Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
          --Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

I remember that today is Beckett's birthday -- he was born Good Friday the thirteenth, a hundred years ago. Today I learned of a letter he wrote to Samuel Putnam, Hilary's father, a connection I remember writing about four years ago. I remember that I got interested in Beckett after reading a review of The Lost Ones, which had just come out. Or rather that was the tipping point of interest, since what got me interested to begin with was Jim Gleick's yearbook quote, which I remember with complete confidence: "But now he knows these hills, that is to say he knows them better, and if ever again he sees them from afar it will be, I think, with other eyes, and not only that, but the within, all those inner caverns where thought and feeling dance their Sabbath." The fact that Mako Stuart had a picture of Beckett as his yearbook photo also helped tipped me, since Beckett was so charismatic in photos.

I didn't know it was Beckett, but my father recognized him in Mako's photo, which I found very impressive. One long weekend when I had an infected ingrown toenail, and wasn't allowed to go on the Searchers four day hike which I'd been so looking forward to (and which Mako was on), I lay in my mother's bed, I guess since it was more comfortable, or maybe they were away, and read Beckett -- both The Lost Ones and Endgame since I was so into chess -- and fully fell in love with him.

As loves go, it's lasted; and been intense without being very difficult.

I remember getting the trilogy out of the library not long after, and writing about the trouble I got into when I failed to return it. I wonder if that was the first time I knew the word "trilogy"? Or did I already know it from Tolkein? I remember that the library copy was hardcover, even though it had only been published in paperback. I realized later the library had at it rebound, with the paperback cover laminated on to the hard boards. There was a dead roach compressed against the back, which I avoided but never removed, out of sheer denial. If I didn't remove it, some part of me was thinking, it was because it must not have been a roach. Eventually, in college (I'd claimed I had returned the book, but I never did), I seem to remember cleaning it off.

Reading it I was able to solve the somewhat nagging puzzle about Jim Gleick's yearbook quote, the fact that it was ungrammatical. So for my yearbook, two years later, I put in the whole quotation, with the sentence-completing predicate (as well as a line from Finnegans Wake, ending "Hee hee hee hee Mr Funn, you're going to be fined again"). I quote it again, as I remember it:

From there he must have seen it all, the sea, these hills, their serried ranges crowding to the skyline. But all are not divined, even from that great height, and often where he saw he crest or peak there must have been two crests, two peaks, riven by a valley. But now he knows these hills, that is to say he knows them better, and if ever again he sees them from afar it will be, I think, with other eyes, and not only that but the within, all those inner caverns where thought and feeling dance their sabbath, all that two quite differently disposed.

I am so glad to remember this.

I think the passage continues: "He looks old, and it is a sorry sight to see him left alone now, after so many days, so many nights, so many comings and goings." My mother was sure there was an obscene, épater-les-bourgeousie pun in comings. But she didn't read Beckett, and got him wrong.

posted by william 8:48 AM
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