I first
looked into Beckett for my AS Art and Context exam unit. After purchasing the
book How it is I have begun to learn about what I
believe is the modernist abstract and gritty realism that made Beckett such a unique writer.
I find his writing
highly academic and his writing style extremely unique . When reading
the preface to the book I learned how he edits his own work from autobiographical to being
almost ominous.
The book is
in three parts and is 129 pages long (in this edition). The graphic work on the
front of the book is purely typographic. The text of the title is bold and
green on a light grey background.
"Beckett then, finds an analogous explanation
of his means to satisfying thirst, before settling for a brief refusal to
explain: ‘mouth opens the tongue comes out and lolls in the mud and no question
of thirst either’. It’s as simple as that. We have a character alone, in the
constant darkness, able to subsist. Which is all that is needed for the
narration to proceed and, in the end, is all we are given. This is ‘How It Is’.
Realism, causality and explanation are written out of the text. The narrator
crawls through the mud and darkness without knowing where he comes from or where
he is going, and certainly not why. He drags with him a sack containing tins of
food, the origin of which is a mystery to him. On his journey he meets another
whom he calls Pim and with whom he has a brief, abusive relationship. In ‘How
It Is’ Beckett continues to strip away conventional forms, as if to adumbrate
the ‘peeling the onion’ metaphor ventured in his earliest critical book on
Proust."
Quote from Introduction in Beckett. S, Faber and Faber ,1964
''the last
modernist.''- Anthony
Cronin
Born in 1906,Samuel Beckett is described as fitting in "easily with writers like Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Henry Miller,
Witold Gombrowicz, Henry Roth, Nathanael West and Louis-Ferdinand Celine." Like them, Beckett was a "second-generation modernist who arrived on the scene in the late 20's, shortly after Eliot, Joyce, Kafka and Proust had written their
major works." Also like them, Beckett was "caught between the anxieties of influence and the uncertainties of
political and economic crisis," and he too "turned toward a dark, acrid and mocking
humor that became one of the great literary vehicles of the Depression years."
'Waiting for Godot', perhaps Beckett's most famous work which premiered in 1953 is an allegory
written in a heartless modern tone. The theatre goer naturally (in a way similar to my first experience of Nauman's work in the Sunderland show) "rummages through
the performance in search of a meaning. It seems fairly certain that Godot
stands for God. Those who are loitering by the withered tree are waiting for
salvation, which never comes.The rest of the
symbolism in Beckett's play is less accessible, and the following quote mirrors my own feelings about Beckett and equally my feelings in relation to Bruce Nauman's work:
"Although "Waiting
for Godot" is a "puzzlement," as the King of Siam would express
it, Mr. Beckett is no charlatan. He has strong feelings about the degradation
of mankind, and he has given vent to them copiously. "Waiting for
Godot" is all feeling. Perhaps that is why it is puzzling and convincing
at the same time. Theatregoers can rail at it, but they cannot ignore it. For
Mr. Beckett is a valid writer."
The following is a quote from Faber & Faber's 1964 Samuel Beckett in relation to How It Is.
"The earliest versions of ‘How It Is’ contain references to moles, and to
callers, and to a scribbler relaxing in his cottage in the country. But,
although Becket often began with images from his own experience, he would later
remove autobiographical details and dismantle chronological and casual
relationships, replacing them with the abstract from that have a coherence of
their own. Thus the first version of the French text includes lengthy passages
explaining the total darkness in which the narrator lives, and invoking the
all-too-trivial moles who manage to be punctual in their own comings and goings
without benefit of altering day and night. After several drafts, Becket simply
asserts the existence of ‘impenetrable dark’.
Again, after the review of the various types of callers he has known in
past lives, the narrator’s solitude is initially explained by a thorough
examination of circumstance and probability. Beckett then cancels the passage
and summarises in a few words: ‘long wrangle so minute that moments when yes to
be feared’, then simply affirms ‘no callers this time’.
Likewise, the narrator’s continued survival seems at first to require
some explanation grounded in realism. The contents of the all-important sack
satisfy the need for food; Beckett then finds an analogous explanation of his
means to satisfying thirst, before settling for a brief refusal to explain:
‘mouth opens the tongue comes out and lolls in the mud and no question of
thirst either’. It’s as simple as that. We have a character alone, in the
constant darkness, able to subsist. Which is all that is needed for the
narration to proceed and, in the end, is all we are given. This is ‘How It Is’.
Realism, causality and explanation are written out of the text. The narrator
crawls through the mud and darkness without knowing where he comes from or
where he is going, and certainly not why. He drags with him a sack containing
tins of food, the origin of which is a mystery to him. On his journey he meets
another whom he calls Pim and with whom he has a brief, abusive relationship.
In ‘How It Is’ Beckett continues to strip away conventional forms, as if to
adumbrate the ‘peeling the onion’ metaphor ventured in his earliest critical
book on Proust."
