Lamott on Beckett
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Continuing my Anne Lamott theme (and I'm not infatuated, OK!), I forgot to mention that it was her birthday a couple of days before Beckett's. The main difference, of course, is that Lamott is still alive. Making this all connect even further is this passage from 'Bird by Bird':
Maybe you find truth in Samuel Beckett - that we're very much alone and it's all scary and annoying and it smells like dirty feet and the most you can hope for is that periodically someone will offer a hand or a rag or a tiny word of encouragement just when you're going under. The redemption in Beckett is so small: in the second act of Waiting for Godot, the barren dying twig of a tree has put out a leaf. Just one leaf. It's not much; still Beckett didn't commit suicide. He wrote.
4 Comments:
commented by 
Anonymous, 5:27 PM
Anonymous, 5:27 PM
It's my dream: A world where all will be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.
anonymous again. Forgot to say this is a quote from Endgame
anonymous again. Forgot to say this is a quote from Endgame
I spotted the Beckett tones but couldn;t place the actual quote. Those who didn't spot that it was Beckett may have worried that you were advocating some version of the 'Rapture'.
No, it's hardly the 'Rapture'. When the Rapture comes everybody will still be alive, the Saved frolicking around in Heaven and the damned burning in Hell.
Clov's utopia (that he describes in Endgame) will find all humans dead and "asleep" (forever unconscious) and everything else (absolutely EVERYTHING, animal, vegetable and mineral) in a state of total inertness "in its last place, under the last dust."
It's an absolute certainty, by the way, that that day will come whenever the sun burns out in about a billion years. Or before.
Clov's utopia (that he describes in Endgame) will find all humans dead and "asleep" (forever unconscious) and everything else (absolutely EVERYTHING, animal, vegetable and mineral) in a state of total inertness "in its last place, under the last dust."
It's an absolute certainty, by the way, that that day will come whenever the sun burns out in about a billion years. Or before.
How did you guess? It's my dream: A world where all will be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.