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