Beckett as Biff

I've been sitting on some parts of Molloy that knock on the reader's head, like Back to the Future when Biff says "Hello, Mcfly, anybody home Mcfly?" Yes Biff Knocks on poor Michael J. Fox's head just like Molloy knocks on his mother's head.

The first I saw was on page 4:

Perhaps I'm inventing a little, perhaps embellishing, but on the whole that's the way it was.

I always have the urge to quote the entire page I am looking at when I do this. And also all the
"I don't knows" and It may have beens" and "I forgets" lends to the unsurety of the text, by the way.

Another (11):

And what do I mean by seeing and seein again? (Isn't that great!)
four sentences later:
I wonder what that means.

And later (24):

I got to my knees, no, that doesn't work,I got up and watched the little procession recede. I heard the shepherd whistle, and I saw him flourishing his crook, and the dof bustling about th herd, which but for him would no doubt have fallen into the canal.

And this (26):

Even farts made no impression upon it. (Absolutely gorgeous)

And, of course (30)

The house where Sophie--no, I can't all her that any more, I'll try calling her Lousse, without the Mrs.--the house where Lousse lived was not far away.

And (31)

Let's first bury the dog.

then this (41)

Mad words, no matter. For I no longer know what I am doing, nor why, those are things I understand less and less, I don't deny it, for why deny it, and to whom, to you, to whom nothing is denied?

then (45)

if such a thing is concievable, and such a thing is conceivable, since I conceive it.

and (51)

She had a somewhat hairy face, or am I imagining it, in the interests of the narrative?

I could go on with more but we all get the point: nothing. Nothing at all.

Rolling Stones

This passage from Molloy is beautiful, it may be my favorite:

This phenomenon, if I remember rightly, was characteristic of my region. Things are perhaps different today. Though I fail to see, never having left my region, what right I have to speak of its characteristics. No, I never escaped, and even the limits of my region were unknown to me. But I felt they were far away. But this feeling was based on nothing serious, it was a simple feeling. For if my region had ended no further than my feet could carry me, surely I would have felt it changing slowly. For regions do not suddenly end, as far as I know, but gradually merge into one another. And I never noticed anything of the kind, but however far I went, and in no matter what direction, it was always the same sky, always the same earth, precisely, day after day and night after night. On the other hand, if it is true that regions gradually merge into one another, and this remains to be proved, than I may well have left mine many times, thinking I was still within it. But I preferred to abide by my simple feeling and its voice that said,
Molloy, your region is vast, you have never left it and you never shall. And wherever you wander, within its distant limits, things will always be the same, precisely. It would thus appear, if this is so, that my movements owed nothing to the places they caused to vanish, but were due to something else, to the buckled wheel that carried me, in unforeseeable jerks, from fatigue to rest, and inversly, for example. (60)

This part speaks to the restlessness of Molloy's soul, or of the human soul. Some of us may be constantly searching for something, yet unable to see it right in front of our own eyes. And it is beautiful, because that is life. We will never know the answers, so then it becomes about the journey in searching, and all the discoveries we make along the way, which of course will never answer our original question. We can never escape our own region, only watch it change with time.

On Waking

I like this line:

You don't remember immediatly who you are, when you wake. (33)

It reminds me of something, I just don't know what. It reminds me of everything. For Molloy, it may be he never remembers immediatly who he is. When I wake, I wake hard and rough. Every morning I have to put myself together again, or wait for myself to be whole again. I think a part of my mind is left behind in whatever dream I was dreaming when I was ripped away from that world. It is hard for me. I was once happy and cheerful upon awakening, and now, and now. In truth I want to keep dreaming, all the time, and I want my day to be whimsical like a dream. Is that selfish? When I open my eyes things are fuzzy and uncertain, as if they may at any moment simply fall through the floor and keep falling, all the way through the elastic earth and end up in someone's house on the other side. I think someday my dreams will be so deep and intense that they will suck me forever in, and no thing then could wake me.

Narcotics

I must say that I opened up Beckett with doubts in my mind. I am a novice in literature, and with Dr. Sexson feeding us the lie that we will not like Beckett, I was not entirely looking forward to reading him--and I mean that my stomach did not fill up with fluttering butterflies as it did prior to opening Nabokov. But once again I was decieved.

Exactly two sentences into Molloy, I whispered a freindly curse into the air and saw it flitter away, of course headed in the direction of that Old Proteus Dr. Sexson. Now I have seven lifetimes of study in front of me (Finnigins Wake is one of them), and in every one I sweat up steep mountains and slither through twisted caves, and stumble through choked valleys, only to find myself where I began. I say freindly curse because it had in it no hate, no malignant nature. It was a forehead-slapping, lightly chuckling curse which would only tickle or gently slap him--it wouldn't do any real harm.
No, it is a love-hate relationship I have with Dr. Sexson. He is my drug dealer. I need him more than he needs me. He dishes me out little samples here and there, and smiles, and always tricks me and teases me and keeps me on my toes. He is a trickster. Now he has given me a new drug to try--it is called Beckett, and it's reeelly good stuff, man. The only problem is, he gives me too much of it. I have stacked in my house mountains of drugs to consume, more than can be done in any lifetime, and he just keeps giving me more to pile on. And then he tells me to have it all done and sniffed up by the end of the week and I say

"Hey, man, I gotta take my time with this stuff. I gotta enjoy it.

rome wasn't built in a day, man."

We all, of course, know that the beautiful yarn he wove for us the last two days in class was all made up, all fiction. Dr. Sexson lives a fictional life and is therefore more real than any one of us. Or maybe not. Maybe it was real and Dr. Sexson encountered his Dopellganger upon that misty plane. Or maybe the old lady was a ghost. Perhaps the other passengers saw Michael talking and motioning as he sat alone in the seats, and they gave him wide berth. Perhaps, then and there upon that fictional plane, Dr. Sexson lived out a lifetime in twenty minutes--one filled with allegorical stories and death and the fight for life using an immortal tool of the Gods: stories. It is something to ponder.

Venia

Im sorry for taking so long to establish my blog site--but no need to fret on it, eh? I mean you don't need to get your panties in a twisted bundle, a dimpled tumble. There is more to life than that, I just don't know what it is.


I love and love and love the first lines of Finnigins Wake--and all the ones after that also! But very much yes! I am happy with this beginning:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to
bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.


I don't have any discoveries to report yet, except this--I did not like Haroun and the sea of stories. I mean the storie behind it was neat and fun but, after being infected by a certain author by the name of Nabokov, such elementary language finds me yawning. Oh my God I am sounding like a high brow! I am not trying to be stuck up, and I read the whole story through. I didn't (God Forbid) Stop Reading The Book.

Anyways, I am enjoying "The Following Story," and I of course I am enjoying Finnigins Wake.