Yes, I'll Play

The dichotomy between James Joyce and Samuel Beckett could at times be so implausible that it seems like they were fictions of their own fictions.

Joyce, perhaps the most verbose writer who has ever lived and may ever live and could arguably be the simultaneous progenitor of Hyper-Realism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. That is a broad statement, but one that can be backed up by the author of Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake respectively. Joyce was a polyglot, polymath, and polygraphic on a scale that may never be seen again. Nearly 80 languages have been identified in Finnegans Wake at some level, to give one such example. There are entire concordances of Joyce's neologisms and centers, such as the one here in Antwerp devoted to deciphering his volumes and volumes of scripted notes, that also happen to be in various handwritings, including Beckett, who for a time helped Joyce scribble his notes due to a hobbled eyesight that left Joyce nearly blind.

Beckett, who was perfectly bi-lingual with French and would actually translate his work back into English, was a minimalist by comparison. With not many more words than one would find in a Dr. Seuss book, Beckett would break the blank page with a turgid laconic method that has also yet to be matched.

Partly due to their mutual Irishness and partially due to exile in Paris and perhaps in part due to other external circumstances, Joyce and Beckett did have an interesting relationship, one that was further compounded and complicated by Joyce's mentally-ill daughter, Lucia, having a sexual fascination for Beckett, much to his and Joyce's discomfort.

Joyce and Beckett find themselves being put together for a variety of reasons at conferences dedicated to Joyce, or Beckett, or topics such as Modernism, Post-Modernism or archives with such fine scholars as Antwerp's own Geert Lernout and Dirk Van Hulle leading the charge.

Some years ago, on Bloomsday, someone sent me this video, though I am blank to the page about whom right now, but I remember being at the Harry Ransom Center, a treasure trove of Joycean materials where I was a curator and Joycean collaborator with international conferences and research, and I remember perhaps literally falling off of my chair when I watched this video. To me, although most lightly Joyce was not so boisterous, unless he had too much to drink as he was known to do, this is pure comic brilliance about capturing two protean and enigmatic Irish and worldly writers as Joyce and Beckett.

This is a Joyce geek-out for me.

Enjoy.