Happy Birthday, Sam Fri. Apr 13th, 07

The expression I often use when trying to describe the experience of the Sublime is that it is like water breaking on rock: the water cannot penetrate the rock, but it may subsume it.

There may be no other author (at least among those I’ve read) that offers me this experience as consistently as Samuel Beckett, and I’m glad, Sam, that you were born on this April day back in 1906.

To go back to the metaphor of the water not being able to penetrate the rock for a moment, although I have read (and reread) a respectful stack of his works, I do not feel that I have yet begun to genuinely understand Beckett, but I find myself continually returning to his works and attempting to read more of them because, as I search for an understanding of his works, I can feel all the lights in my mind surge with brightness and then dim from exhaustion, and I find the experience exhilarating, inspiring, and addicting, and, while reading his works, I occasionally, in my weariness, catch glimpses of what wiser people might call a brutal & grotesque reality, but I call moments of honesty that have the ability to inspire a hope that is of the kind one receives from putting one’s hand in the fire.

As I sat down to reflect on what I might share with you, dear fates readers, about my Sam, I found my mind & tongue paralyzed. I’ve never even sat down to write even a brief email about Beckett, so I didn’t really know where to begin a reverie (I guess I’m lucky I’ve never had to read him for a course that might require a proper essay).
While I sat back searching for words, my mind came across the epigrammatic, comforting, yet discomforting sentiment of Beckett’s, “I cannot go on. I go on. I cannot go on. I go on.” I can’t quite finger where this phrase occurs in Beckett’s works—it probably doesn’t occur this way verbatim—but I think it is a sentiment that permeates much of what Beckett attempts to share with readers. The sentiment haunts the first sentence of what is likely Beckett’s most “accessible” novel, Murphy, “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” And I think as first sentences in novels go this has to rank up very high on the list for aesthetic foreshadowing, profundity, and sheer power.
On the back cover of my copy of Murphy, there is a quote from some commentary on Beckett’s 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, and I think it sums up why Beckett is so important, at least to me, better than I ever could. It reads, “In the realms of annihilation, the writing of Samuel Beckett rises like a miserere from all mankind, it’s muffled minor key sounding liberation to the oppressed and comfort to those in need.” But I fear I must add a caveat and say that this “comfort” is rarely the gentle kind.

Home Libraries Wed. Feb 21st, 07

I have a thing about home libraries. I don’t put a book on a shelf unless I’ve read it. I spent a year enamored with all the books on my shelf when I was 16, most of which I hadn’t read, and, by the end of that year, I “grew up” enough to decide that unless I had read a book I couldn’t put it on my shelf—all unread books would have to remain boxed and closeted (and for a while I wouldn’t even display books I’d read, but that’s a whole other matter). Of course, I have a reference section, which is filled with books I haven’t fully read, but look to for guidance. But unless I’ve read a book from cover to cover and can share a few personal thoughts about it, I don’t feel that it’s honest to put a book on my shelf. Now, if I were running a lending library out of my home, then displaying all books (read or unread) would be sensible, but I think a home library should be about books you’ve read and should be organized in a way that means something to you, so you can find a book based on your memory of it and how it relates to other books in your library.

A home library should not be about all the books you’ve bought and intended to read, or am I being an aesthetic fascist here? I sometimes wonder if I take this whole honesty & aesthetics thing too far. I do think that when you enjoy something, you should be honest about why you enjoy it. So if you buy books just to fill your shelves, with only a slight intention of reading them, I think you should be open about the bullshit artist you are. And I bullshit about things all the time, but, generally, I don’t lie to myself about it. Aesthetics are at the center of most what we enjoy in life, so, when you muddy that picture, your enjoyment of anything thereafter is a moot point because you really don’t enjoy the said thing for the reason you “think.” Then again, when I begin to openly address “enjoyment” & “honesty” in life (amongst other things), I know I’m touching on subjects I feel I have no real rationale for or series of presuppositions to work with, and I might as well be talking about the reoccurring piece of salt in my eye, which is why I usually hedge on those subjects.
But I digress.
I once had a friend that organized her books according to what continent they were written on—I always liked that idea. I have most of my books organized according to how they affected me, how I think they’ve influenced each other, and I’ll usually group an author’s books together, but not always.
What about your home libraries?

technorati tags:Aesthetics, home libraries, books, honesty

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