Beckett, Stein, and That Blurry Line
Apologies for the title, and thoughts on narrative forms
Written by: Sourima Chakraborty
I used to feel that if there is one instrument that a writer needs to hone, it must be a dazzling, baffling narrative structure that heroically bears the sense of the author’s gargantuan philosophies on its back, like Atlas bore the weight of the heavens. I am not sure how I feel about it now, and if I choose to talk about it, what it is that I’ll talk about. Throughout the past month, I have been reading literature from different periods, by authors of different nationalities, trying to pay close attention to each word, each sentence, each paragraph, as they come together by means of experimentation, or deliberation, or simply pure impulse. And they come together to form a judgement, an opinion, a way of life, a revelation, or merely an escape — I do not know which. At times, I have also been so sick and tired of words, that I could not care less to tell one from another. So, when I read a few passages from Gertrude Stein earlier this evening, I wondered if those ebbing and flowing sentences that opened and closed into itself, could promise emancipation at such times.
While reading an essay by Sherwood Anderson, I learnt that one of his primary influences had been this book called ‘Tender Buttons’ (yes, nipples), by Stein. I turned to the book, and a few sentences in the first page caught my eye — ‘The change in that is that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search.’ It didn’t make much sense, perhaps none at all. Perhaps, I’d grown a bit restless, or weary too. Taking a detour, I also read bits and pieces of the nine hundred page volume of character portraits, ‘The Making of American Lives’ — a mammoth stream of text with not even chapter divisions. I thought about my own attempts at writing a character portrait over the last few days, which was turning out to be an ensemble of ghostly characters who formed and dispersed like wisps of smoke.
If Gertrude Stein’s sentences were people, they would have lived and died at the same time.
What I eventually sat through, was her essay — Composition as Explanation. If Gertrude Stein’s sentences were people, they would have lived and died at the same time. Now, do not ask me to explain that further, for I do not know what I mean. Imagine living in an utopian world where there is only one word that sums up the entirety of the human experience. Let that word be ‘fidledadee’. And let us imagine people there blissfully saying fidledadee to each other all day long and hoping to be understood. But doesn’t this fantasy feel like something Orwell’s dystopia from 1984 might have been trying to achieve? So here I am, trying to talk about the possibility of an utopia, and something about it feels dystopian also, and I cannot help but sense the hollowness of such absolute words and absolute worlds.
But why talk only about Stein, when, just a few weeks back, while reading Watt by Samuel Beckett, I’d scribbled in my diary the following — ‘Watt is a curious piece of literature, indeed. I cannot even decipher how I feel about it. I think the kind of endurance required to sit through a reading of the book, which appears to be just an ensemble of words, events, characters making little to no sense, just wandering aimlessly from one word to another, as the brain still tries to feel itself, to tame the randomness into a semblance of logic, is perhaps, very similar to the process of putting one word after another on a blank page, with no expectations and nothing to look forward to.’
It is a new day, and the tragedy of it is just that I do not know who I am, all over again.
But then, what can possibly be the relevance of the notion of progress in art? How does a writer create knowing that he’s creating, but what he wanted to create is no longer true? It is a new day and all that I wrote yesterday is already distant and lusterless. I do not love it, I do not hate it, but it is just a faraway cousin I exchanged courtesies with. It is a new day, and the tragedy of it is just that I do not know who I am, all over again. So, what option am I left with, except to start at the very beginning, always?
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if I cannot make sense out of Beckett, or Stein. Maybe, one only needs to listen to the waves of the zeitgeist for the time being, and forgive oneself if one is intimidated by it. The process of creation does not seem to be a process of aloofness. The tremendous work of grilling and chiseling away at the form, seems to be concurrent with the equally challenging work on one’s fear. Can the form simply be unafraid? Can the form entertain the idea that it might be rooted in so many different things, grounded in so many different ways? Can the form get people to reconsider what beauty is by being utterly ugly? Can the form make people reconsider what meaning is by being utterly nonsensical? Can the form embrace the fact that there is nothing, nothing concrete to say, or be, or do, and infinitely bear testimony to that? In the end, can the form be as simple, and accessible as when Dickens writes, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…”, one cannot help but resonate with the truth of it.
