in writing to create "rooms" in a long utterance, which in itself is a house.  Our thoughts- mine included-tend to be elastic, jumping quickly from one idea to the next; they can take the most strange of detours; they can visit many seemingly disparate door-ways en-route; finally, they can take you firmly to the point being made.  Instead of flummoxing a reader, the semi-colon allows a mile-stone to rest upon before continuing the journey to the end of the sentence.  Those mile-stones are markers; they make sure that we're less likely to lose our way and if we do, we don't have to return to the start, just the last mile-stone we remember passing.  

Of course, that's just my opinion.  We're all free to decide which side of the Vonnegut fence we rest on. 

A final thought: students often ask me if punctuation is really important.  Do they REALLY need to use apostrophes correctly?  Can't they just miss them out?  I don't reply.  Instead, I withdraw a handy pile of Poe's short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart" from a box marked, "For Emergencies."  I explain that punctuation in writing is like musical notation.  Imagine all notes were the same without differing values; imagine a score without a time-signature.  Why does a composer need such things at her/his disposal?  Music should be played as it was written to be played, but that does not mean that there isn't room for interpretation.  To me, Poe uses punctuation like a great composer: to create crescendo, diminuendo;  quiet, disquiet; climax, anti-climax; tension, denouement. Without it we would not gasp, our hearts would not race in the same way as we enter the mind of the mad-man as he slowly unravels. 


When someone can write with a real sense of control, I can feel it in my bones: I see with their eyes and can be utterly transported.  That means using all the tricks we can to pull the rabbit from the hat, whether we're seventeen and sitting an exam , or if we are a stalwart in the canon of American fiction.

Thanks to Ali for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger award!  http://alibeecreations.blogspot.com

I have to write (admit) seven random facts about myself. Tricky one...
1)  I am a super-taster.  Despite the fact I thought, when I was a child, that blue cheese smelled like old socks, I now love it! 
2)  I have had a poem and a short story published (on websites...)
3)  I love the poet John Burnside.  I saw him speak at my university and then, many years later, I saw him speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival.  It was like meeting a celebrity.  I got tongue-tied!
4)  I cried when I saw Death of a Salesman.  I was sitting in the front row and may have embarassed the actors...
5)  I can recite To a Mouse and To a Haggis off by heart.  Still working on Tam o'Shanter.
6)  To celebrate Eurovision 1999, myself and a number of pan-European friends, played a drinking game which culminated in us all having to sing a song in our mother tongue.  I sang the Scottish, Caledonia and won the competition, winning a large glass of red wine for my trouble.  We were drunk and misty eyed.  To regain composure, myself, a Finn and an American (yes, not European, but still got to enter the competition because we're all inclusive) went skinny dipping in the Adriatic.  Not too clever when I think back: drunk and swimming in unknown waters.  Even more unnerving was the moment when, as we emerged from the water, slightly less drunk, but pretty naked, we were illuminated by the full-beam headlights of a man who had, presumably been watching us for some time.  He left his vehicle, pursuing us up the beach as we ran, stumbled and tried to put on our soggy clothes with as much decorum as we could muster. 
7) Slept with a sausage.  (Had a house-warming party in Hungary when I shared a flat with the afore-mentioned American girl.  We had a punch bowl... I almost don't have to tell the rest of this tale...  Needless to say, it was messy.  We had to go out, however, as were disturbing out neighbours who were early risers.  We headed out to the pub and the only reason I know what happened, is because I took photographs, which I had developed many weeks later.  It was 1999: digital photography was but a speck of technology on the horizon.  I digress.  We had tequilla, played table-football and then ran home in the snow.  I must have arrived home, needed some food, so took a Hungarian sausage to bed.  I didn't have the energy to eat it, so woke to find it happily uneaten and slightly withered by body-heat in the morning.  My lovely American friend was asleep in a pile of crisps, so she can't assume the position of the innocent.  I blame the fact that there was not such a thing as a take-away kebab shop in Southern Hungary in the late nineties.)

I really do have to stop there, or my explanations will get longer and longer! 

So, now I have to nominate fifteen other bloggers for this award.  I will go in search and will return to this post at a later date!