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  He wrote of sitting in the park one day while he was still unpublished and suffering from a lack of ideas.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

New York, New York, it's a heck of a town!

Friday, November 7

Our plane to New York was set to depart at ten-ten AM.  Airtran personnel got on the horn and announced that our flight was cancelled.  Not postponed, not late, cancelled.  They put us all on a new flight set to leave at twelve-thirty.  Apparently New York was having some weather problems so several flights were postponed. 

So, we waited. 

I like the airport.  There is no place like it for a people-watcher like me.  I'm a natural observer.  Ogler, some might say.  It's a great way to picking up mannerisms, ticks and other physical oddities that may come in useful in a performance.  I have stolen from many a stranger in airports, shopping malls, MARTA.

Today I was particularly interested in a short, slim, grey-haired man in a black suit with wide pin stripes.  He was tan, expensive haircut, good shoes and in his left ear he sported at least five diamond studs, glittering in the glow of the phosphorescent lighting.  He was alternately talking loudly on his cell phone and plugging it in to recharge.  His New York accent was thick as pea soup.  I listened as a young African-American girl struck up a conversation with him about the city.  Her first trip to Manhattan.  She soaked up his advice about how to avoid the gypsy cabs at the airport, what restaurants in which to dine and the like.

Then, there was Airtran back on the loudspeaker.  We were being pushed back again.  Two-fifteen was to be our new departure time.  Ugh.  We were instructed to form a single file line to get our tickets updated.  After ten minutes or so we arrived at the front of the line only to be told by Mr. Agent that he was shutting down his computer and we were all to follow him to a different kiosk!  Much grumbling ensued from the restless patrons around us.  Mr. Agent told us to remain in the same order as the queue but some eager flyers tried to use the confusion to cut ahead.  Barbara wasn't having it.

"Stay in the original order!" she projected in her best teaching voice.  The eager beavers sheepishly fell in line behind us, thank you very much.

I couldn't stop grinning.  She asked me later if she sounded bitchy.  I responded that she sounded like my wife.  So, with our Airtran piper in the lead, we scuttled our way down the hall some fifty feet to another kiosk.  After a brief interchange our new tickets were in hand.

Waiting again.  People watching can only get you so far.  I tried to nap.  Wasn't happening.  Too excited about getting there, so I read Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal.

Finally we were in the sky.  We made up some time in the air and arrived at LaGuardia around four-thirty.

The weather in the city was just lovely.  Overcast but not raining, temperature was in the mid-sixties.  We just couldn't wait to get out and about in the big city.

...to be continued.