"“Spratt’s.” Every time I see Endgame I wait in anticipation for it. The way it seems to implode in the play’s taut, heavily silence. [...] the line’s sonic dimension is as important as its grim humor. Spratt’s. The opening sibilant fricative, the bilabial plosive, and the final dying hiss (low hiss – spike – fall: Endgame’s structure in miniature?)."
-Jarred Wells at Begayer La Langue
GREIL MARCUS ~
8 hours ago
3 comments:
I like Beckett (I have read a lot of his works and just about have all his works in some form) - and Endgame is my favourite - almost - play by Beckett. Actually I find it very funny! I also found parts of Watt so funny I was rolling around of the floor once when I read it - the part where he enumerates all the illnessses of his relatives etc...people constantly talk about the darkness in Beckett - sure it's there - but like Hamlet, Ulysses by Joyce etc (like life itself!) it can be seen as immensely funny as well as tragic!
By the way, I have no idea what the last line means! What is "Spratt's medium"? - I have to admit I haven't read the play for some time but it was so funny I remember the structure of it very well... the way the blind guy keeps getting or trying to get into the exact centre of the room and so on...
Can you enlighten me?
I saw - with my father in about 1965 or round that time - a production of Godot played by some touring players - I was about 17 or so and I didn't know anything about it - I had heard of it - but I and the audience found that very amusing also! It was well recived here by the audience despite its being rather "new". And it was interesting of course. It was easy to see what it was "about", or sense it, it even as a teenager...
Spratt's is a brand of dog biscuits - the tragic humour there is evident. A guy keeping his parents in trash cans and feeding them dog biscuits...
Ahh! "The accursed progenitors"
I have that line in a poem I wrote...
I thought it might be dog biscuits!
Even more hilarious!
Long live Beckett!
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