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 He wrote of sitting in the park one day while he was still unpublished and suffering from a lack of ideas.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!
