Hello.
I usually reserve this page for a longish thinkish piece(ish) focusing on a book/band/something I dig (hence the blog name), among other essayish ishes. Not today. Today I wanted to write a quick, sloppy blogthing about how I’ve spent my winter break from teaching.
First, there was xmas, which I prefer to Christmas because I’m on the front lines of the war on Christmas fighting against the holiday. Death to Santa. But I will say that my xmas was quite nice. I spent the eve of the day itself driving a considerable distance from home to see family, driving back toward home to see more family, driving home to see my dog who missed me during those hours of driving and familying. Then came the magic day of driving to see more family. Nothing like family.
Then there was New Year’s Eve, aka Amateur Night II (St. Patrick’s Day being so popular the amateurs demanded a sequel). This was spent watching movies, going to bed early, being woken by fireworks and/or gunshots and a nervous dog. My dog really hates the holidays.
When not engaged in the above mentioned affairs, I wrote my ass off, drank lots of tea and a little wine, ate some good meals, went to the gym, walked the dog, took naps with the dog, read a few things.
Readings thus far in 2020:
Beckett’s great play Endgame, which gets better with age.
Michael Coffey’s book Samuel Beckett is Closed, which is fantastic stuff.
Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad, which is quite fascinating and not at all what I expected.
Samuel Beckett: Anatomy of a Literary Revolution by Pascale Casanova (well, half of it, but I plan to finish it this week, and man, what a fantastic bit of lit crit this is turning out to be).
The Seafarer by Conor McPherson, which was a lot of fun, went in an interesting direction midway through, ended nicely, and takes place over xmas eve and xmas and so seemed quite relevant.
As you can see, I’m in a Beckett phase. I tend to go through one every few years. And yeah, I make the sign of the cross these days while saying: “In the name of Joyce, Beckett, and Flann O’Brien,” but this phase seems to be particularly long. I’m seeing things in Sam’s work that are hitting me in ways they didn’t when I was a younger man. I think I was first attracted to the weirdness of the plays, the awe inspiringly dense novels, the near insufferable permutations of Watt. Now I’m responding with more than juvenile recognition along the lines of, “Yeah, this feels right—bleak and absurd and meaningless. That life, man.” Now I see insight, ideas, struggle, dare I say truth even though the idea of universal truths has long irked me. I dunno. . . I grow older and the books of my 20s seem different now. Some, like Beckett’s, feel deeper than others. Maybe I needed to grow with the books. Maybe I’ll respond differently at 80.
Nothing much else to report. I’m on my couch, dog at my feet, getting hungry, not writing my syllabi for the coming semester, writing this instead. But I can only prolong the real work for so long. So, so long.