FW meeting Sundays at 7pm at the Bacchus Pub. The meeting on Monday was a success, 18 people, and good conversation. I got to meet some new people, or rather people I knew, but hadn't really talked to before. So much fun at Finnegans Wake.
Homework assignments:
-Blog 5 places where Beckett pulls the rug out & reminds the reader it is fiction
Which reminded me of dinner the other night with my boyfriend, Sutter. I
made him dinner because I'm a nice girlfriend. After dinner I asked him if he
wanted dessert.
He said I'd like ice cream.
I said we have strawberry or vanilla.
Sutter said, I want chocolate.
I said, Well we have strawberry or vanilla and I'd be
happy to get either of those for you.
He says again, I want chocolate. (These here are some breaking up words.)
Again I ask, well we only have starwberry or vanilla so would you like one
of those.
Sutter says could you go to the store and get me chocolate?
So I said, spell the "van" in vanilla, and because Sutter is advanced
for his age he says, v-a-n.
I said, Okay can you spell the "straw" in strawberry? he does.
Now I say, can you spell the "fuck" in chocolate? And he says there
aint no fuck in chocolate.
I said, you got it!
This joke is funnier when you think it is true, but that conversation has
never happened between me and Sutter, but in order for it to be funny we tell it
like it's really happened just the other night. Sutter likes people to continue
thinking that it's real, however I always like to say, "that was a joke" or they
might walk away with the wrong idea.
-Blog about some research you've done regarding Samuel Beckett. http://www.samuel-beckett.net/ is a good place. But find something interesting online or at a library, and blog about it. Harold Pinter said about Beckett's writing, "His work is beautiful." How do we get to there? to where Pinter is?
-also be reading the blogs of other and be in conversation with them
-also read Jon Orsi's blog and see the picture he posted of Beckett
Jon Orsi gave an introduction/testimonial to Beckett's three novels saying that it is all worth it, and while it may seem like it is about tedious things, or masturbation or defecation, there is so much more to Beckett's three novels. I will say that he inspired me to read more vigorously, and I hope people noticed all the tabs he had on his book, talk about some work. See pages 43 &44, also mentioned. I like how he referenced, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the quote he pulled out of his head and the ideas seemed to fit perfectly. the fire. the ash. the phoenix. Thank you Jon.
We spent the rest of class talking about Beckett and the novels, as sort of an introduction.
My notes are a bit choppy, but things were being said so fast,
Dr. Sexson mentioned he had been hesitant to teach Beckett in class because of the alienating effect it has and the pessimism.
Beckett: compassionate, but also pessimistic
a hero in WWII, lived in the French Resistance
friend to James Joyce
Vico influenced Joyce, Frye, and Beckett
Beckett went to a lecture from Jung and had an epiphany, he decided to write to take everything out, exploring the impotence and uncertainty.
Spring- comedy, celebrates life, sexual intercourse/procreation, comedies end in marriage, getting together
Summer- romance, myth, celebration of the triumph of order over chaos
Fall- tragedy, anti-sex, Hamlet, Oedipus......three roads meet...
Winter - satire, irony
Beckett - the end of things
About deterioration of people, mythic writing, Ovid's gold, silver, bronze, iron.......the mythic pattern, initiation, separation, return.
paucity is 1. Smallness of number; fewness.
2. Scarcity; dearth: a paucity of natural resources
Beckett interested in Deterioration
Alzheimer's
Iris Murdoch, 26 novels (Dr. Sexson has read each twice)
Movie, Iris with Judi Dench, here is a clip from the movie
Gaber.................think of Gabriel, Gaber announcing mission to Moran to find Molloy.......
Yahweh
See page 92 and 176 from Becketts Three Novels
Page 92 - "It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows"
Page 176 - "It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining"
It's all made up! Beckett wants us to understand the subject matter.....the business of writing a story.
Page 31 of Beckett's Three Novels
"I had been living so far from words so long, you understand, that it was enough
for me to see my town, since we're talking of my town, to be unable, you
understand. It's too difficult to say, for me. And even my sense of identity was
wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I
think. And so on for all the other things which made merry my senses. Yes, even
then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things
but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but
after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon
me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is
what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little
sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and
the long sonata of the dead."
Dr. Sexson said this is a beautiful/attractive piece of writing to make us understand something about writing, the mechanisms.
theme: our life in fiction, the limits of our language are limits of our world, we are made up of words and language.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment