unconscious of the raceof man. And his mind, wandering forward and back in time, touches upon all symbol, myth, and history from the hieroglyphics on ancient tombs through Vedic and Norse myths, the Bible in its several forms, sagas and passion plays and verse, and on to modern literature, right up to Beckett himself, who was often sitting across the room from Joyce, and so appears in the Wake.
“During the twenty years that it took Joyce to write the Wake, he had a team of readers—the literary groupies of his day—scouring the Bibliothèque in Paris, reading all the great books he suggested. They would synopsize each and include a few representative pages of text so that Joyce could then add both statement and word to Finnegan’s dream.
“With a few dozen minds and at least one, perhaps two—here I mean Beckett—indisputable geniuses working on the Wake, it became the ideally competent novel that the ideally erudite reader might peruse for the rest of his life and still never appreciate in all its ideal complexity. In other words Joyce, within the assumptions of his aesthetic, exhausted the form of the novel of competence. Another novel more complete probably could not be produced, since it would require another Joyce, greater scope, a larger vision, more and better help, a second Bibliothèque Nationale.
“And since the form of the novel as written from Richardson to Joyce was exhausted, Samuel Beckett turned around and attempted to exhaust the form of its ‘negative’ image, as it were—the novel of incompetence. By incompetence Beckett does not mean novels written by incompetent authors. He means that, unlike Joyce, he cannot assume the possibility of communication among human beings, much less between human beings and the collective unconscious.
“For Beckett words don’t work. They are an imposition, given us by others after our births; they really can’t describe our own particular experiences in our own individual terms. Also, when we speak words, we need somebody else to hear and acknowledge them. A witness. In other words, we can’t say us in our own terms for anybody’s ears but our own. And if we were to try, say, by speaking out all the words of the Others once and for all, we would find that there’s nothing to say, since Western civilization assumes that we are no more than what we were when we were first born—a tabula rasa, a void, un néant, a nothing. And nothing can only be described by silence.
“But if the whole point of communication is to confirm life and existence, then we must try, if only to know we live. With words that are inexact and ultimately unavailing.
“More?” Flood asked.
Sinclaire, who had turned his head to McGarr, said, “Not today, Professor. I think we catch on—Beckett’s novels are worse than his plays. Now I know why he won a Nobel Prize.”
Flood’s laugh was quick and ready.
At the door McGarr looked up at the wall of books. It was Ulysses that concerned them at the moment, and at least one shelf seemed to be devoted to nothing else.
“All in the attempt to prove it’s not Useless, ” said Flood in a knowing way.
“What would you recommend for the first-time reader of the book? Surely there’s a…” McGarr searched for a term that was not “trot.”
“Key,” Flood supplied eagerly. “Dozens of them. The best is this little volume.” He handed McGarr a book. “There are others, of course, all the way from long-winded explanations of a single motif to indexes of recurrent elements thatmerely list the pages on which words are mentioned.” Taking another book from the shelf, Flood fanned the pages, revealing what looked like a kind of dictionary. “Take whatever you think you might need.”
“This’ll be enough for now.”
Flood smiled. “Sure—the overexamined book isn’t worth reading.” And when McGarr’s head came up, he added quickly, “Don’t take offense. Kinch said that. I’m only quoting.”
Said Sinclaire,
“During the twenty years that it took Joyce to write the Wake, he had a team of readers—the literary groupies of his day—scouring the Bibliothèque in Paris, reading all the great books he suggested. They would synopsize each and include a few representative pages of text so that Joyce could then add both statement and word to Finnegan’s dream.
“With a few dozen minds and at least one, perhaps two—here I mean Beckett—indisputable geniuses working on the Wake, it became the ideally competent novel that the ideally erudite reader might peruse for the rest of his life and still never appreciate in all its ideal complexity. In other words Joyce, within the assumptions of his aesthetic, exhausted the form of the novel of competence. Another novel more complete probably could not be produced, since it would require another Joyce, greater scope, a larger vision, more and better help, a second Bibliothèque Nationale.
“And since the form of the novel as written from Richardson to Joyce was exhausted, Samuel Beckett turned around and attempted to exhaust the form of its ‘negative’ image, as it were—the novel of incompetence. By incompetence Beckett does not mean novels written by incompetent authors. He means that, unlike Joyce, he cannot assume the possibility of communication among human beings, much less between human beings and the collective unconscious.
“For Beckett words don’t work. They are an imposition, given us by others after our births; they really can’t describe our own particular experiences in our own individual terms. Also, when we speak words, we need somebody else to hear and acknowledge them. A witness. In other words, we can’t say us in our own terms for anybody’s ears but our own. And if we were to try, say, by speaking out all the words of the Others once and for all, we would find that there’s nothing to say, since Western civilization assumes that we are no more than what we were when we were first born—a tabula rasa, a void, un néant, a nothing. And nothing can only be described by silence.
“But if the whole point of communication is to confirm life and existence, then we must try, if only to know we live. With words that are inexact and ultimately unavailing.
“More?” Flood asked.
Sinclaire, who had turned his head to McGarr, said, “Not today, Professor. I think we catch on—Beckett’s novels are worse than his plays. Now I know why he won a Nobel Prize.”
Flood’s laugh was quick and ready.
At the door McGarr looked up at the wall of books. It was Ulysses that concerned them at the moment, and at least one shelf seemed to be devoted to nothing else.
“All in the attempt to prove it’s not Useless, ” said Flood in a knowing way.
“What would you recommend for the first-time reader of the book? Surely there’s a…” McGarr searched for a term that was not “trot.”
“Key,” Flood supplied eagerly. “Dozens of them. The best is this little volume.” He handed McGarr a book. “There are others, of course, all the way from long-winded explanations of a single motif to indexes of recurrent elements thatmerely list the pages on which words are mentioned.” Taking another book from the shelf, Flood fanned the pages, revealing what looked like a kind of dictionary. “Take whatever you think you might need.”
“This’ll be enough for now.”
Flood smiled. “Sure—the overexamined book isn’t worth reading.” And when McGarr’s head came up, he added quickly, “Don’t take offense. Kinch said that. I’m only quoting.”
Said Sinclaire,
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