Class Notes 2/22

Notes...
Wednesday, is our last day for Beckett, and we must all come with a question foe the Exam....multiple choice....simple

Sources for blogs on Wikipedia.......
Finnegans Wake, Grade: B
Beckett, Grade: C
Four Quartets: F

First page of Molloy, How long do we read until we see this guy is being written?

pg. 7 writing is the subject matter

he's getting paid to write

Read the Rat's blog, Language as Fiction

Molloy's method of communicating with his mother......knocking on her head

Moran turning into Molloy, mirror images of each other

Malone Dies........Travels in the Scriptorium, by Auster.....(I have the book if anyone wishes to borrow it...it is really short and a good read! just let me know!)

pigsticker

see Christina's blog for the stone sucking you tube

see Justin's blog, business classes

Waiting for Godot
first performance, San Quintin Penitentiary, no women in the play so it was allowed, two tramps waiting for Godot by a tree with one leaf left, inmates at penitentiary LOVED the play because there were also waiting, they understood, they identified with what was going on.

See Jennifer's blog! Molloy Milleu
See Shelby's blog, stair counting business, it is a must read if you were not in class

Malone Dies, has a character to kill off other characters
Beckett, minimalness, silence has not been conspicuous

leaf on tree (Waiting for Godot) -------> "I'll go on"

even if you have not finished Beckett's Three Novels, read the whole thing when you get a chance (anytime even after this semester), but read the whole thing to get the reward....the last line.

pages 287-8

power of words!

Unnamable, no pencil, no body, disembodied voice, man trying to get home

Connection between King Lear and Beckett's Three Novels
There is a man(father) authoritative, abusing children
Lear starts as King, Moran starts in charge, both end as nothing

LEAR:
O reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is as cheap as beast's. Thou art a lady:
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need--
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need.
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age, wretched in both.
If it be you that stirs these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women's weapons, water drops,
Stain my man's cheeks. No, you unnatural hags!
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall--I will do such things--
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep.
No, I'll not weep.I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep. O Fool, I shall go mad!
(Lear to his daughters Goneril and Regan, "King Lear," Act 2, Scene 4,
lines 263-285)

What do we really need???
in the course of the play Lear realizes he needs nothing.....exposes himself to the elements....

Beckett and Lear.....increment by increment, to get to the zero point, reduce to nothing.....

The Jerk...That's all I need
NOTHING.....except.......ashtray, paddle game, remote control, matches, lamp, chair
the point - lowbrow material reduced to a Beckett figure attached to things

Happy Days play, woman with her purse, taking stuff out, till it is up to her neck.....still enormously interested in tedious stuff

Beckett experiments with going silent, rhythmic ebbing & flowing of language