Zoo pictures by Julia Tsuchiya-Mayhew.

Here' that Rorem quote I was referring to earlier today:

"He made of human loneliness a subject of high camp, yet despite his virtues, he created no enjoyable characters or any real catharsis. His ultimate value will lie not so much in his own works, but in his influence. Without him there would be no Pinter or Albee, no Ionesco or Orton."

What an idiot. "Enjoyable characters"? I can think of many, but what a cretinous criterion to apply to Samuel Beckett.

I went to the MLA without really going to the MLA. I didn't go to any panels or even register for the convention. I saw very few people. Mostly, I went to the zoo and several museums / monuments with my daughter while my wife did the MLA thing. I realized I had never been in the I.M. Pei East wing of the National Gallery. Basically I hadn't been there as an adult.

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My favorite Beckett text, "neither," was set to music by my favorite 20th century composer, Morton Feldman. The entire "opera" lasts close to an hour, and not one of the words is sung comprehensibly, in the one recording I have downloaded. I can't discern a single syllable. I guess I like the "fact" that this work, which I like quite a bit, bears a relation to this other text, which I also love--even though the relationship is invisible (inaudible.)

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I found a quote by Ned Rorem about about Beckett, in which he says the best thing about Beckett is not his own work but his influence on Albee, Ionesco, Pinter, etc... And I thought to myself: "I wouldn't trade a page of Beckett for the entire complete works of all the playwrights Beckett has influenced." It's not that I disdain Albee & Co. It just seems a little perverse to denigrate the great original and praise those who learned from him.

***

I heard both Albee and Ionesco speak as an undergraduate. They both gave the exact same talk: the superiority of true, truth-telling theater to commercial Broadway / Boulevard theater. Albee complained for an hour how Neil Simon made more money than Samuel Beckett.

Although both Albee and Ionesco were entirely correct, from my perspective then and now, they both gave pretty much vacuous talks. There wasn't a single insight beyond the declaration of allegiance. Or is my memory reducing it now? No, because I remember others complaining too at the time. The University had paid Albee 10 thousand or so to complain about how playwrights like him didn't earn enough money.

Anyone going to MLA? Email me and we'll get together. I have no official responsibilities this year except taking Julia to museums.

Did I ever post one of my favorite sentences from Beckett? I'm sure I did but it was several years ago:

"Je dors peu, et le peu que je dors, je le dors le jour."

What place does Ron Silliman hold in the pantheon of modern writers, does anyone know?

Yes, I know the exact place Ron Silliman occupies in the pantheon. Contact me for details.

Long-windedness is rampant in the blogging world. Holbo, Silliman, Abramson, Bérubé, can dash off a 6,000 word squib about something, about anything, and then do the same thing the next day. Meanwhile I'm struggling to reach 5,000 on my Beckett article, after a week or so of working 3 to 4 hours day. On a good day I might add 500 words to my word count--and this is before any real polishing of the prose. Of course, this is scholarly writing where every statement must be backed-up and inserted into a pre-existing academic conversation. It is tiresome but also a good kind of discipline for me, since I like to toss off unsupported opinions, as you well know from reading this blog.

In the case of the article I am now writing, I have to take into account several pre-existing conversations:

Beckett studies
Spanish Cultural Studies and Intellectual History
Studies of Valente, the poet whose work I am studying along with Beckett
Studies of contemporary Spanish poetry
Discourses on modernism generally

I have to balance my different degrees of expertise in each of these fields. I have to anticipate objections, make sure I don't contradict myself too much, that my argument is coherent and cogent and doesn't fall to pieces.

I believe a piece of criticism must deal with a critical problem. That is, it can't just be a description or an interpretation. I like setting the bar high for myself. An article can just be a line on your c.v. Or it can be a line on your c.v. that kicks some ass. But ultimately it is just a line on your c.v.

New location for écritures bleues

We don't need to be deliberately self-destructive, because ordinary life is already ravaging enough.

Between Beckett and Koch--that is my world. These might very well be my two favorite authors, judging by how many books by both I own. What do they have in common? The English language (but it is not the same English). The French language? (Is it the same French?) Paris? Grove Press? The twentieth century? Poetry fiction and drama? Humor? (but it is not the same humor either).

Maybe the central question of Beckett studies is how much, or whether?, to recuperate negativity in positive form. If there is no recuperation, no going after a positive through a "via negativa," what is the justification, the pay off? On the other hand, aren't positive recuperations simply sentimentalized readings of uncompromisingly negative texts? No, I think it could be shown that Beckett himself invites these recuperations... The short text "neither" illustrates this aporia:

To and fro in shadow from inner to outershadow

from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither

as between two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently close,
once turned away from gently part again

beckoned back and forth and turned away

heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam or the other

unheard footfalls only sound

till at last halt for good, absent for good from self and other

then no sound

then gently light unfading on that unheeded neither

unspeakable home

Beckett on Proust:

"The only fertile research is excavatory, immersive, a contraction of the spirit, a descent. The artist is active, but negatively, shrinking from the nullity of extra-circumferential phenomena, drawn in to the core of the eddy. "

But of course this is also Beckett on Beckett. Did I mention I am writing my first essay ever on Beckett? I think I know more than I thought I did about him. Of course, the essay is about other things as well, particularly the Spanish poet Valente. This quotation could be about Valente himself, although it was written when the latter was 2 years old.

Julia with Charles Demuth's #5.

I found a 1928 Cántico in the library stacks. (Jorge Guillén). This would be kind of like finding a first edition of Harmonium just sitting in the stacks ready to be checked out by anyone. Of course some idiot had made some pencil notes on one page. If this were in mint condition and weren't a library copy, it would probably be worth around $2,000. Of course I checked it out, a temporary rescue. "Tiempo en profundidad; está en jardines." Lorca took a line from this poem and began his own poem in Poeta en Nueva York: "Sí, tu niñez: ya fábula de fuentes."