Beckett Letters

Last night Barbara and I got to see one of our favorite playwrights, Edward Albee read Samuel Beckett.  I am so glad for Emory University.  And more specifically the wonderfully artistic people that they employ.  Brenda Bynum, a landmark of Atlanta theater, helped to organize a reading of Beckett's early letters from the recently published The Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1929 - 1940 by Cambridge University Press.  The reading is part of a celebration of Beckett that Emory is hosting for the next several weeks.

The evening took place in Glenn Memorial, the church that sits on Emory campus.  The readers were Brenda Bynum, Robert Shaw-Smith, Salman Rushdie and Edward Albee.   I am still reeling from getting to see such talent together on the stage.

Beckett's letters were very engaging.  He wrote of depression, loneliness, boredom as well as happiness and hope.  He bemoaned the lack of interest on the part of publishers in his early work.  His letters were very well written.  Verbose and poetic at times, crude and sarcastic at others.  A couple of stories stand out in my mind.  He wrote of sitting in the park one day while he was still unpublished and suffering from a lack of ideas.  He observed a small child with a rather severe looking Nanny with a stoney expression on her face and remarked that she reminded him of his Nanny of so long ago.  So much so that he wanted to go back in time and be coddled again by his own Nanny.

After his first novel was finally picked up, the publisher wanted Beckett to make some major cuts the the story.  About a third of the text.  He wrote a letter in which he was very bitter about it.  The next day he wrote second letter that posited another idea.  He wrote that the next Beckett novel would be written on rice paper and rolled into a scroll with perforation every five inches or so.  So that it would be ready to wipe the asses of the people who didn't appreciate his work.  Love it.

I was very impressed with Salman Rushdie's reading.  In his slight English accent I felt I could hear Beckett's own voice.  If not the proper accent, Irish, then the proper feeling and attitude.  

How cool to hear Albee read as well.  His voice carries such character.  He was a bit harder to follow.  His voice is rather crusty, and the echoing acoustics of the church were not helping.

There were many theater companies represented that night.  Theatre Emory, of course, but also The Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern, Theatre du Reve and others.

I will leave you with these thoughts.  As I listened to Beckett's letters being read it struck me just how many things have changed in this world.  We no longer communicate through letters.  Oh, sure, some of us do, but I'd say it's a relative few.  I have long bemoaned the systemic breaking down of the English language.  Words get changed, dumbed down, new words get added to our lexicon that maybe shouldn't.  "Blog", for example.  Oh, and how about "Webinar".  That one makes me want to throw breakable things from a tall building and scream.  Don't get me wrong.  The new technology that these words describe is awesome.  Every day I giddily look forward to the next scientific and technological advances, praying that they will not describe them with a stupid, made-up word.

Back to the letters.  Letters were once the only way to get a message to someone.  Then technology made it easier and faster. Now we sit down at a glowing screen and send someone a message and they can view it instantly.  Convenient?  Yes, indeed.  But technology is also making it easier for people to be even less expressive, at least in words.  Poetry is no longer a priority.  Proper English is no longer a priority.  Just look at the world of texting.  Mispellings and short-cuts all around.  I used to hate and avoid texting but now I'm a texting fool.  How easily we get lured into the fast-lane.  And how hard is it to slow back down and merge right.  

People used to communicate their feelings of love through the post.  Courting for long periods of time without even hearing the person's voice or seeing that person's face.  Can we even conceive of that now?  How many teen-agers would go for that scenario?  "Ok, there's this great guy in Wisconsin who you will just love... No, you cannot see him for a year.  However you will get to know him through his words of courtship in his letters."  "Sorry, Mom.  I didn't hear you.  I was texting Lydia."

Next time you need to communicate with someone slow down, merge right, and compose a letter, for Beckett's sake!

I feel as though a piece of my heart is missing.

My beautiful big tom cat Archer left us last night.

It came on so suddenly.  I was in the kitchen doing some dishes and I heard a deep moan from one of the cats.  I thought that our neighbor's orange tabby had dropped by for a visit.  The cats make the strangest noises defending their territory.  I went in the living room to see Archer lying on his side by the front door, panting and making that strange pining sound.  His breath was raspy.  Jane, one of the other females, must have thought that Archer was playing with them because she growled back and swatted at him.  Archer pulled himself away from her on his front legs, dragging his hind legs uselessly behind him.  Something was terribly wrong.  I shooed the other cats away and tried to get a closer look at my boy.  His hind legs just wouldn't work and he had lost control of his lower functions as well.  I felt totally helpless.  Barbara was in the room by then and called the emergency animal clinic.  They told us to bring him in as soon as possible.

The ride to the clinic was tense.  Archer's cries got more pained as his discomfort and fear deepened.  To make matters worse, I missed the exit and had to double back at the next one, extending our travel time by a few minutes.  A nurse had to come from the back to buzz us in the front door of the clinic.  We quickly passed off the carrier with a brief explanation and filled out paperwork allowing the vets to do whatever possible, pain meds, IV, etc.

After a long wait, which we later realized was just a few minutes, we were ushered into a side room to see the doctor.  The prognosis was grim.  He was in congestive heart failure and a blood clot had broken free from his heart and went to his legs, thus causing the paralyzation of his lower body.  He also had fluid in his lungs causing rasping and shortness of breath.  It turns out that he had heart disease and we never knew.  Never had a clue.  Archer was the most strong, active cat I'd ever owned.  The doc explained that there was very little to be done.  Yes, he could be treated but the chances of recovery were very slim.  Even if he stabilized there was a very good chance that another clot would hit him.  If he'd had just one or other of the problems facing him it may have been possible to seek treatment.  But both the heart attack and the blood clot left us one option.  That is one decision that I never want to have to make again.

Barbara and I were heartbroken at the news.  Archer was with us for six years.  Six years.  So very young.  Our friends Sharon and John brought him back from Hilton Head.  They found him in a parking lot mewling loudly and all alone.  He was terribly small and undernourished and his his ears were huge.  I really wanted to name him Edgar after the Bat Boy but Barbara refused.  We settled on Jonathan Archer of the starship Enterprise.  He was a varied mix of breeds.  A mutt, you would say if he was a dog.  Dark brown and grey stripes on his back with a startlingly white belly and paws.  His face had a splotch of white on one side of his nose giving him a distinct lopsided look which we never noticed unless seeing him in a mirror.  He was very active and playful.  When we pulled into the driveway he was always sitting in the window seat that faces the carport and would run into the hall to greet us as we came in by way of the office, reaching his fore paws up on the wall as if to make himself as tall as possible.  He loved to snuggle against my cheek.  And if I didn't pay enough attention to him he would head butt my face until I did.  He loved to be carried around on my shoulder.  I think I'll miss that the most.  He just couldn't get enough love from his daddy.

We stayed with Archer as the vet gave the injection.  Barbara told me what to expect as she had put down her cat Kimmer so many years ago.  I am so glad that we were there with him in those final moments.  We kissed him told him that we loved him and to look for Kimmer.

I am not sure what I expected my memories from that moment would be but I can tell you what they are.  The light slowly going out of his eyes.  The weight of his head in my hand.  Stillness.  Peace.

Archer has reached the path at the end of the clearing.  I will miss my big boy.