Did you know that scholars, rummaging around in the papers of Beckett’s dusty Paris estate, recently discovered what might be a long-lost play? A long suspected, lost masterwork. It consists of 23 blank pages that magnificently capture the starkness and emptiness of modern life. The first page, alone, scholars say, is genius. It’s true. I read it in The Onion.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47722
O'Donoghue shows off what could easily be the play's whimsically tragic opening scene.
Approaching Beckett isn’t easy. It’s like standing at the base of a mountain and thinking…I’ll never get up there. It’s intimidating, daunting. It’s like my Dad asking me if I was reading that book on purpose. “That book” being any part of the screwy collection of stuff that I used to read, and still do. It’s like Salman Rushdie saying that “these are difficult books and a headache after reading would not, or not in all cases be an inappropriate response.” But there I was, reading Beckett, Murphy, on the beach. Beach reading material, risking the Beckettian headache. People are regarding me with some suspicion. But I ignore them.
Like Murphy, on my beach day, I reject money, work, marriage and responsibility. I sit on my chair. However, I am unbound. I am in the sun, not out of it, so I slather on the suntan oil–it’s so easy to lose personal freshness (Murphy, pg 81)–I am not in a medium-sized cage of north-western aspect, (Murphy, pg 3) symbolizing 20th century man’s walls and entrapments–I am on a lovely beach. But soon I will have to “buckle to” and start eating, drinking, sleeping and putting my clothes back on.
And so, I go on.
