Instances of Story Telling

The more I look into it, the more I see Beckett's thinly veiled directive. He is always trying to show the reader his capacity for telling stories, not truths, but stories.
"And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing" (pg. 27 Molloy).

This, I personally felt, is a jab at the gullable reader... "I should add, before I get down to facts, you'd swear they were facts, of that distant summer afternoon, that with this deaf blind impotent mad old woman, who called me Dan and I called Mag, and with her alone, I-no, I can't say it" (Molloy pg. 15) In particular, the bit about "you'd swear they were facts" seems to be a direct insult to any reader believing Beckett's story. Also, the implication at the end, where the reader is left hanging with the disturbing thought of incest, Beckett seems to seek out the gullable side in the reader, directly after slapping him/her in the face with the little comment about facts.

"Oh the stories I could tell you, if I were easy. What a rabble in my head, what a gallery of moribunds...Stories, stories. I have not been able to tell them. I shall not be able to tell this one" (Molloy pg. 132). This, I beleive, is one of Beckett's moments of irony.

I Googled portmanteau, to ensure my full understanding of the term, and clicked on images, finding this very picture in the first few images available. Interesting... I then looked further into the term and found that Lewis Caroll, the creator of Humpty Dumpty, had also been the pioneer of the portmanteau with words such as "slithy", which is a combination of lithe and slimy. Now I think I understand why Humpty Dumpty is such a prominent figure in FW.

Finnegans Wake in Modest Mouse

I don't know if any of you listen to Modest Mouse but their song Bukowski has a nice little reference, or so I saw, to Finnegans wake. Here is the link. Go about 3 minutes and 35 seconds into it...trust me it's worth it! Also, this may be kind of a stretch but there is a Beckett expression about 1 minute and 6 seconds in. In a related subject, since every subject is related to Finnegans Wake, here is a really cool song about the Fall.

My grandma has 13...or 14, I'm not entirely sure, steps leading to the basement of her house. She also has 13...0r 14, I'm not entirely sure, steps leading out of the basement of her house. My cousins and I used to be blocked from these stairs with a fence meant for boisterous children bound to crash down a set of 13 or 14 steps. Once I was allowed to traverse these stairs, and once I was able to count, they became my constant torment. From the top, one steps down, counts one, two, three, four...so on, until that nagging bottom step, potential step number 14. Is the floor at the bottom considered a step or is it just part of the floor? I then ascend the stairs, starting at the bottom, the first step up counts one, then two, three, four...so on, until that damned top step, potential step number 14. Is the top step to be counted or is it part of the floor of the first level? Like I said, constant torment. In times of little conciousness, my habit of counting stairs of a truly Beckettian obsession, I still count the stairs and after reflection find myself varying in outcomes. Sometimes I count 13, other times 14. What is the solution for my predicament? "I will tell you. No, I'll tell you nothing. Nothing." (Malloy pg. 129)

Below is a yew-tree, which could live to be 2,000 years old, at least that's the potential lifespan of this kind of tree. To the left, as everyone probably knows, is a rose. The actual flower of the rose only lives through the warm season of each year. "The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree/ Are of equal duration" (Eliot 58). I have an inkling that this may be in relation to the twenty-minute lifetime, but in a more obscure way. The life of the rose and the life of the yew-tree are contained in one moment, a lifetime in one moment. It doesn't matter how long the yew-tree outlives the rose because the rose and the yew-tree are in a cycle of constant life and death where each moment represents their beginning and their end.

T.S. List

"O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, To the vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark, And dark the Sun and the Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha And the Stock Exchange Gazette, The Directory of Directors..." (Eliot 27). This list seems to signify the darkness of death which is inevitable for all of mankind. With this list of people, thier rankings stated but of minimal importance, Eliot places every human on the same plane, the plane of fate or the plane of the inevitable.

Reading Finnegans Wake

Excuse me for seeming rude...

This is not meant to be vulgar or rude but Dr. Sexson referred to faeces the other day and the recurrence of its appearance in the works we are reading. Well, I was reading the very beginning of East Coker and I came upon an interesting line and formed a theory. "Old fire to ashes, and ashes to the earth/ Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,/ Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf." My interpretation of the importance of faeces is that it is in constant cycle. Beginning as a living organism; a plant or animal, it then becomes part of the earth to nourish more plants and in turn more animals. This may seem simple and very Lion Kingish, but it seems to be one possible definition of eternal recurrence.

...in a Lapsummer skirt an damazon cheeks...

After some searching I found a reference to "...the black water of death polished like onyx..." (Nooteboom 107). The Amazon, in Nooteboom, bears an undeniable likeness to the river that is Finnegans wake. Beginning, or ending, or middling, from the first page, and ending, beginning or middling in the same place. This river winds and wends and winds again. Just as night "Falls again" (Nooteboom 106). The night falls again so a character can begin or end or middle thier story, but they are always on the river, in the beginning and the end and the middle. As they relive thier story they relive thier twenty, or thirteen, minutes of life. "Thirteen minutes--of course Captain Dekobra still remembered precisely--had elapsed between the moment that the first of his four engines had failed and the moment he touched the surface of the sea." Earlier on that page, page 108, Dekobra recalls "...he had been able to store his entire life in that instant..." On the damazon, recalling, reliving his story, Dekobra lives his lifetime, begins, ends and middles his story. Just as Peter Harris mentions on page 98 "...you depart from Belem, you arive in Belem. There's something cyclical about it, something of eternal recurrence."

From Beginning to End

What's interesting about Finnegans Wake and The Skin of Our Teeth is one major difference I noticed. What's odd about this difference is that it also creates a likeness. While the skin of our teeth covers thousands of years, Finnegans Wake only covers one night. But in that one night FW covers the entirety of history. Both books cover every aspect of history, although The Skin of Our Teeth is slightly more abridged. Also, and obviously, both endlessly reference the Bible, and with very little subtelty. What also seems very important, in both books, is the surroundings. While chaos reigns, the setting of the Antrobus's house is in chaos. When peacetime comes, the characters physically pull thier domain out of chaos. The surrounding scene is symbolic of thier lives, as it is in Finnegans Wake. Lastly, both books begin and end exactly the same, with the same scene, the same words, the same concerns.

Jack n' Jill

Well...I don't know how to say this but Joyce managed to pervert Jack and Jill. I shouldn't be surprised but I am somewhat shocked...I don't really think they are the same thing. The kind of shock I'm feeling isn't that he's capable of such a perversion but the portrayal of Jack and Jill so lewdly. Since this is a clean blog I will just give the page number: 462, from the very top.

Listlessness

I wandered about today and saw several things. I saw a cat with yellow eyes, black fur, an evil countenance and a gruesome personality. After said cat I experienced a table with four legs, made of wood, would I have looked closer, I'm sure the wood would have been identifiable, and one leaf. Outside I saw my car docked, a cadillac (not of the modern type), gray in color, square in shape, a veritable boat. I also studied the contents of my backpack, which, very much like my room, was in upheaval. There was a notebook, the Four Quartets by T.S. Elliot (browny points?), Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, an Almanac, which I always carry, erasers, pens, pencils, scraps of nondescript paper, Kettle Brand potato chips, three folders (red, blue and gray), my passport (in case I need to flea...ha kidding), deodorant, a bouncy ball, shnozmitts (Joycean word of my own fabrication), a flash drive, an i clicker (arhg), cough drops; mentho-lyptus flavored(as if any flavor could make cough drops good), some money and last but not least, a piece of plastic which used to cover one of my books. Not least, I say, because this piece of plastic could serve a number of purposes. In the beginning it covered a book but now the possibilities are endless. With its bag-like shape it could carry a sandwich, an orange, any lunch-like accoutraments, it could plug a hole in a not-so-tight window, it could cover pressed flowers in need of preservation, it could be used to smother afore mentioned cat (I'm not a creepy cat killer and I would never harm an animal but this cat and I do NOT see eye to eye), it could be used as a garbage sack, etc. Like I said the possibilites are endless...

My Grounded Experience

Well, yesterday started as a normal day. The very first thing I saw, much to my dismay, was the red glare of my alarm clock, which, by the way, makes me levitate every time it goes off. After three years of the same blood curdling sound one would think I would be accustomed to it, but the sound this alarm clock makes is at best unnatural. After hitting the snooze button and dreading the end of the nine minutes, I realized I had to pee and was very disappointed. My day always begins with alarm, snooze, alarm and the disruption of this process due to bodily functions is simply not acceptable. After peeling myself out of my brown snowflake flannel sheets I clumsily felt my way to the light switch and recieved my second shock of the day. I hate turning on lights in the morning. Not only does it jolt my senses, but it brings to life the harsh realization that my sleeping time is no more. Since I dearly love to sleep, my mornings consist of a series of arguments with myself, constantly convincing myself that I need to wake up and get my lazy ass out of bed. I jumped, no lurched, into the shower and I was instantly at peace. As much as I love sleeping, I love showering even more. Turning the water to just below the point of being unbearable, I revel in the heat and steam of a fifteen minute shower. The first thing I heard after exiting the bathroom was the ominous sound of sirens. One thing I definitely miss about living in the middle of nowhere is the lack of traffic noises. All this occurred, by the way, while singing "Joy" by Against Me to myself, a pleasantly cheerful song. Usually I wake up with the reverberations of some terrible song ringing in my head, so this was a welcome change. I then proceeded to turn on my CD player and listened to quite the array of music. The mix CD, entitled Happy Graduation, Love Sally, had music by artists ranging from Incubus, Tool and some stupid baller rap song to music by Nirvana and Dido. Being exhausted, a fault of my own I assure you, I made a futile attempt at putting on makeup and doing my hair and eventually resigned myself to the bare minimum. Since I have to go now, I will quit and label this blog as my Groundhog's Day morning. I assure you, there is more exciting news about my day to come.