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Watt
Fiction. WATT was the beginning of Samuel Becket's post-war literary career, the fruition of the years in hiding in the Vaucluse mountains from the Gestapo, which also largely inspired WAITING FOR GODOT. But it remains, unlike the work that followed it, extremely Irish, a philosophical novel full of the grim humour that was already his trade-mark in such earlier fictions as MORE PRICKS THAN KICKS and MURPHY. The perambulations of WATT, especially in the home of the eccentric Mr. Knott, and the sketching of logic to elicit meaning, must be among the most comic inventions of modern literature. First published by the libertine Olympia Press in 1953, it has established itself as one of the most quoted and best-loved of Becket's novels. The typographical oddities and omissions are as Beckett left the text.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
About the author
Samuel Beckett
798 books6,055 followersSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in France for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.
Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.
Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1984 he was elected Saoi of Aosdána.
Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.
Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1984 he was elected Saoi of Aosdána.
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August 27, 2023
Any human being is a strange creature… But some human beings are stranger than others…
There is certain Watt with his own peculiar lifestyle…
And of course he has his own inimitable wisdom…
Samuel Beckett manages not just to make life nonsensical but also to turn every step of living into a preposterous act. So Watt literally becomes the mad and maddening combinations of possibilities and impossibilities, multiplying ad infinitum.
Even the least ones of humankind are capable to play God.
There is certain Watt with his own peculiar lifestyle…
Too fearful to assume himself the onus of a decision he refers it to the frigid machinery of a time-space relation.
And of course he has his own inimitable wisdom…
…but we know that we are no longer the same, and not only know that we are no longer the same, but know in what we are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep on adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or egg collection, without feeling very much the worse for it, is it not.
Samuel Beckett manages not just to make life nonsensical but also to turn every step of living into a preposterous act. So Watt literally becomes the mad and maddening combinations of possibilities and impossibilities, multiplying ad infinitum.
But our particular friends were the rats, that dwelt by the stream. They were long and black. We brought them such titbits from our ordinary as rinds of cheese, and morsels of gristle, and we brought them also bird’s eggs, and frogs, and fledgelings. Sensible of these attentions, they would come flocking round us at our approach, with every sign of confidence and affection, and glide up our trouserlegs, and hang upon our breasts. And then we would sit down in the midst of them, and give them to eat, out of our hands, of a nice fat frog, or a baby thrush. Or seizing suddenly a plump young rat, resting in our bosom after its repast, we would feed it to its mother, or its father, or its brother, or its sister, or to some less fortunate relative.
It was on these occasions, we agreed, after an exchange of views, that we came nearest to God.
Even the least ones of humankind are capable to play God.
Read
August 16, 2019This is the tale
of the man in a
hat called Watt.
And what Watt
did at the house of Mr Knott;
what Watt thought
about what he did &
didn’t do chez Knott,
what Watt didn’t think
and what he didn’t
do while at Knott’s,
what Watt said
about what he did
at Knott’s, what
Watt felt
about what he was or
wasn’t saying about what
he did at Knott’s, what Watt
did about what he said about
what he did at Knott’s. Here,
the first button of his greatcoat.
What Watt thought about Knott,
what Watt thought about Knott’s
dog, what Watt didn’t think about
the dog. The second button, here,
of Watt’s greatcoat. What Watt did
about the family who cared for the
dog at Knott’s house, and did not
care for the dog. What Watt made
of the food I saw him prepare for
Knott’s dog. And note that I, your
narrator, have suddenly appeared
beside you, reader, at the midpoint,
that is the belt of Watt’s greatcoat
so that we may together ask what
Watt himself ate while he thought
at Knot’s. And having now reached
the area of Watt’s lower abdomen,
if you feel inclined to read further,
you might be advised to put a peg
on your nose and close your ears
to the rumblings, the grumblings
of Watt’s innards, for hereabouts
lie the turd and fart buttons of our
Watt’s greatcoat, because Watt's
greatcoat merits a very detailed
description, one that has been
passed down to us, and not by
Watt, nor Mr Knott, nor Sam B,
but yet it has been written. And
Watt’s greatcoat bears a passing
resemblance to the one found in
Mr Swift's Tub, for our good pal
Watt's coat, in its way, is a holy
garment, sewn with guilt and
remorse and sorrow and, yes,
suffering, yes, and thorns, yes,
and tears and rents, yes, at the
seat and elbows of the green
and not-green stiffened fabric,
a fabric known to man, and to
woman too, since the dawn of
time, a fabric of seamlessness,
a fabric of meaninglessness,
and so we arrive at the hem of
Watt’s overcoat which, as it is
written, is lying directly atop,
Watt’s boot,
Watt's shoe,
one of each, ill-matched
one size eight, one size ten,
one blunted, one pointed at the toe.
of the man in a
hat called Watt.
And what Watt
did at the house of Mr Knott;
what Watt thought
about what he did &
didn’t do chez Knott,
what Watt didn’t think
and what he didn’t
do while at Knott’s,
what Watt said
about what he did
at Knott’s, what
Watt felt
about what he was or
wasn’t saying about what
he did at Knott’s, what Watt
did about what he said about
what he did at Knott’s. Here,
the first button of his greatcoat.
What Watt thought about Knott,
what Watt thought about Knott’s
dog, what Watt didn’t think about
the dog. The second button, here,
of Watt’s greatcoat. What Watt did
about the family who cared for the
dog at Knott’s house, and did not
care for the dog. What Watt made
of the food I saw him prepare for
Knott’s dog. And note that I, your
narrator, have suddenly appeared
beside you, reader, at the midpoint,
that is the belt of Watt’s greatcoat
so that we may together ask what
Watt himself ate while he thought
at Knot’s. And having now reached
the area of Watt’s lower abdomen,
if you feel inclined to read further,
you might be advised to put a peg
on your nose and close your ears
to the rumblings, the grumblings
of Watt’s innards, for hereabouts
lie the turd and fart buttons of our
Watt’s greatcoat, because Watt's
greatcoat merits a very detailed
description, one that has been
passed down to us, and not by
Watt, nor Mr Knott, nor Sam B,
but yet it has been written. And
Watt’s greatcoat bears a passing
resemblance to the one found in
Mr Swift's Tub, for our good pal
Watt's coat, in its way, is a holy
garment, sewn with guilt and
remorse and sorrow and, yes,
suffering, yes, and thorns, yes,
and tears and rents, yes, at the
seat and elbows of the green
and not-green stiffened fabric,
a fabric known to man, and to
woman too, since the dawn of
time, a fabric of seamlessness,
a fabric of meaninglessness,
and so we arrive at the hem of
Watt’s overcoat which, as it is
written, is lying directly atop,
Watt’s boot,
Watt's shoe,
one of each, ill-matched
one size eight, one size ten,
one blunted, one pointed at the toe.
September 26, 2024
Stopped in a church
I passed along the way.
Well - I got down on my knees -
And I began to pray!
You know, the preacher likes the cold:
He knows I'm gonna stay.
California Dreamin'
On such a winter's day!
Mamas and the Papas.
Watt is a grim old homeless peripatetic, but he was not grim enough for me. I have anyway now been spoiled by the cornucopia of Beckett’s stark late short pieces in my Collected Short Fiction ebook and am a tad happier as a Grumpy Old Man.
I prefer my Beckett aged - my mordant disassembler of dreams! Here he merely mocks Euclidean Logic.
No, he was not grim enough for me in 1970, though its Keystone Cops slapstick mocks his quondam nemesis - the French Gestapo.
And just as Italo Calvino was then hiding out in the mountains against the hated Italian OVRA, so Beckett headed for the hills to escape his Vichy Nazi secret police, as a hated Resistance operative.
Is it any wonder both resistance workers loved zany slapstick? It shows here.
So Watt reads like a hyperactive teen's deranged ventings. It's full of lists of oddball facts. It is the literary equivalent of the music on the internationally available Mad Christian Radio Show, a Canadian classic of heavy metal!
It's funny. Beckett had to exhale! But if he rarely skewers his nemeses here, at least he vents.
No, for it's his first major novel. He hadn't yet gotten his sea legs for writing in life's rough waters.
I was chuckling mightily in my junior year university English class as I read it, but there was a greenish pallor to my face hearing my classmates' pseudo-intelligent pronouncements upon it.
Partly due to my memories of my prof's surprise blitzkrieg spot quiz earlier that month... And partly due to my paranoid memories of my Grade School buddy Hewey's Chistmas Break happy memories of my Junior High Snafu at his New Year's party in 1970... (that year at his parents' house I was still demolished from my first breakdown)!
You see, this Christmas of '72 before classes started I had supped too close to the devil to chuckle overmuch. My friend Don and I got permission for an ill-fated New Years Eve Party (to get back at Hewey) at my folks' place...
One antic family wag, my bro, had hung condoms from the ceiling. My date, Diana, was speechless and appalled. I drove her home early. And Hewey got lotsa laughs.
Birds, Beasts and Relatives, as the book says.
I learned, like Beckett, to play Dodge Ball with friends and family thereafter.
***
The year 1969, the year In which for the first time I Truly identified with Beckett's old train wreck, Molloy, I had had the Great Godfather of Breakdowns. A perfect (ly awful) Storm.
Not a month after my release from the Enlightenment Ward, my dear old buddy Hewey had decided to hold a show and tell about Fergus for his friend's and family's enlightenment, too.
I was In the hot seat at that New Year Party...
'You always seemed so NORMAL' gushed yet another ex-date there! At least she shared my sadness.
***
So - yes, you guessed it - reading this nutty novel, Watt, In my English class, back in my sophomore year, recalled my first trip to the Enlightenment Ward the summer of 1969. And led to my second trip into Enlightenment In June, 1973, after which, a steady diet of Chlorpromazine.
In this novel, Samuel Beckett's star was rising.
But no one then knew at what an Empyrean Height it would find its Zenith!
God alone knew, and He wasn't saying:
Let the dead bury their dead!
Boys will be boys (and test our limit like Hewey and my bro), but men like Beckett seat themselves tall in the saddle...
And judge the world impartially.
As it will - make no mistake - be judged.
I passed along the way.
Well - I got down on my knees -
And I began to pray!
You know, the preacher likes the cold:
He knows I'm gonna stay.
California Dreamin'
On such a winter's day!
Mamas and the Papas.
Watt is a grim old homeless peripatetic, but he was not grim enough for me. I have anyway now been spoiled by the cornucopia of Beckett’s stark late short pieces in my Collected Short Fiction ebook and am a tad happier as a Grumpy Old Man.
I prefer my Beckett aged - my mordant disassembler of dreams! Here he merely mocks Euclidean Logic.
No, he was not grim enough for me in 1970, though its Keystone Cops slapstick mocks his quondam nemesis - the French Gestapo.
And just as Italo Calvino was then hiding out in the mountains against the hated Italian OVRA, so Beckett headed for the hills to escape his Vichy Nazi secret police, as a hated Resistance operative.
Is it any wonder both resistance workers loved zany slapstick? It shows here.
So Watt reads like a hyperactive teen's deranged ventings. It's full of lists of oddball facts. It is the literary equivalent of the music on the internationally available Mad Christian Radio Show, a Canadian classic of heavy metal!
It's funny. Beckett had to exhale! But if he rarely skewers his nemeses here, at least he vents.
No, for it's his first major novel. He hadn't yet gotten his sea legs for writing in life's rough waters.
I was chuckling mightily in my junior year university English class as I read it, but there was a greenish pallor to my face hearing my classmates' pseudo-intelligent pronouncements upon it.
Partly due to my memories of my prof's surprise blitzkrieg spot quiz earlier that month... And partly due to my paranoid memories of my Grade School buddy Hewey's Chistmas Break happy memories of my Junior High Snafu at his New Year's party in 1970... (that year at his parents' house I was still demolished from my first breakdown)!
You see, this Christmas of '72 before classes started I had supped too close to the devil to chuckle overmuch. My friend Don and I got permission for an ill-fated New Years Eve Party (to get back at Hewey) at my folks' place...
One antic family wag, my bro, had hung condoms from the ceiling. My date, Diana, was speechless and appalled. I drove her home early. And Hewey got lotsa laughs.
Birds, Beasts and Relatives, as the book says.
I learned, like Beckett, to play Dodge Ball with friends and family thereafter.
***
The year 1969, the year In which for the first time I Truly identified with Beckett's old train wreck, Molloy, I had had the Great Godfather of Breakdowns. A perfect (ly awful) Storm.
Not a month after my release from the Enlightenment Ward, my dear old buddy Hewey had decided to hold a show and tell about Fergus for his friend's and family's enlightenment, too.
I was In the hot seat at that New Year Party...
'You always seemed so NORMAL' gushed yet another ex-date there! At least she shared my sadness.
***
So - yes, you guessed it - reading this nutty novel, Watt, In my English class, back in my sophomore year, recalled my first trip to the Enlightenment Ward the summer of 1969. And led to my second trip into Enlightenment In June, 1973, after which, a steady diet of Chlorpromazine.
In this novel, Samuel Beckett's star was rising.
But no one then knew at what an Empyrean Height it would find its Zenith!
God alone knew, and He wasn't saying:
Let the dead bury their dead!
Boys will be boys (and test our limit like Hewey and my bro), but men like Beckett seat themselves tall in the saddle...
And judge the world impartially.
As it will - make no mistake - be judged.
May 14, 2015
“No symbols where none intended.” So runs Beckett’s oft-quoted post-scriptural warning to readers of this unique, flawed masterpiece. Apt, if useless, advice in a novel in which everything from the dog’s dinner to the layout of the garden is analysed and contra-analysed to infinity by its ever-questioning protagonist, who must be one of the most enigmatic (read baffling, alien, other-dimensional) characters ever to have served as the lynchpin for a game-changing work of literature. And make no mistake, Watt is a game-changer like no other, a dadaist middle-finger salute to everything that’s solemn or portentous in art and thought, and an uproarious comedy into the bargain. Sure, it’s frustrating―at times excruciating―and for years was riddled with errors because Beckett, disgusted with the changes wrought by well-wishers in the early editions, wouldn’t allow it to be edited despite knowing that even his original typescript was flawed. (I haven’t read the current Faber edition, but these errors may still be extant, knowing the scrupulousness of the Beckett estate.) But even without the typos this book resembles a manuscript, and the manuscript of a writer in the throes of a crisis at that. I suspect it helps to know that Beckett wrote it while hiding with his wife in an isolated village in France during the German occupation, having fled Paris (often on foot and in inclement weather) following his involvement with the Resistance; that he wrote it with as near to no expectations for publication as he had written or would write anything in his life, more as a game to pass the time while waiting for the war to end than as a “serious” project; that it was his last work in English; that none of his previous books had sold even their meagre print-runs and there hadn’t been many of them, and he had never even remotely made a living from his writing. Years later in Paris, after Godot and Molloy, Watt (“that old misery” as Beckett called it) was finally published by Olympia Press in an edition of 1000, an achievement which may have paled in comparison to the then-slowly-uncoiling but soon-to-prove-parabolic success that would propell its author to stardom. But I suspect it didn’t. I suspect Beckett knew full well that the publication of this “misery” (uneditable, like a knotted ball of twine that must be destroyed to be unknotted) was an achievement like few others―that his peace of mind as an author and his confidence in the fates of future projects may have depended on it. And if you ask me, it was some kind of miracle. I doubt there’s an author alive who could convince even an Olympia Press to print something as absurd, as messy and as deliberately obfuscating as this, short of paying them for the privilege, and the idea that any “major” author, at least in the Anglo world, would risk their reputation with it is fantastical. But we need this book, and others like it, to understand how it is when you’re a writer, reduced to nothing or near to it, and digging up in last-ditch desperation whatever shards and innards and straight-up bullshit you can pull from a mind almost ready―almost yearning―to give in. It’s real. And it’s seriously beautiful. This guy can write; he’s an absolute master. The coherent parts of Watt could serve as a style guide every bit as rigorous and informative as Fowler’s, but subversive into the bargain. Watch him hunt down the ugliest syntax available and make it mindblowing. Watch him turn your conception of grammar inside out. Watch him lose his cool and type the same sentence for three pages Jack-Nicholson-in-The Shining-style (no shit), sometimes to the accompaniment of a musical score, before picking up the thread and calmly going on. After Watt Beckett felt that, in English, he was too apt to be seduced by adornment and inherited phraseology, and he turned to a French shorn of both to create what would become known as his masterpieces. Murphy, it’s true, was too in-thrall to the curlicues of British English, and while the work of an obviously brilliant stylist, was not a patch on what was to come. Watt, also, has little to do with what would come after it, but it’s the work of a man who has learnt (or is learning) not to luxuriate. Later, with the discovery of monologue (which, rightly, he discovers here, in the opening chapters), Beckett would develop a style that, throughout its many contortions, came to define him. Here, he’s undefined. Watt is like nothing he nor anyone else would write again. It’s the work of a young man becoming a master, growing tired with mastery and moving on. It’s a gas.
February 26, 2017
Bloody marvellous. Enjoyed it even more this second time round. I think I may revisit all the fella's novels this year and then buy myself that lovely looking four volume set of his letters as a present for continuing to get up every morning.
"And so always, when the impossibility of my knowing, of Watt’s having known, what I know, what Watt knows, seems absolute, and insurmountable, and undeniable and uncoercible, it could be shown that I know, because Watt told me, and that Watt knew, because someone told him, or because he found out for himself. For I know nothing, in this connexion, but what Watt told me. And Watt knew nothing, on this subject, but what he was told, or found out for himself, in one way or in another "
******
Some thinking in quotes
“Difference lies between two repetitions” – Deleuze
”The true effect of repetition is to decompose and then to recompose, and thus appeal to the intelligence of the body…” - Bergson
“A great many think that they know confusion when they know or see it or hear it, but do they. A thing that seems to be exactly the same thing may seem to be a repetition but is it....what I wrote was exciting although those that did not really see what it was thought it was repetition. If it had been repetition it would not have been exciting but it was exciting and it was not repetition. It never is. I never repeat that is while I am writing.” - "Portraits and Repetition” – Gertrude Stein
” If they get deadened by the steady pounding of repeating they will not learn from each one even though each one always is repeating the whole of them they will not learn the completed history of them, they will not know the being really in them.” - Gertrude Stein – The Making of Americans
” It is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it.” - Beckett – Watt
”And if I could begin it all over again, knowing what I know now, the result would be the same. And if I could begin again a third time, knowing what I would know then, the result would be the same. And if I could begin it all over again a hundred times, knowing each time a little more than the time before, the result would always be the same, and the hundredth life as the first, and the hundred lives as one.” - Beckett – Watt
”The house was in darkness. Finding the front door locked, Watt went to the back door. … Finding the back door locked also, Watt returned to the front door. Finding the front door locked still, Watt returned to the back door. Finding the back door now open, … Watt was able to enter the house.” Beckett – Watt
” Of course, for the time being, one makes do with little. At first, it can only be a matter of somehow inventing a method of verbally demonstrating this scornful attitude vis-a-vis the word. In this dissonance of instrument and usage perhaps one will already be able to sense a whispering of the end-music or of silence underlying all….Perhaps, Gertrude Stein’s Logographs come closer to what I mean. The fabric of the language has at least become porous, if regrettably only quite by accident and, as it were, as a consequence of a procedure somewhat akin to the technique of Feininger. The unhappy lady (is she still alive?) is undoubtedly still in love with her vehicle, if only, however, as a mathematician is with his numbers; for him the solution of the problem is of very secondary interest, yes, as the death of numbers, it must seem to him indeed dreadful. To connect this method with that of Joyce, as is fashionable, appears to me as ludicrous as the attempt, as yet unknown to me, to compare Nominalism (in the sense of the Scholastics) wth Realism. On the road toward this, for me, very desirable literature of the non-word, some form of nominalistic irony can of course be a necessary phase. However, it does not suffice if the game loses some of its sacred solemnity Let it cease altogether! Let’s do as that crazy mathematician who used to apply a new principle of measurement to each individual step of the calculation. Word-storming in the name of beauty.” Beckett’s letter of 1937 to Axel Kaun (originally in German)
"And so always, when the impossibility of my knowing, of Watt’s having known, what I know, what Watt knows, seems absolute, and insurmountable, and undeniable and uncoercible, it could be shown that I know, because Watt told me, and that Watt knew, because someone told him, or because he found out for himself. For I know nothing, in this connexion, but what Watt told me. And Watt knew nothing, on this subject, but what he was told, or found out for himself, in one way or in another "
******
Some thinking in quotes
“Difference lies between two repetitions” – Deleuze
”The true effect of repetition is to decompose and then to recompose, and thus appeal to the intelligence of the body…” - Bergson
“A great many think that they know confusion when they know or see it or hear it, but do they. A thing that seems to be exactly the same thing may seem to be a repetition but is it....what I wrote was exciting although those that did not really see what it was thought it was repetition. If it had been repetition it would not have been exciting but it was exciting and it was not repetition. It never is. I never repeat that is while I am writing.” - "Portraits and Repetition” – Gertrude Stein
” If they get deadened by the steady pounding of repeating they will not learn from each one even though each one always is repeating the whole of them they will not learn the completed history of them, they will not know the being really in them.” - Gertrude Stein – The Making of Americans
” It is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it.” - Beckett – Watt
”And if I could begin it all over again, knowing what I know now, the result would be the same. And if I could begin again a third time, knowing what I would know then, the result would be the same. And if I could begin it all over again a hundred times, knowing each time a little more than the time before, the result would always be the same, and the hundredth life as the first, and the hundred lives as one.” - Beckett – Watt
”The house was in darkness. Finding the front door locked, Watt went to the back door. … Finding the back door locked also, Watt returned to the front door. Finding the front door locked still, Watt returned to the back door. Finding the back door now open, … Watt was able to enter the house.” Beckett – Watt
” Of course, for the time being, one makes do with little. At first, it can only be a matter of somehow inventing a method of verbally demonstrating this scornful attitude vis-a-vis the word. In this dissonance of instrument and usage perhaps one will already be able to sense a whispering of the end-music or of silence underlying all….Perhaps, Gertrude Stein’s Logographs come closer to what I mean. The fabric of the language has at least become porous, if regrettably only quite by accident and, as it were, as a consequence of a procedure somewhat akin to the technique of Feininger. The unhappy lady (is she still alive?) is undoubtedly still in love with her vehicle, if only, however, as a mathematician is with his numbers; for him the solution of the problem is of very secondary interest, yes, as the death of numbers, it must seem to him indeed dreadful. To connect this method with that of Joyce, as is fashionable, appears to me as ludicrous as the attempt, as yet unknown to me, to compare Nominalism (in the sense of the Scholastics) wth Realism. On the road toward this, for me, very desirable literature of the non-word, some form of nominalistic irony can of course be a necessary phase. However, it does not suffice if the game loses some of its sacred solemnity Let it cease altogether! Let’s do as that crazy mathematician who used to apply a new principle of measurement to each individual step of the calculation. Word-storming in the name of beauty.” Beckett’s letter of 1937 to Axel Kaun (originally in German)
May 2, 2021
Well, I found it funny. Watt wants to know the essence of his boss, Mr Knott, but this essence he knows not. Of his accidentals he bears witness, but barely. Hilarious in many, many passages, from the Lynch family to the short Arsene's more-than-20-pages farewell, Watt is a superb critical text of rationalism, Cartesianism and Scholasticism. Well-written, humorous philosophical fiction. Arguably the work of a genius. Well, I found it awesome.
November 2, 2009
Ha!
Think I will have to buy a copy. It will replace Wittgenstein, all existentialists, Augustine, Aquinas, T.S. Eliot and manuals on dog husbandry. Also, most economically, it will dispense with all tomes of psychoanalysis. Even though I can sometimes only read a paragraph a day, for hilarity and joy in excess can be exquisitively painful, I do believe I will also dispense with my Dhamapadda.
What a glorious piece of writing.
Ha! Just read an amazon review: "Anyone who claims they enjoy reading this muck is either lying, insane or both." Complements the text in the way only utterly unconscious ironical parody may achieve.
Think I will have to buy a copy. It will replace Wittgenstein, all existentialists, Augustine, Aquinas, T.S. Eliot and manuals on dog husbandry. Also, most economically, it will dispense with all tomes of psychoanalysis. Even though I can sometimes only read a paragraph a day, for hilarity and joy in excess can be exquisitively painful, I do believe I will also dispense with my Dhamapadda.
What a glorious piece of writing.
Ha! Just read an amazon review: "Anyone who claims they enjoy reading this muck is either lying, insane or both." Complements the text in the way only utterly unconscious ironical parody may achieve.
September 22, 2024
After reading this book, I wondered if I was disappointed because this book is for those who like to be disappointed. I liked being disappointed, so I was satisfied. Liking to be unhappy, I wouldn't say I liked having liked, so I will say I was disappointed. That is to say how much I liked it.
September 23, 2018
Real Rating: 4.25* of five
Damn me if this isn't better on an older-man re-read. This last of Beckett's Irish books written in English was absorbing in a way that it couldn't have been to the youth. The stultifying ordinariness of a bus-stop bench chat between a hunchback and a boring married couple now feels sharp and perceptive instead of punitive.
Watt himself remains unknowable.
I soldier on to the Trilogy.
Damn me if this isn't better on an older-man re-read. This last of Beckett's Irish books written in English was absorbing in a way that it couldn't have been to the youth. The stultifying ordinariness of a bus-stop bench chat between a hunchback and a boring married couple now feels sharp and perceptive instead of punitive.
Watt himself remains unknowable.
I soldier on to the Trilogy.
May 12, 2015
A brilliant, excellent work, that may also be maddening. This is my first exposure to Beckett in any medium, and as I began reading it I was somewhat dubious... until the person of Watt arrived on the scene (that sewer pipe)... but then the book took over my life.
Beckett has created something unique, challenging, entertaining (to a certain kind of reader... me) and bizarre here. He toys with two things that have been kinds of obsessions for me as well... damn, stole my thunder before I knew it was thunder... permutations and deliberate "mistakes." Well, I'll still make of it what I will. But what is unique? By analogy I can connect Watt to the writings of many great and creative minds, Borges, Queneau, Kafka, Sartre, whoever the Hell wrote the Bible, and my friend Mr. Internet tells me that Beckett labored to find his place in a world where he felt so strongly the influence of Joyce. But like all these wits and weirdos, though he was tied into the culture of literature he managed to produce something entirely his own.
How will you respond to Beckett? Hell if I know. Is this book in any way representative of his work as a whole? Stop bothering me with absurd questions you know I can't answer. I liked this book.
Things I liked:
-(Playing with the absurdity of describing a character physically) "His moustache, handsome in itself, was for obscure reasons unimportant."
-Random stone-throwing assault by a complete stranger
-Over-analysis taken to an outrageous extreme
-Commas everywhere! (and logical too, but pursuing their own over-analytic logic).
-Expectations built up by elaborate construct, supplied with heaps of evidence and argument, only to be thoroughly and senselessly violated.
-(Sentences which could never have occurred in any other work, or any other mind, ever) "At the same time my tobacco-pipe, since I was not eating a banana, ceased so completely from the solace to which I was inured, that I took it out of my mouth to make sure it was not a thermometer, or an epileptic's dental wedge."
-This (on the tendency of most people to pause from eating rather than to eat continuously throughout the day):
"...Let him be a small eater, a moderate eater, a heavy eater, a vegetarian, a naturist, a cannibal, a coprophage, let him look forward to his eating with pleasure or back on it with regret or both, let him eliminate well or let him eliminate ill, let him eructate, vomit, break wind or in other ways fail or scorn to contain himself as a result of an ill-adapted diet, congenital affliction or faulty training during the impressionable years, let him, Jane, I say, be one or more or all or more than all of these, or let him on the other hand be none of these, but something quite different, as would be the case for example if he were on hunger strike or in a catatonic stupor or obliged for some reason best known to his medical advisers to turn for his sustenance to the clyster, the fact remains, and can hardly be denied, that he proceeds by what we call meals, whether taken voluntarily or involuntarily, with pleasure or pain, successfully or unsuccessfully, through the mouth, the nose, the pores, the feedtube or in an upward direction with the aid of a piston from behind is not of the slightest importance, and that between these acts of nutritions, without which life as it is generally understood would be hard set to continue, there intervene periods of rest or repose, during which no food is taken, unless it be every now and then from time to time an occasional snack, quick drink or light collation, rendered if not indispensable at least welcome by an unforeseen acceleration of the metabolic exchanges due to circumstances of an imprevisible kind, as for example the backing of a loser, the birth of a child, the payment of a debt, the recovery of a loan, the voice of conscience, or any other shock to the great sympathetic, causing a sudden rush of chyme, or chyle, or both, to the semidigested slowly surely earthward struggling mass of sherrywine, soup, beer, fish, stout, meat, beer, vegetables, sweet, fruit, cheese, stout, anchovy, beer, coffee and benedictine, for example, swallowed lightheartedly but a few short hours before to the strains as likely as not of a piano and cello."
-(And, by the way, he's not talking to someone named Jane there... and he's been known to forget his own name.)
-The fact that almost every attempt to exhaustively consider every possibility turns out to be less than exhaustive, though excessive.
-Additional random outbursts:
"Birds of every kind abounded, and these it was our delight to pursue, with stones and clods of earth. Robins, in particular, thanks to their confidingness, we destroyed in great numbers. And larks' nests, laden with eggs still warm from the mother's breast, we ground into fragments, under our feet, with peculiar satisfaction, at the appropriate season, of the year."
Beckett has created something unique, challenging, entertaining (to a certain kind of reader... me) and bizarre here. He toys with two things that have been kinds of obsessions for me as well... damn, stole my thunder before I knew it was thunder... permutations and deliberate "mistakes." Well, I'll still make of it what I will. But what is unique? By analogy I can connect Watt to the writings of many great and creative minds, Borges, Queneau, Kafka, Sartre, whoever the Hell wrote the Bible, and my friend Mr. Internet tells me that Beckett labored to find his place in a world where he felt so strongly the influence of Joyce. But like all these wits and weirdos, though he was tied into the culture of literature he managed to produce something entirely his own.
How will you respond to Beckett? Hell if I know. Is this book in any way representative of his work as a whole? Stop bothering me with absurd questions you know I can't answer. I liked this book.
Things I liked:
-(Playing with the absurdity of describing a character physically) "His moustache, handsome in itself, was for obscure reasons unimportant."
-Random stone-throwing assault by a complete stranger
-Over-analysis taken to an outrageous extreme
-Commas everywhere! (and logical too, but pursuing their own over-analytic logic).
-Expectations built up by elaborate construct, supplied with heaps of evidence and argument, only to be thoroughly and senselessly violated.
-(Sentences which could never have occurred in any other work, or any other mind, ever) "At the same time my tobacco-pipe, since I was not eating a banana, ceased so completely from the solace to which I was inured, that I took it out of my mouth to make sure it was not a thermometer, or an epileptic's dental wedge."
-This (on the tendency of most people to pause from eating rather than to eat continuously throughout the day):
"...Let him be a small eater, a moderate eater, a heavy eater, a vegetarian, a naturist, a cannibal, a coprophage, let him look forward to his eating with pleasure or back on it with regret or both, let him eliminate well or let him eliminate ill, let him eructate, vomit, break wind or in other ways fail or scorn to contain himself as a result of an ill-adapted diet, congenital affliction or faulty training during the impressionable years, let him, Jane, I say, be one or more or all or more than all of these, or let him on the other hand be none of these, but something quite different, as would be the case for example if he were on hunger strike or in a catatonic stupor or obliged for some reason best known to his medical advisers to turn for his sustenance to the clyster, the fact remains, and can hardly be denied, that he proceeds by what we call meals, whether taken voluntarily or involuntarily, with pleasure or pain, successfully or unsuccessfully, through the mouth, the nose, the pores, the feedtube or in an upward direction with the aid of a piston from behind is not of the slightest importance, and that between these acts of nutritions, without which life as it is generally understood would be hard set to continue, there intervene periods of rest or repose, during which no food is taken, unless it be every now and then from time to time an occasional snack, quick drink or light collation, rendered if not indispensable at least welcome by an unforeseen acceleration of the metabolic exchanges due to circumstances of an imprevisible kind, as for example the backing of a loser, the birth of a child, the payment of a debt, the recovery of a loan, the voice of conscience, or any other shock to the great sympathetic, causing a sudden rush of chyme, or chyle, or both, to the semidigested slowly surely earthward struggling mass of sherrywine, soup, beer, fish, stout, meat, beer, vegetables, sweet, fruit, cheese, stout, anchovy, beer, coffee and benedictine, for example, swallowed lightheartedly but a few short hours before to the strains as likely as not of a piano and cello."
-(And, by the way, he's not talking to someone named Jane there... and he's been known to forget his own name.)
-The fact that almost every attempt to exhaustively consider every possibility turns out to be less than exhaustive, though excessive.
-Additional random outbursts:
"Birds of every kind abounded, and these it was our delight to pursue, with stones and clods of earth. Robins, in particular, thanks to their confidingness, we destroyed in great numbers. And larks' nests, laden with eggs still warm from the mother's breast, we ground into fragments, under our feet, with peculiar satisfaction, at the appropriate season, of the year."
July 3, 2017
وات از نظر ترتیب زمانی، از نظر کیفیت ادبی و از نظر میزان بهتآوری، و به دید خود نویسنده، واسطی بوده بین دورهی اولیهی کاری بکت (شاخصترین اثر: رمان مرفی) و دورهی دورم کاری او. بکت در دورهی دوم تمام شاهکارهای پرمخاطبش رو نوشته (مولوی- مالون میمیرد- نامناپذیر- چشم به راه گودو) و بعد از اون هم هیچ اثر ضعیفی ننوشته.
ویژگیهای منفی وات از مرفی به یادگار مونده و ویژگیهای مثبتش از جنس رمانهای بعدی و چشم به راه گودوئه. گاهی متهوارنه اونها رو هم پشت سر میگذاره و توجیه خوندن وات همینجاست.
وات پر از گروتسکئه. اما مشکل در اینجاست که خود اثر هم تا حدی از دست نویسنده گریخته (علت اصلی اینه که تازه داشته این شکل از آوانگاردیسم رو تالیف میکرده) و تبدیل به گروتسکی از اون چیزی شده که میشه تصور کرد این رمان، در صورتی که شاهکار میبود، میتونست که باشه. البته این شکل از تصور کردن از نظرِ نظری! نادرسته.
مزهای از زیباییشناسی:
اسم شخصیتهای اصلی وات شبیه اسم تیپهای رمانهای دیگهست، و بر خلاف قاعدهها، تیپهای این رمان همون کسانی هستن که اسم دارن. قضیه به اینجا ختم نمیشه و هر اسم تیپگونهای که برای کاراکترهای اصلی استفاده شده، قصهای میسازه.
آدمهای اصلی داستان:
Watt - همآوای کلمهای به معنای چی، یا چه؟
knott - همآوای کلمهای به معنای نیست، نفی، نبودِ چیزی یا مفهومی
Micks - همآوای کلمهای به معنای قاطی کردن و هم زدن
Sa'm - همآوای کلمهای به معنای یک کمی. یک مقدار
-
به این جملهها فکر میکنم:
Knott is not NOT. Thus, Knott is the true NOT. Refusing to be NOT, is being a real not.
-
وات (چه؟) به محضر شخصی وارد میشه. توی خونهش زندگی میکنه. خونهی آقای نات (نفی). ابتدا در طبقهی همکف، که هرگز سر از کار نات درنمیآره. و بعد در طبقهی اول، که میفهمه نات سر از چیزی درنمیآره و فقط به دنبال فرار کردن از فرار نکردنه. وات به هر دری میزنه هیچ چیز نمیفهمه. میکس (قاطی کردن چیزها) سر میرسه و دوران وات به سر میرسه. وات دچار تجربهی سرخوردگی و واپاشی، و ناامیدی از امکان ادراک و فهم، با ناراحتی خونه رو ترک میکنه. خیال میکنه قراره از این عمل ناراحت بشه. اما در اصل بیرون رفتن از قصر نات، خوشحالکننده است. وات نه شاد میشه، نه غمگین. امکاناتشو از کف داده. وات فقط وات میمونه. مبهوت. قطاری میگیره و به آخرین ایستگاه میره. به یه آسایشگاه روانی. پیش سام. سام (یه کم) میتونه هرگز نفهمیدنِ وات رو درک کنه.
-
وات رو خوندن: ماراتونی از بهت، خنده، نفرت، کلافگی، عصبانیت و لذت. به عقیدهی من آخرین کتابی از بکته که باید خوند. اثری بهشدت مسخره و فلسفی.
ترجمهی سهیل سمی رو راحت زیر سوال میبرن، اما برای این اثر واقعا عالی کار کرده.
ویژگیهای منفی وات از مرفی به یادگار مونده و ویژگیهای مثبتش از جنس رمانهای بعدی و چشم به راه گودوئه. گاهی متهوارنه اونها رو هم پشت سر میگذاره و توجیه خوندن وات همینجاست.
وات پر از گروتسکئه. اما مشکل در اینجاست که خود اثر هم تا حدی از دست نویسنده گریخته (علت اصلی اینه که تازه داشته این شکل از آوانگاردیسم رو تالیف میکرده) و تبدیل به گروتسکی از اون چیزی شده که میشه تصور کرد این رمان، در صورتی که شاهکار میبود، میتونست که باشه. البته این شکل از تصور کردن از نظرِ نظری! نادرسته.
مزهای از زیباییشناسی:
اسم شخصیتهای اصلی وات شبیه اسم تیپهای رمانهای دیگهست، و بر خلاف قاعدهها، تیپهای این رمان همون کسانی هستن که اسم دارن. قضیه به اینجا ختم نمیشه و هر اسم تیپگونهای که برای کاراکترهای اصلی استفاده شده، قصهای میسازه.
آدمهای اصلی داستان:
Watt - همآوای کلمهای به معنای چی، یا چه؟
knott - همآوای کلمهای به معنای نیست، نفی، نبودِ چیزی یا مفهومی
Micks - همآوای کلمهای به معنای قاطی کردن و هم زدن
Sa'm - همآوای کلمهای به معنای یک کمی. یک مقدار
-
به این جملهها فکر میکنم:
Knott is not NOT. Thus, Knott is the true NOT. Refusing to be NOT, is being a real not.
-
وات (چه؟) به محضر شخصی وارد میشه. توی خونهش زندگی میکنه. خونهی آقای نات (نفی). ابتدا در طبقهی همکف، که هرگز سر از کار نات درنمیآره. و بعد در طبقهی اول، که میفهمه نات سر از چیزی درنمیآره و فقط به دنبال فرار کردن از فرار نکردنه. وات به هر دری میزنه هیچ چیز نمیفهمه. میکس (قاطی کردن چیزها) سر میرسه و دوران وات به سر میرسه. وات دچار تجربهی سرخوردگی و واپاشی، و ناامیدی از امکان ادراک و فهم، با ناراحتی خونه رو ترک میکنه. خیال میکنه قراره از این عمل ناراحت بشه. اما در اصل بیرون رفتن از قصر نات، خوشحالکننده است. وات نه شاد میشه، نه غمگین. امکاناتشو از کف داده. وات فقط وات میمونه. مبهوت. قطاری میگیره و به آخرین ایستگاه میره. به یه آسایشگاه روانی. پیش سام. سام (یه کم) میتونه هرگز نفهمیدنِ وات رو درک کنه.
-
وات رو خوندن: ماراتونی از بهت، خنده، نفرت، کلافگی، عصبانیت و لذت. به عقیدهی من آخرین کتابی از بکته که باید خوند. اثری بهشدت مسخره و فلسفی.
ترجمهی سهیل سمی رو راحت زیر سوال میبرن، اما برای این اثر واقعا عالی کار کرده.
August 14, 2018
Watt the F*** !
January 11, 2014
I took me forever to finish this book. I mean, somewhere in the middle, I stopped and switched to other easier-to-read ones. It was painful especially at the start because you did not know what was going on. Then last Sunday, 5th of January 2014, we had to bring my 95-y/o father-in-law to the hospital and I just did not know what came over me. Of all the books that I have in my currently reading shelf, I picked this one up. Then I had to wait for almost the whole morning inside the hospital room to accompany my 84-y/o mother-in-law and I almost finished this book! I mean, my mother-in-law was there sleeping on a chair or in bed and I was reading and she understood me and she let me read because I have been her son-in-law who is a book addict and it has been that way since I married her daughter 20 years ago.
But then, I am not new to post-modernist novels. In 2012, I read James Joyce's challenging duo Ulysses (5 stars) and Finnegans Wake (5 stars). I liked them very much so I also read my first Samuel Beckett - Murphy (5 stars). Last year, I had a new job in the company I am still connected with and so I had to stop "punishing" myself and decided to read easier-to-understand books and lowered by 2013 Reading Challenge target from 300 to 200. Work comes first before hobbies, obviously. But hey, my point is that I love challenging books especially if they are well-written because I always like to push myself to my limit: be it at work, in a relationship and even in hobbies. It is my attitude in almost everything I do.
Watt is a story of a servant Watt. his master Mr. Knott and some of the people that are residing in their building. Some because in most parts of the story, Watt and his master live on the ground floor and they only interact with people on the first floor or those on the second floor. Beckett is fond of describing the minutest details of his scenes and even on what is going on inside Watt and Mr.. Knott's. Most of the POV is Watt's but it feels like a breather to have his master's thoughts as well. What is perplexing is Beckett's prose: his word plays. There is nothing like it. Well, James Joyce has it but Beckett's is easier to understand because (at least my Grove Press edition) uses simple English and the Introduction says that this has been edited removing all the typographical errors that when Beckett was still alive, he would not want to be touched. I wish I could give you some samples of the word plays but they are long so they are not as simple as Getrude Stein's famous A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose seems like a mediocre play of words.
I have to read more Beckett but do try him once and don't give up in the middle for the rest of the book because you have to read the whole package to appreciate the masterpiece.
But then, I am not new to post-modernist novels. In 2012, I read James Joyce's challenging duo Ulysses (5 stars) and Finnegans Wake (5 stars). I liked them very much so I also read my first Samuel Beckett - Murphy (5 stars). Last year, I had a new job in the company I am still connected with and so I had to stop "punishing" myself and decided to read easier-to-understand books and lowered by 2013 Reading Challenge target from 300 to 200. Work comes first before hobbies, obviously. But hey, my point is that I love challenging books especially if they are well-written because I always like to push myself to my limit: be it at work, in a relationship and even in hobbies. It is my attitude in almost everything I do.
Watt is a story of a servant Watt. his master Mr. Knott and some of the people that are residing in their building. Some because in most parts of the story, Watt and his master live on the ground floor and they only interact with people on the first floor or those on the second floor. Beckett is fond of describing the minutest details of his scenes and even on what is going on inside Watt and Mr.. Knott's. Most of the POV is Watt's but it feels like a breather to have his master's thoughts as well. What is perplexing is Beckett's prose: his word plays. There is nothing like it. Well, James Joyce has it but Beckett's is easier to understand because (at least my Grove Press edition) uses simple English and the Introduction says that this has been edited removing all the typographical errors that when Beckett was still alive, he would not want to be touched. I wish I could give you some samples of the word plays but they are long so they are not as simple as Getrude Stein's famous A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose seems like a mediocre play of words.
I have to read more Beckett but do try him once and don't give up in the middle for the rest of the book because you have to read the whole package to appreciate the masterpiece.
July 6, 2021
I am so enjoying re-reading the complete works of Samuel Beckett in chronological order--the project is explaining/illuminating so much to me that had remained mysterious in my patchwork reading of this and that text as the great man's work fell into my hands over the years. As I said in my review of Murphy, it was as if Beckett's first two MSs were failed attempts to write Murphy, and Murphy itself a kind of pinnacle of his early aspirations to concoct an Irish/Continental existential humorous tour de force. Watt therefore marks a new beginning, breathtaking in its refusal to return to the previous ground of Murphy's triumph.
That said, Watt is also, by pretty much any aesthetic criteria that I can come up with, a total mess. Still, it's also breathtaking to a Beckett fan--especially when taken in chronological order--in how it announces, perhaps through exploration, so many of the interesting directions that the author's work will take over the course of the next 40 years. It's a treat for me who had read, at one time or another, all of his works except for this one. (Yes, I've only given it a middling three stars so as to appease the critique gods who care about character development, plot, drama, identification, etc. But for the Beckett fan this is a win-win novel, a glimpse ahead and a wonderful free-for-all of what can only be experienced as random experimentation verging often on self-parody. It writes through its own utter pretension and into a festival of self-loathing, destroying all such facile categories created by trollish literary pundits and reviewers. It's totally fucking punk. Deal with it.
That restless, and seemingly random, peeping into the possibilities behind each new sentence is what I mean by mess. And not all messes are inclement. Sometimes we welcome a mess. Here are all of the hallmarks of classic Beckett smooshed together: the endless variations, the systems, the rhetorical re-iterations and variations, the homelessness and helplessness, bodily disintegration and decrepitude, even the logorrhia of the monologist--the incessant voices of the French stories and novels that immediate follow Watt. The novel is more like a prolegomena to the future work than an actual novel in and of itself. Even so, it has a better love story than Twilight, a more thrilling mystery than a Gresham, and better pseudo-philosophy than a Dan Brown--and, unlike all of these contemporary bestselling authors, Beckett writes in English! Beckett's notebooks--his smelliest turds--still smell better than most contemporary authors' best work.
That said, Watt is also, by pretty much any aesthetic criteria that I can come up with, a total mess. Still, it's also breathtaking to a Beckett fan--especially when taken in chronological order--in how it announces, perhaps through exploration, so many of the interesting directions that the author's work will take over the course of the next 40 years. It's a treat for me who had read, at one time or another, all of his works except for this one. (Yes, I've only given it a middling three stars so as to appease the critique gods who care about character development, plot, drama, identification, etc. But for the Beckett fan this is a win-win novel, a glimpse ahead and a wonderful free-for-all of what can only be experienced as random experimentation verging often on self-parody. It writes through its own utter pretension and into a festival of self-loathing, destroying all such facile categories created by trollish literary pundits and reviewers. It's totally fucking punk. Deal with it.
That restless, and seemingly random, peeping into the possibilities behind each new sentence is what I mean by mess. And not all messes are inclement. Sometimes we welcome a mess. Here are all of the hallmarks of classic Beckett smooshed together: the endless variations, the systems, the rhetorical re-iterations and variations, the homelessness and helplessness, bodily disintegration and decrepitude, even the logorrhia of the monologist--the incessant voices of the French stories and novels that immediate follow Watt. The novel is more like a prolegomena to the future work than an actual novel in and of itself. Even so, it has a better love story than Twilight, a more thrilling mystery than a Gresham, and better pseudo-philosophy than a Dan Brown--and, unlike all of these contemporary bestselling authors, Beckett writes in English! Beckett's notebooks--his smelliest turds--still smell better than most contemporary authors' best work.
October 22, 2015
When you put Watt down, you will have a headache. Several times between the moment that you pick it up and the moment that you put it down, you will have a headache. If you finished this book without a headache, then you probably didn't do it right. Surely, several options may arise at the end of the journey. Perhaps you will come out understanding what may have been Samuel Beckett's intentions in creating this book, but not the content. Or perhaps you will understand neither the intentions nor the content. Or perhaps you will understand the content, but not the intentions. Or perhaps you will understand both the intentions and the content, but not enjoy it. Or perhaps you will understand both the intentions and the content, and neither enjoy it nor not enjoy it. Or perhaps you will understand the intentions and the content, and have thoroughly enjoyed the ride. I prefer the latter, for it is the most beautiful. However, if you claim to have understood both the intentions and the content, then you might be lying. But, on the other hand, perhaps you do understand both the intentions and the content in earnest. In the case of the latter, please seek help.
May 22, 2011
Among other things Beckett's most Proustian book: a treatise on desire or exercise of it or exorcism from it (apologies for the ripoff Wattean syntax, but that's what you get after beating your head through this miraculously-tedious book for a month). That all three of these goals are impossible to meet and Watt therefore a failure should be no surprise to anyone who keeps in mind Beckett's's famous dictum, which could sell Pepsi: try again. Fail again. Fail better. Fail at what? Well, how about writing an unreadable book (Watt is highly readable)? Or divesting narrative prose of the very verve and time-slavery on which its taxonomy depends? And yet, for every tether that Beckett cuts, three more tie him to a ground as real as it is absurd, which to my mind makes Watt the best utter failure in literature, or at least the best I've ever read. A true successor to Bouvard and Pecuchet, and ancestor to... what? (Watt?) Charlie Sheen? The internet? May our boredom flower with conviction.
January 3, 2008
Any time someone claims to be a realist writer, I direct them to this book to show them what a "realistic" book would actually be like.
December 31, 2021
Not my sniff of whatever it is the author used. I think I'll give it an extra star for the bravery since I wouldn't have ever dared to go to any publisher with this drivel.
August 21, 2024
Коротше, це було б 4, якби не післямова перекладача. Бо було щось таке ніби не ясно, а потім як зробилось ясно, що аж на 5. Боялася за Уота, бо окрім Трилогії нічого у Бекета не читала, але все в порядку, тривога була марна. В краще ❤️
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July 24, 2022The Strangest Book of the Twentieth Century
One consequence of having belatedly read Watt (after all the other novels) is that it strengthens my bewilderment that Beckett can be so widely appreciated. I can understand the popular reception of Godot and other plays, and I can see postwar works as exemplars of existentialism, but I am baffled that a book as bizarre, as emotionally and affectively opaque, as formally unaccountable, as multiply wrecked and fragmented, as little in control of its logic, could ever come to be widely understood as a classic of the kind that attracts Nobel committees. Watt makes "The Third Policeman" and "The Dalkey Archive" seem congenial. It makes "Memoirs of my Mental Illness" look like a simpleminded diagnosis.
How can it possibly begin to explain Watt's weirdness to note that it was composed while in hiding from the Nazis, as if that particular anxiety had diffused through the book, metastasing into the exotic bruises and bacterial growths of Watt's imagination? Anyone who finishes this book and experiences mainly the cryptic complaints of a Resistance fighter in hiding has refused the words that Beckett wrote, which have nothing to say about war or exile. One of Beckett's principal scholars, David Hayman, thinks of him as a "difficult" author, a "St. Sebastian type" with a "paranoid personality," whose reception "has always rested on the willingness of a masochistic(?) audience to surmount the obstacles placed in its way in order to join a limited group of adepts, to share in Beckett's mind set." (Hayman, "Continuing Now: Crisis Enjambments in the Watt Manuscripts," 2002, p. 212 , n. 8.) What does "difficult" mean if it amounts to such a simple diagnosis? Beckett is not a club with a steep membership fee, furnished on the inside with comfortable lounge chairs.
This is a novel of barely managed compulsions, of nearly uncontrolled experiences of meaninglessness. The narrator is like a helium balloon tethered to his own life by unraveling threads. He secures and resecures his experiences to their meanings by rehearsing self-imposed conditions and lists. He finds it especially comforting -- although the comfort lasts only as long as the rehearsal -- to run through lists of two things, arranged in groups of three, or three, taken in pairs, or four, taken in groups of three, or six, taken in pairs... it hardly matters, provided there is a combinatorics that can be rehearsed without omissions. I assume it is equally unclear both to the narrator and the author how these sorts of rehearsals, which keep freezing the narrative into mechanical lists, can possibly reattach experience to meaning, except by the act of threading and rethreading sets of objects to one another, pulling out the thread with each new stitch. Entire pages of "Watt" are ceystallized into short phrases separated by commas:
"Not that Watt felt calm and free and glad, for he did not.. but he thought that perhaps he felt calm and free and glad, or if not calm and free and glad, at least calm and free, or free and glad, or glad and calm, or if not calm and free, or free and glad, or glad and calm, or if not calm and free, or free and glad, or glad and calm..." (p. 133)
Watt exercises constant vigilance for understanding and control of his own experiences. As a reader one finds oneself watching for the first signs of the impending autistic combinatorics. Sometimes alliteration or slant rhyme is the first sign:
"And from [Mr. Knott's room] this ambience followed him forth, when he moved, in the house, in the garden, with him moved, dimming all, dulling all, stilling all, numbing all, where he passed." (p. 199)
At this point I felt the prose tightening: an attack of combinatorics was coming on. The subject matter does not matter. What concerns a reader is what will be listed, and how long will it take? The narrator continues:
"The clothes that Mr. Knott wore, in his room, about the house, amid his garden, were very various, very very various. Now heavy, now light; now smart, now dowdy; now sober, now gaudy; now decent, now daring (his skirtless bathing-costume, for example)."
The sentences become increasingly rhythmic, like the signs of a seizure. He continues:
"Often he wore, by his fireside, or as he mooched about the rooms, the stairs, the passage-ways of his home, a hat, or a cap, or, imprisoning his rare his wanton hair, a net."
Short phrases are often the trigger, and on the next page the list commences. I quote just the first couple of lines (they occupy more than a full page):
"As for his feet, sometimes he wore on each a sock, or on the one a sock and on the other a stocking, or a boot, or a shoe, or a slipper, or a sock and a boot, or a sock and a shoe, or a sock and a slipper, ora stocking and a boot, or a stocking and a shoe, or a stocking and a slipper..." (p. 200)
On the following page this mechanical recitation simply stops, and the narrative continues. The reader and narrator may be "transported" (as Arthur's story does on p. 198) -- clearly these lists are presented as therapeutic -- but the relief is temporary. An itch has been scratched, but it will start to bother the narrator again soon. Amazing lyrical paragraphs, done with long periods as in Proust or some Joyce, have a special tendency to collapse into lists (pp. 173, 201-203). The lists may have "great formal brilliance," but also "indeterminable import," and they end without comment. (p. 71)
This sort of narrative behavior can't be "designed" to "render" the narrator's thoughts "simultaneously absurd and rigorous" as Hayman says: that's their effect, but the judgment about design and rendering assumes the author has control of his invention. If that's the case, why would he wish to demonstrate it again and again? I experience the author here as struggling, not at all demonstrating or rendering. (Hayman, "Beckett's Watt -- The Graphic Accompaniment: Marginalia in the Manuscripts," Word andImage 13, 1997, p. 177.)
A better formulation is S. E. Gontarski's proposal that Beckett (1) "created absences" by deleting "detail" and"explanation" from experiences, (2) "destroyed" chronology, and (3) created "an alternative arrangement or internal relationship" that could emphasize "pattern." Dirk Van Hulle quotes this in his book "Manuscript Genetics, Joyce's Know-How, Beckett's Nohow" and says the emphasis on pattern and order "counterbalances and nuances Beckett's (over)emphasis on not being in control of his material." (2008, p. 120) I don't like that parenthetical (over)! Might it be possible to countenance the possibility that artists mean it when they report their lack of system?
I doubt Beckett could have produced anything resembling an explanation for the structure of "Watt," except in the obvious sense that there are stages to Watt's employment. I imagine Beckett understood perfectly well -- perhaps I should say excruciatingly well -- that nothing could explain or justify the length of the book's set pieces or speeches. Hayman says it is "astonishing" to find out Beckett had no plan at the beginning:
"It may seem astonishing, but when he set out to write what was to become his ur-Watt, Beckett had no idea where he was going, no project, no outline, no plot, no setting, and effectively no characters: tabula rasa." ("Getting Where? Beckett's Opening Gambit for Watt," 2002, p. 28.)
This is really as close to idiocy as literary criticism gets. Of course it is not "astonishing" to learn Beckett did not know where he was going with Watt. By the fifth page any reader who is listening for something other than a clue or a key or a plot knows this is desperate stuff. There will not be any understanding, only coping.
*
That is the end of my notes on Watt. What follows has to do with the images, which is a special interest of mine. (See writingwithimages.com.) The manuscript has hundreds of images, and the published book has three typographic insertions that are like musical notation. I will consider each in turn.
(A) Visual and musical elements
The six-volume manuscript of "Watt," in Austin, still has not been reproduced in facsimile. A book by Mark Byron, The Making of Samuel Beckett's Watt: The Beckett Manuscript Project, is the next step (due 2020). I agree with Hayman that some of the marginal doodles, caricatures, cartoons, and diagrams in the manuscript were probably intended as illuminations. (Hayman, "Beckett's Watt -- The Graphic Accompaniment," p. 177.)
The most extended ekphrasis in the book is the description of an abstract painting of a broken circle and a dot (pp. 129-31). Hayman's essay "Beckett’s Watt, the Art-Historical Trace: An Archeological Inquest" (2004) relates this to Beckett's 1936 trip to Germany, which was an attempt to provide himself with credentials as an art historian. Hayman says that in the sketches the passage is much longer:
"I should add that the original version was anything but straightforward. It was in fact complicated by long digressions on the relationship of the circle to its center, on the person who could have brought the picture there, on the servant to whom it might have belonged, etc. Nested in this larger art historical setting are the passages that relate to the artist who painted the image and to Watt’s experience with the art world." (p. 97)
In the notebooks, the passage is also full of art historical "procedures and preoccupations" (MS, vol. 3:160–77; typescript, pp. 317–29):
"For example, Watt first describes the location and mounting of the image and even names its painter. Then he tries to explain its aesthetic impact: what is on the canvas, what illusions it conveys, how the center relates to the circumference, how the illusion is conveyed. He tries to establish who could have brought it to Quin’s house and when, and whether or not it enjoys permanent status there
(whether it is a “classic”). In the early drafts, he even attempts attribution before positing the names of other works that could have preceded it." (pp. 97-98)
What remains in the book is not "universals" or "tropes," as Hayward says, but a mechanically formalist examination of a very restricted set of possible meanings for the circle and dot. It comes across as an idiot savant's attempt at an inventory of symbolic meanings.
Watt imagines the painting in different orientations, and in the notebooks, there is a page showing the painting in different orientations. (It is online, and in Hayward's "Word and Image" essay.) Hayward says only this might reflect "an aesthetic impulse" (but why? and why that one?). I would rather not blur what happens here with the term aesthetic: this is a combinatorics, licensed by his invention of such a simple two-part painting. It is like one of Beckett's stage sets, or like Knott's room in the novel: a game of simple movable parts.
(It's interesting that the painter Beckett probably had in mind, Bram van Velde, subject of his first published essay in French, made work that is nothing like the painting in Watt, despite Hayward's weak protestations. Elsewhere Beckett mentions Elsheimer, Seghers, and Friedrich, although he was allergic to Freidrich's pantheism: "Kreuz im Gebirge won’t do at all, appeals to the very dregs of aesthesia.")
(B) What is music in Watt?
There are three typographic interruptions in the text that are musical or rhythmic. There is a "mixed choir" (pp. 32-33), a chorus of frogs (pp. 135-37), and the words to the "descant" heard earlier (pp. 254-55).
I may well have missed a scholarly source, but I haven't seen much discussion of these aside from some notes on variants in different editions. (Byron and Ackerley, "Watt Is Not a Well-Wrought Pot," 2015, pp. 38-39.) None is normal music notation.
The first looks like music because it has rhythms noted as eighth notes, quarter notes, and rests, but it has no pitches. Some of the words may denote pitches ("Fifty two point two eight five seven" may be sol re do re do sol ti), but others are not ("Great gran ma Ma grew do you do blooming thanks..."). It is carefully set in the typescript, with errata, suggesting there's method in it that hasn't yet been located. Dirk Van Hulle points out it is a canon "with the subject and countersubjects greatgranma, granma, mama, [and] Miss Magrew," and the "contrapuntal states" of "blooming, withering, drooping, forgotten." (p. 165) He also points out the canon is echoed on p. 231. But this doesn't address how it is to be read or heard.
Same with the frogs' chorus. I'm not especially patient with puzzles, but this seems to be one. Beckett says the frogs croaked at "one, nine, seventeen, twenty-five, etc" (p. 135) and if I count line by line, that gives me the "Krak! Krek! Krik!" etc. down the left-hand column. Then he says they croak by "one, six, eleven, sixteen, etc.," that nearly corresponds with the second column. I wonder if this is meant to be puzzled out: it's polyrhythm, resulting from the superposition of several sequences.
And the "descant" (pp. 254-55), which supposedly gives the rhythm of the "mixed choir" (pp. 32-33) only adds different words, and does not correspond to the rhythm of the choir, though I assume it's supposed to.
Puzzles aside, I wonder at the sense of music, or rhythm, that we're supposed to get. I can tap out the frogs's chorus, but I can't sing the choir. I can't even understand what its words are. It's a graphical notation, like a table or chart, which reminds me of music, but isn't, for a reason I am not given.
It's also interesting that these three interpolations have the same unresolved epistemology as images often do in fiction: it is not clear who transcribed them and put them on the page for us to see. Watt could have shown his transcriptions to the narrator, but the narrator is silent about that. (This is a common theme in novels with images, when the narrators are not carrying cameras; see writingwithimages.com). As Byron and Ackerley note:
"Intentional infelicities and inconsistencies in the text
are ascribed to the narrating voice, but it is not certain, for
example, that the narrating voice is responsible for the inclusion of the musical scores." (Byron and Ackerley, p. 37.)
It is curious that none of the marginal doodles and diagrams in the manuscript survived into the book, but the three typographic musical interruptions were retained. That makes Watt one of the very few novels with something resembling printed music. Perhaps it was the whimsical nature of the caricatures that made Beckett decide to exclude them: the musical graphics are different, because they are ciphers like the unaccountable acts of counting that perforate the text.
This is a strange book, and its strangeness is what counts, not its puzzles, its process of composition, its supposedly underlying philosophy, or its political moment.
One consequence of having belatedly read Watt (after all the other novels) is that it strengthens my bewilderment that Beckett can be so widely appreciated. I can understand the popular reception of Godot and other plays, and I can see postwar works as exemplars of existentialism, but I am baffled that a book as bizarre, as emotionally and affectively opaque, as formally unaccountable, as multiply wrecked and fragmented, as little in control of its logic, could ever come to be widely understood as a classic of the kind that attracts Nobel committees. Watt makes "The Third Policeman" and "The Dalkey Archive" seem congenial. It makes "Memoirs of my Mental Illness" look like a simpleminded diagnosis.
How can it possibly begin to explain Watt's weirdness to note that it was composed while in hiding from the Nazis, as if that particular anxiety had diffused through the book, metastasing into the exotic bruises and bacterial growths of Watt's imagination? Anyone who finishes this book and experiences mainly the cryptic complaints of a Resistance fighter in hiding has refused the words that Beckett wrote, which have nothing to say about war or exile. One of Beckett's principal scholars, David Hayman, thinks of him as a "difficult" author, a "St. Sebastian type" with a "paranoid personality," whose reception "has always rested on the willingness of a masochistic(?) audience to surmount the obstacles placed in its way in order to join a limited group of adepts, to share in Beckett's mind set." (Hayman, "Continuing Now: Crisis Enjambments in the Watt Manuscripts," 2002, p. 212 , n. 8.) What does "difficult" mean if it amounts to such a simple diagnosis? Beckett is not a club with a steep membership fee, furnished on the inside with comfortable lounge chairs.
This is a novel of barely managed compulsions, of nearly uncontrolled experiences of meaninglessness. The narrator is like a helium balloon tethered to his own life by unraveling threads. He secures and resecures his experiences to their meanings by rehearsing self-imposed conditions and lists. He finds it especially comforting -- although the comfort lasts only as long as the rehearsal -- to run through lists of two things, arranged in groups of three, or three, taken in pairs, or four, taken in groups of three, or six, taken in pairs... it hardly matters, provided there is a combinatorics that can be rehearsed without omissions. I assume it is equally unclear both to the narrator and the author how these sorts of rehearsals, which keep freezing the narrative into mechanical lists, can possibly reattach experience to meaning, except by the act of threading and rethreading sets of objects to one another, pulling out the thread with each new stitch. Entire pages of "Watt" are ceystallized into short phrases separated by commas:
"Not that Watt felt calm and free and glad, for he did not.. but he thought that perhaps he felt calm and free and glad, or if not calm and free and glad, at least calm and free, or free and glad, or glad and calm, or if not calm and free, or free and glad, or glad and calm, or if not calm and free, or free and glad, or glad and calm..." (p. 133)
Watt exercises constant vigilance for understanding and control of his own experiences. As a reader one finds oneself watching for the first signs of the impending autistic combinatorics. Sometimes alliteration or slant rhyme is the first sign:
"And from [Mr. Knott's room] this ambience followed him forth, when he moved, in the house, in the garden, with him moved, dimming all, dulling all, stilling all, numbing all, where he passed." (p. 199)
At this point I felt the prose tightening: an attack of combinatorics was coming on. The subject matter does not matter. What concerns a reader is what will be listed, and how long will it take? The narrator continues:
"The clothes that Mr. Knott wore, in his room, about the house, amid his garden, were very various, very very various. Now heavy, now light; now smart, now dowdy; now sober, now gaudy; now decent, now daring (his skirtless bathing-costume, for example)."
The sentences become increasingly rhythmic, like the signs of a seizure. He continues:
"Often he wore, by his fireside, or as he mooched about the rooms, the stairs, the passage-ways of his home, a hat, or a cap, or, imprisoning his rare his wanton hair, a net."
Short phrases are often the trigger, and on the next page the list commences. I quote just the first couple of lines (they occupy more than a full page):
"As for his feet, sometimes he wore on each a sock, or on the one a sock and on the other a stocking, or a boot, or a shoe, or a slipper, or a sock and a boot, or a sock and a shoe, or a sock and a slipper, ora stocking and a boot, or a stocking and a shoe, or a stocking and a slipper..." (p. 200)
On the following page this mechanical recitation simply stops, and the narrative continues. The reader and narrator may be "transported" (as Arthur's story does on p. 198) -- clearly these lists are presented as therapeutic -- but the relief is temporary. An itch has been scratched, but it will start to bother the narrator again soon. Amazing lyrical paragraphs, done with long periods as in Proust or some Joyce, have a special tendency to collapse into lists (pp. 173, 201-203). The lists may have "great formal brilliance," but also "indeterminable import," and they end without comment. (p. 71)
This sort of narrative behavior can't be "designed" to "render" the narrator's thoughts "simultaneously absurd and rigorous" as Hayman says: that's their effect, but the judgment about design and rendering assumes the author has control of his invention. If that's the case, why would he wish to demonstrate it again and again? I experience the author here as struggling, not at all demonstrating or rendering. (Hayman, "Beckett's Watt -- The Graphic Accompaniment: Marginalia in the Manuscripts," Word andImage 13, 1997, p. 177.)
A better formulation is S. E. Gontarski's proposal that Beckett (1) "created absences" by deleting "detail" and"explanation" from experiences, (2) "destroyed" chronology, and (3) created "an alternative arrangement or internal relationship" that could emphasize "pattern." Dirk Van Hulle quotes this in his book "Manuscript Genetics, Joyce's Know-How, Beckett's Nohow" and says the emphasis on pattern and order "counterbalances and nuances Beckett's (over)emphasis on not being in control of his material." (2008, p. 120) I don't like that parenthetical (over)! Might it be possible to countenance the possibility that artists mean it when they report their lack of system?
I doubt Beckett could have produced anything resembling an explanation for the structure of "Watt," except in the obvious sense that there are stages to Watt's employment. I imagine Beckett understood perfectly well -- perhaps I should say excruciatingly well -- that nothing could explain or justify the length of the book's set pieces or speeches. Hayman says it is "astonishing" to find out Beckett had no plan at the beginning:
"It may seem astonishing, but when he set out to write what was to become his ur-Watt, Beckett had no idea where he was going, no project, no outline, no plot, no setting, and effectively no characters: tabula rasa." ("Getting Where? Beckett's Opening Gambit for Watt," 2002, p. 28.)
This is really as close to idiocy as literary criticism gets. Of course it is not "astonishing" to learn Beckett did not know where he was going with Watt. By the fifth page any reader who is listening for something other than a clue or a key or a plot knows this is desperate stuff. There will not be any understanding, only coping.
*
That is the end of my notes on Watt. What follows has to do with the images, which is a special interest of mine. (See writingwithimages.com.) The manuscript has hundreds of images, and the published book has three typographic insertions that are like musical notation. I will consider each in turn.
(A) Visual and musical elements
The six-volume manuscript of "Watt," in Austin, still has not been reproduced in facsimile. A book by Mark Byron, The Making of Samuel Beckett's Watt: The Beckett Manuscript Project, is the next step (due 2020). I agree with Hayman that some of the marginal doodles, caricatures, cartoons, and diagrams in the manuscript were probably intended as illuminations. (Hayman, "Beckett's Watt -- The Graphic Accompaniment," p. 177.)
The most extended ekphrasis in the book is the description of an abstract painting of a broken circle and a dot (pp. 129-31). Hayman's essay "Beckett’s Watt, the Art-Historical Trace: An Archeological Inquest" (2004) relates this to Beckett's 1936 trip to Germany, which was an attempt to provide himself with credentials as an art historian. Hayman says that in the sketches the passage is much longer:
"I should add that the original version was anything but straightforward. It was in fact complicated by long digressions on the relationship of the circle to its center, on the person who could have brought the picture there, on the servant to whom it might have belonged, etc. Nested in this larger art historical setting are the passages that relate to the artist who painted the image and to Watt’s experience with the art world." (p. 97)
In the notebooks, the passage is also full of art historical "procedures and preoccupations" (MS, vol. 3:160–77; typescript, pp. 317–29):
"For example, Watt first describes the location and mounting of the image and even names its painter. Then he tries to explain its aesthetic impact: what is on the canvas, what illusions it conveys, how the center relates to the circumference, how the illusion is conveyed. He tries to establish who could have brought it to Quin’s house and when, and whether or not it enjoys permanent status there
(whether it is a “classic”). In the early drafts, he even attempts attribution before positing the names of other works that could have preceded it." (pp. 97-98)
What remains in the book is not "universals" or "tropes," as Hayward says, but a mechanically formalist examination of a very restricted set of possible meanings for the circle and dot. It comes across as an idiot savant's attempt at an inventory of symbolic meanings.
Watt imagines the painting in different orientations, and in the notebooks, there is a page showing the painting in different orientations. (It is online, and in Hayward's "Word and Image" essay.) Hayward says only this might reflect "an aesthetic impulse" (but why? and why that one?). I would rather not blur what happens here with the term aesthetic: this is a combinatorics, licensed by his invention of such a simple two-part painting. It is like one of Beckett's stage sets, or like Knott's room in the novel: a game of simple movable parts.
(It's interesting that the painter Beckett probably had in mind, Bram van Velde, subject of his first published essay in French, made work that is nothing like the painting in Watt, despite Hayward's weak protestations. Elsewhere Beckett mentions Elsheimer, Seghers, and Friedrich, although he was allergic to Freidrich's pantheism: "Kreuz im Gebirge won’t do at all, appeals to the very dregs of aesthesia.")
(B) What is music in Watt?
There are three typographic interruptions in the text that are musical or rhythmic. There is a "mixed choir" (pp. 32-33), a chorus of frogs (pp. 135-37), and the words to the "descant" heard earlier (pp. 254-55).
I may well have missed a scholarly source, but I haven't seen much discussion of these aside from some notes on variants in different editions. (Byron and Ackerley, "Watt Is Not a Well-Wrought Pot," 2015, pp. 38-39.) None is normal music notation.
The first looks like music because it has rhythms noted as eighth notes, quarter notes, and rests, but it has no pitches. Some of the words may denote pitches ("Fifty two point two eight five seven" may be sol re do re do sol ti), but others are not ("Great gran ma Ma grew do you do blooming thanks..."). It is carefully set in the typescript, with errata, suggesting there's method in it that hasn't yet been located. Dirk Van Hulle points out it is a canon "with the subject and countersubjects greatgranma, granma, mama, [and] Miss Magrew," and the "contrapuntal states" of "blooming, withering, drooping, forgotten." (p. 165) He also points out the canon is echoed on p. 231. But this doesn't address how it is to be read or heard.
Same with the frogs' chorus. I'm not especially patient with puzzles, but this seems to be one. Beckett says the frogs croaked at "one, nine, seventeen, twenty-five, etc" (p. 135) and if I count line by line, that gives me the "Krak! Krek! Krik!" etc. down the left-hand column. Then he says they croak by "one, six, eleven, sixteen, etc.," that nearly corresponds with the second column. I wonder if this is meant to be puzzled out: it's polyrhythm, resulting from the superposition of several sequences.
And the "descant" (pp. 254-55), which supposedly gives the rhythm of the "mixed choir" (pp. 32-33) only adds different words, and does not correspond to the rhythm of the choir, though I assume it's supposed to.
Puzzles aside, I wonder at the sense of music, or rhythm, that we're supposed to get. I can tap out the frogs's chorus, but I can't sing the choir. I can't even understand what its words are. It's a graphical notation, like a table or chart, which reminds me of music, but isn't, for a reason I am not given.
It's also interesting that these three interpolations have the same unresolved epistemology as images often do in fiction: it is not clear who transcribed them and put them on the page for us to see. Watt could have shown his transcriptions to the narrator, but the narrator is silent about that. (This is a common theme in novels with images, when the narrators are not carrying cameras; see writingwithimages.com). As Byron and Ackerley note:
"Intentional infelicities and inconsistencies in the text
are ascribed to the narrating voice, but it is not certain, for
example, that the narrating voice is responsible for the inclusion of the musical scores." (Byron and Ackerley, p. 37.)
It is curious that none of the marginal doodles and diagrams in the manuscript survived into the book, but the three typographic musical interruptions were retained. That makes Watt one of the very few novels with something resembling printed music. Perhaps it was the whimsical nature of the caricatures that made Beckett decide to exclude them: the musical graphics are different, because they are ciphers like the unaccountable acts of counting that perforate the text.
This is a strange book, and its strangeness is what counts, not its puzzles, its process of composition, its supposedly underlying philosophy, or its political moment.
November 25, 2020
Frustrating, exuberant, fucking mad, and dreadfully boring. All these discordant parts make up the overall appeal for reading a thick novel equivalent to a long, wayward joke -- one intent on going nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. The repetition of an OCD mind comes across like a raging purge of freestyle angst. The forlorn nowhere man, Watt, is on the brink of madness from page 1 until the appendix nearly 300 pages later. You won't read of any epiphanies here.
Definitely not as humorous, and enjoyable as Beckett's prior novel, 'Murphy.' But a well-deserved read, rewarding in its own aplomb and disdain for cohesion, comfort, and characters you can internally empathize with. A fucking madman, that Beckett.
What sticks to me are the book-ended scenes of Watt on the road to and from the train station. There are truly haunting insinuations in these parts. The end teases a slow-burn scenario with a doppelganger, I believe. It's Beckett doing his version of horror, which dare I say, much of his work is.
Definitely not as humorous, and enjoyable as Beckett's prior novel, 'Murphy.' But a well-deserved read, rewarding in its own aplomb and disdain for cohesion, comfort, and characters you can internally empathize with. A fucking madman, that Beckett.
What sticks to me are the book-ended scenes of Watt on the road to and from the train station. There are truly haunting insinuations in these parts. The end teases a slow-burn scenario with a doppelganger, I believe. It's Beckett doing his version of horror, which dare I say, much of his work is.
October 13, 2010
Possibly the most annoying book I've ever been profoundly unhappy to come to the final page of.
August 15, 2016
Weird, darker than dark to the point where it at times borders on the sinister but absolutely fascinating and hilariously funny in parts.
I love, love, love Samuel Beckett. He has to be one of the MOST original, daring and innovative writers of the 20th Century and alongside Joyce and Oscar Wilde, surely also goes down as one of the best Irish writers of all time.
What is Watt about? Well, in a nutshell, it's about a mysterious, shadowy figure called 'Watt' who is either mentally disadvantaged, shall we say, or internally tormented, or possibly borderline autistic who works as a 'retainer' for a Mr Knott, his master - a character who lurks in the shadows of the pages of this novel and of whom we catch the occasional glimpse or side-reference. Most of the action takes place on the Knott property which I believe is based loosely on Beckett's childhood home or vicinity (at least) of Cooldrinagh, Ireland.
This book reminded me a lot of Molloy, the first in Beckett's famous trilogy, - especially the paradigms in which Beckett exhaustively writes out every possible combination and permutation of objects or people or word in any given scene. For example, in Mr Knott's room there are four pieces of furniture which might be lying up, face down or on its side etc. and place near the bed, near the door, near the fire or near the window and Beckett writes out every possible combination/permutation!
There are also 5-6 different combinations of adjectives describing how Mr Knott's appearance shifts day by day as seen through Watt's eyes, which is another piece of testimony questioning Watt's overall sanity or mental health. I heard that Watt is a critique of Cartesian logic and was written while Beckett was hiding out in Roussillon from the Gestapo during WWII, and couldn't help think that Beckett was doing these crazy, long permutation blocks of text excessively to poke fun at mathematicians and scientists who may sometimes write like this. At the same time, it creates an interesting 'obsessiveness' in Watt's character and this ODCD theme, which I can never figure out is reflective of the narrator or the character under description, is one which also recurs in Molloy with the 'sucking stones' routine.
Some reviewers have said that this is a hard book to follow, perhaps because i have read the Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnameable Trilogy already, I did not find this as difficult as some of his other works - for example, The Unnameable, which is the weirdest book of Beckett's I have read to date but it also features some of the most pristine, immaculate English prose I have ever read by a 20th Century writer.
Watt is no exception. This is a highly entertaining book but you have to pay attention carefully to what is going on and the permutation sections, once you get 'into' them, you will find yourself slipping into a mad but smooth rhythm, almost like some weird burlesque form of parodic poetry or something.
I love, love, love this guy. Some people took months to read this book - for me, I couldn't put it down and finished it in 3 days. Want to read more and more Beckett. What a dangerously addictive writer he his.
I recommend this edition because it appears to be the most accurate to date. The introduction/preface talks about the various problems they have had with the MS over the years, which contains a large number of errors, some accidental and some deliberate it appears, and to which Beckett has chopped and changed and added over the years (including the mysterious addenda at the back of the book) The intro also summarises neatly some of the flaws in the Olympia (1st publication of Watt) and Grove Press editions (2nd publication of Watt). Despite the numerous errors in the flawed Olympic text, hats off once again to Mr Maurice Girodias who was not only brave enough to first publish Beckett's Watt back in 1953 (its evident publication flaws aside) but would also expose the world to Burroughs' Naked Lunch about 6 years later. And the literary world has not been the same since.
Great book, not for the faint-of-heart but highly entertaining and inimitable and incomparable!
I love, love, love Samuel Beckett. He has to be one of the MOST original, daring and innovative writers of the 20th Century and alongside Joyce and Oscar Wilde, surely also goes down as one of the best Irish writers of all time.
What is Watt about? Well, in a nutshell, it's about a mysterious, shadowy figure called 'Watt' who is either mentally disadvantaged, shall we say, or internally tormented, or possibly borderline autistic who works as a 'retainer' for a Mr Knott, his master - a character who lurks in the shadows of the pages of this novel and of whom we catch the occasional glimpse or side-reference. Most of the action takes place on the Knott property which I believe is based loosely on Beckett's childhood home or vicinity (at least) of Cooldrinagh, Ireland.
This book reminded me a lot of Molloy, the first in Beckett's famous trilogy, - especially the paradigms in which Beckett exhaustively writes out every possible combination and permutation of objects or people or word in any given scene. For example, in Mr Knott's room there are four pieces of furniture which might be lying up, face down or on its side etc. and place near the bed, near the door, near the fire or near the window and Beckett writes out every possible combination/permutation!
There are also 5-6 different combinations of adjectives describing how Mr Knott's appearance shifts day by day as seen through Watt's eyes, which is another piece of testimony questioning Watt's overall sanity or mental health. I heard that Watt is a critique of Cartesian logic and was written while Beckett was hiding out in Roussillon from the Gestapo during WWII, and couldn't help think that Beckett was doing these crazy, long permutation blocks of text excessively to poke fun at mathematicians and scientists who may sometimes write like this. At the same time, it creates an interesting 'obsessiveness' in Watt's character and this ODCD theme, which I can never figure out is reflective of the narrator or the character under description, is one which also recurs in Molloy with the 'sucking stones' routine.
Some reviewers have said that this is a hard book to follow, perhaps because i have read the Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnameable Trilogy already, I did not find this as difficult as some of his other works - for example, The Unnameable, which is the weirdest book of Beckett's I have read to date but it also features some of the most pristine, immaculate English prose I have ever read by a 20th Century writer.
Watt is no exception. This is a highly entertaining book but you have to pay attention carefully to what is going on and the permutation sections, once you get 'into' them, you will find yourself slipping into a mad but smooth rhythm, almost like some weird burlesque form of parodic poetry or something.
I love, love, love this guy. Some people took months to read this book - for me, I couldn't put it down and finished it in 3 days. Want to read more and more Beckett. What a dangerously addictive writer he his.
I recommend this edition because it appears to be the most accurate to date. The introduction/preface talks about the various problems they have had with the MS over the years, which contains a large number of errors, some accidental and some deliberate it appears, and to which Beckett has chopped and changed and added over the years (including the mysterious addenda at the back of the book) The intro also summarises neatly some of the flaws in the Olympia (1st publication of Watt) and Grove Press editions (2nd publication of Watt). Despite the numerous errors in the flawed Olympic text, hats off once again to Mr Maurice Girodias who was not only brave enough to first publish Beckett's Watt back in 1953 (its evident publication flaws aside) but would also expose the world to Burroughs' Naked Lunch about 6 years later. And the literary world has not been the same since.
Great book, not for the faint-of-heart but highly entertaining and inimitable and incomparable!
Read
August 26, 2022This is included in my video on Beckett's life and work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teB1U...
November 16, 2017
Anything less than 5 stars would be criminal. One of the funniest books you'll ever read.
November 4, 2017
وات به خانه ی آقای نات میرود، به عنوان سرایدارد استخدام میشود و پس از آن که به سمت مدیر خدمات میرسد که قادر نیست درباره ی نات چیزی را اثبات کند پس خانه را ترک میکند و به خانه ی مجللی که شبیه به تیمارستان است میرود!
سفر وات در واقع سفری درونی و ذهنی است.وات عقل گرایی فرتوت است که بارها با ماهیت پوچ و بیهوده ی تلاش هایش روبرو میشود و سکونی سرد سر تا سر ذهنش را فرا میگیرد. وات در جستجوی گمشده اش است که با پوچ گرایی ِ دوران بعد از جنگ روبرو میشود. خانه ی نات تجلیگاه پست مدرنیستم است و این وات (چرا) است که با نه (نات) نفی میشود.
واژه ها و اعداد در نگاه وات پوچند اعداد مردود و عبثند چرا که ساخته ی ذهن بشر هستند. آنجا که از اعضای خانواده ی لینچ گفته میشود و در پاورقی به این نکته برمیخوریم که – ارقام ارائه شده نادرستند بنابراین محاسبات متعاقب نیز دو برابر اشتباهند-- وقتی عقل گرایان میخواهند دقت و منطق موجود در ریاضی را به بافت زبان تزریق کنند فاجعه به بار میآید . نات با سکوت ممتد پرسش فلسفی وات را نفی میکند و هیچانگاری نات تنها با با سخنان وات تسکین مییابد، سخنانی که از واژگان بیهوده و تهیاند. وات میگوید تنها راه سخن گفتن از هیچ آن است که طوری حرف بزنیم که انگار چیزی وجود دارد درست وقتی که از خدا به عنوان یک انسان صحبت میکنیم.
بسیاری از تلاش های عقل گرایانه وات برای استخراج و بررسی تمام احتمالات منشعب از یک موضوع ترفندیست که نویسنده به وسیله ی آن صبر خواننده رامیآزماید. بارزترین مشخصه ی این رمان کاربرد مختل کننده ی ساختار برای اثبات بی ساختاری واقعیت و بی قوارگی آن است.
دربخش سوم وات داستان زندگیاش را برای سَم در تیمارستان تعریف میکند و بخش چهارم اینطور آغاز میشود«همانطور که وات داستانش را به جای بخش اول، با بخش دوم آغاز کرد، بخش سومش را هم با بخش چهارم شروع کرد، و بعد داستانش را تعریف کرد». ترتیب غیرمنسجم و بیقواره ی واژگان این جمله اشاره به روش افسارگسیخته ی روایت وات و به هم ریختگی تاریخ وقوع حوادث دارد که به کمک سم شکل و شمایل باور پذیر به خود گرفته.
جهان بیرون وات در دو بخش اول و چهارم متبلور شده. بکت به این ترتیب نه به جهان درون - ذهن – و نه به جهان بیرون – جسم – تقدم میدهد. در کل این رمان اثریست معماگونه متناقض و ناسازگار.
سفر وات در واقع سفری درونی و ذهنی است.وات عقل گرایی فرتوت است که بارها با ماهیت پوچ و بیهوده ی تلاش هایش روبرو میشود و سکونی سرد سر تا سر ذهنش را فرا میگیرد. وات در جستجوی گمشده اش است که با پوچ گرایی ِ دوران بعد از جنگ روبرو میشود. خانه ی نات تجلیگاه پست مدرنیستم است و این وات (چرا) است که با نه (نات) نفی میشود.
واژه ها و اعداد در نگاه وات پوچند اعداد مردود و عبثند چرا که ساخته ی ذهن بشر هستند. آنجا که از اعضای خانواده ی لینچ گفته میشود و در پاورقی به این نکته برمیخوریم که – ارقام ارائه شده نادرستند بنابراین محاسبات متعاقب نیز دو برابر اشتباهند-- وقتی عقل گرایان میخواهند دقت و منطق موجود در ریاضی را به بافت زبان تزریق کنند فاجعه به بار میآید . نات با سکوت ممتد پرسش فلسفی وات را نفی میکند و هیچانگاری نات تنها با با سخنان وات تسکین مییابد، سخنانی که از واژگان بیهوده و تهیاند. وات میگوید تنها راه سخن گفتن از هیچ آن است که طوری حرف بزنیم که انگار چیزی وجود دارد درست وقتی که از خدا به عنوان یک انسان صحبت میکنیم.
بسیاری از تلاش های عقل گرایانه وات برای استخراج و بررسی تمام احتمالات منشعب از یک موضوع ترفندیست که نویسنده به وسیله ی آن صبر خواننده رامیآزماید. بارزترین مشخصه ی این رمان کاربرد مختل کننده ی ساختار برای اثبات بی ساختاری واقعیت و بی قوارگی آن است.
دربخش سوم وات داستان زندگیاش را برای سَم در تیمارستان تعریف میکند و بخش چهارم اینطور آغاز میشود«همانطور که وات داستانش را به جای بخش اول، با بخش دوم آغاز کرد، بخش سومش را هم با بخش چهارم شروع کرد، و بعد داستانش را تعریف کرد». ترتیب غیرمنسجم و بیقواره ی واژگان این جمله اشاره به روش افسارگسیخته ی روایت وات و به هم ریختگی تاریخ وقوع حوادث دارد که به کمک سم شکل و شمایل باور پذیر به خود گرفته.
جهان بیرون وات در دو بخش اول و چهارم متبلور شده. بکت به این ترتیب نه به جهان درون - ذهن – و نه به جهان بیرون – جسم – تقدم میدهد. در کل این رمان اثریست معماگونه متناقض و ناسازگار.
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September 4, 2023Отут він стояв. Отут сидів, тут ставав навколішки. Тут лежав. Тут рухався взад-уперед, від дверей до вікна, від вікна до дверей; від вікна до дверей, від дверей до вікна, від каміна до ліжка, від ліжка до каміна, від каміна до ліжка, від дверей до каміна, від каміна до дверей; від каміна до дверей, від дверей до каміна; від вікна до ліжка; від ліжка до вікна; від ліжка до вікна, від вікна до ліжка; від каміна до вікна, від вікна до каміна; від вікна до каміна; від каміна до вікна; від ліжка до дверей, від дверей до ліжка; від дверей до ліжка, від ліжка до дверей; від дверей до вікна, від вікна до каміна; від каміна до вікна, від вікна до дверей, від вікна до дверей, від дверей до ліжка; від ліжка до дверей, від дверей до вікна; від каміна до ліжка, від ліжка до вікна; від вікна до ліжка, від ліжка до каміна; від ліжка до каміна, від каміна до дверей; від дверей до каміна, від каміна до ліжка; від дверей до вікна, від вікна до ліжка; від ліжка до вікна, від вікна до дверей; від вікна до дверей, від дверей до каміна; від каміна до дверей, від дверей до вікна, від каміна до ліжка, від ліжка до дверей, від дверей до ліжка, від ліжка до вікна; від ліжка до каміна, від каміна до вікна: від вікна до каміна, від каміна до ліжка; від дверей до каміна, від каміна до вікна; від вікна до каміна, від каміна до дверей: від вікна до ліжка, від ліжка до дверей; від дверей до ліжка, від ліжка до вікна: від каміна до вікна, від вікна до ліжка; від ліжка до вікна, від вікна до каміна; від ліжка до дверей, від дверей до каміна, від каміна до дверей, від дверей до ліжка. Його кімната була мебльована доладно і зі смаком.
йобані ірландці 🖤
August 28, 2007
A typical Beckett book, this one is not an easy read, but an interesting read most definately. Did I enjoy it - 'enjoy' would be a big word. It is not that I did not enjoy it at all, because I certainly did. I have always had a huge appreciation for Beckett’s work, and Watt only emphasized once again why that is. The capacity to make something very simple, very complicated, and in that way to offer a new look at things we might be taking for granted is a trait I have always admired. Yet this is not a novel one enjoys, per say. This is a novel one is frustrated and baffled by, and which makes one wonder if either the author is certifiably insane, of if the reader himself might be. But that exactly is also what makes Beckett a good read: we read to be emotionally moved by experiences not our own – who ever said that these emotions just had to be positive ones?
Although I did, however, laugh quite often while reading. The absurdity catered to my sense of humour quite nicely, indeed.
Although I did, however, laugh quite often while reading. The absurdity catered to my sense of humour quite nicely, indeed.
November 28, 2007
If I could give this 6 stars I would. My favoritist-favorite of Beckett. I reread this one quite often.
January 30, 2024
I have recently written somewhere, or thought to write and did not, or merely thought (neither to write nor not to write), but thought all the same, that I have noticed a tendency in some critics to owe almost everything there is about that form, which has lately, somewhat amazingly, attained what could be construed as a certain vogue, that is the unbroken paragraph (not to speak of the unbroken sentence) that appears/presents as though poured onto the page, and spilled onto successive pages, and gone on without a break, or in some cases much more than much of one – that the tendency has been to find, upstream, and to name as the eminent source of it, the Austrian writer, Thomas Bernhard: there is that Portuguese writer, that Hungarian writer, that Russian writer, that Mexican writer, and each of them, the critics cry, comes out of Bernhard. And there are others, too, perhaps too many to not name. And most of them, but not all of them, the ones I have not named, have been translated into English, and then have been published, by that publishing house at 88th Avenue, that is, 80 Eighth Avenue, in New York, that is, New York, New York. Their work is usually challenging, and interesting (because challenging), and enjoyable (because interesting), if not always profound (because not all books are), but something usually worth reading, remarkable for that dense and unstoppable lava-flow form especially, perhaps. And Bernhard gets mentioned on the backs of these books, and inside them too, if you would believe it, not that there isn’t a trace of Bernhard, there is, of course, but with each of these, almost without exception, a gaping gap, one that is evidently spannable but which remains, almost without exception, unspanned, obtains, and that is the name of Samuel Beckett. Beckett did it before Bernhard, and as far as I can tell, as far as I, who have read much less of Beckett than of Bernhard, and who love Bernhard, and who love, of what I’ve read of them, that Portuguese writer, that Hungarian writer, that Russian writer, that Mexican writer, all of whom come out of Bernhard, but who therefore also come out of Beckett, as Dostoevsky was said to have come out of Gogol, and as Gogol was said to have issued forth from his own nose, like a flower blooming backward, therefore Dostoevsky too, and no wonder the shape of his nose (Gogol's), and no wonder the shape of his head (Dostoevsky's), and as far as all this is concerned, of my reading and my loving, as far as I can tell, Beckett not only did it before Bernhard, as Bernhard did it before all those others after him, but he, Beckett, did it better than Bernhard, as well. And I think maybe part of the reason for this, that Beckett did it before as well as better than Bernhard, is this, that Beckett himself comes out of Kafka, and Kafka, like Gogol, comes out of himself, and as the neuroses that Kafka birthed for the benefit of 20th century fiction, namely postwar fiction, found their deftest reimagining in Beckett, because, perhaps, first-removed, and not second- or third- or fourth- (as the Mexican, at this point, feels more derivative than the Portuguese), as the neuroses and the endlessly logical and permutative qualities of Kafka’s fictions, of Kafka’s doubting fictions, the undreaming ones I mean, the waking ones I mean, consolidated to form the bright baton, or constipated to form the turgid turd, that Beckett would catch like a boy playing catch, or else fetch like a dog playing fetch, or else viciously grab hold of like a mean old man, and wield to conjure a work like Watt, so Beckett played up the best attributes of one of our best writers, then superadded that essential feature of repetition, which made it Beckett, which made it feel and read like Beckett, not Kafka, although the trace of Kafka remains, of course, even on the inside, although not, as far as I can surmise, on the outside, if you would believe it, and this might be viewed as a good thing. And Bernhard takes Beckett, like Beckett takes Kafka, but Bernhard subtracts the permutation, disarms the endless logic, and is left with the repetition, and adds nothing but bile, and the bile is not nothing, of course, but it is less than what it isn’t, that is, it is less than what it purports to replace. And I love Bernhard, and I can really say, now, more than ever, that I love Beckett, although I can’t really say that I love Beckett more than Bernhard, or indeed that I love Bernhard more than Beckett, or for that matter that I love that Portuguese or that Hungarian or that Russian or that Mexican more than Bernhard or Beckett or one or another among them more than another, because it is unbecoming for a parent to show preference for one child among many, and it is worse for an onlooker to guess at the favorite. That reminds me. Did Beckett ever read Kafka?
(On second thought, or in addition, Bernhard shares this with Kafka, that his prose is impassioned. Beckett can be as calm as the categorizing Aristotle, though I wouldn't call him cold, that calmness, however, being something the other two are completely incapable of. And yet in the end Beckett manages to be funnier than both predecessor and padawan, who both are plenty funny. I laughed and laughed and laughed reading Watt.)
(On second thought, or in addition, Bernhard shares this with Kafka, that his prose is impassioned. Beckett can be as calm as the categorizing Aristotle, though I wouldn't call him cold, that calmness, however, being something the other two are completely incapable of. And yet in the end Beckett manages to be funnier than both predecessor and padawan, who both are plenty funny. I laughed and laughed and laughed reading Watt.)
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