Pulled into Beckett

So as I was reading Beckett I was pulled into his writing and especially his language. But then again weren’t we all. Especially after hearing Jon’s “testimony,” if we hadn’t started to read we were drawn in before even beginning.

Dr. Sexson wanted us to find five instances where Beckett speaks to us the reader through his writing. After getting farther into the reading I began to realize that there are many instances that Beckett reminds us that he is writing and this is a fictitious work. The ones I liked best are as follows. All of them are from Molloy because after getting through that work I decided to stop counting.

1. “Perhaps I had invented him, I mean found him ready made in my head. There is no doubt one sometimes meets with strangers who are not entire strangers, through their having played a part in certain cerebral reels.”

2. “I knew then about Mollory, without however knowing much about him. I shall say briefly what little I did know about him. I shall also draw attention, in my knowledge of Mollory, to the most striking lacunae.”

3. “But let us leave it at that, if you don’t mind, the party is big enough.”

4. “And in writing these lines I know in what danger I am….But I write them all the same, and with a firm hand weaving inexorably back and forth and devouring my page with the indifference of a shuttle.”

5. “And it would not surprise me if I deviated, in the pages to follow, from the true and exact succession of events.”

OK just two more because I love them!

“Stories, stories. I have not been able to tell them. I shall not be able to tell this one.”

“But it is not at this late stage of my relation that I intend to give way to literature.”

Beckett is continually pulling his audience in. While he tries to empty his works out his is pulling us into this emptiness. Writing “you” at times and even “Youdi,” while perhaps the old pronunciation of Yahweh, still hints at us the reader. Yet as a reader you cannot be helped to be surrounded by Beckett’s words, as long as we remember they are his.