My Own Quirk

When we started discussing the sucking stones section of Beckett I thought about one of my own weird quirks that I use to have. I didn't really want to put this down but maybe nobody will read it and I'll be able to just slip this by. Anyway, here goes:

When I was about ten for some reason I decided that I would start counting the letters in words. Anytime I would hear an interesting word, I would have to dissect it. First seeing it in my mind and then separating the letters into even parts. Usually I would put two or three letters together in the hopes that the groups would come out even. If they did not, then the words were disregarded as uninteresting and "odd."

For example if I were to hear the word provision, I would see the word in my head and then break it apart so that I saw instead three different parts pro-vis-ion. I did this for about two years or three years, until I finally realized that I had become somewhat obsessed with breaking down almost each and every word in a conversation. I would literally break down every word longer than three letters to the point that conversations usually took a while and ended with the people I was trying to talk to walking away in frustration or staring at me with a strange look on their faces.

Anyway, I thought that I would share my own quirk with you guys and hopefully it was at least a little interesting.

A Thought On Beckett

I've been thinking for a couple of days about Beckett and been trying to make some sense of his writing which is simpler than Joyce's but that kind of goes without saying. What interests me the most is the idea of decay that we've been throwing around for a few days. Of course, obviously the first story actually deals with decay, but I think more than that, the writing itself almost seems to be decaying the further we go in the book. Where many would have created new paragraphs there are none. Where others would have used quotations, Beckett ignores them. It's as if the writing is slowly falling apart along with the characters in the story, as if it is somehow connected to the very characters that it tries to portray.

Anyway, just an idea that I had earlier and thought I'd put down.

3 Similarities

So I thought that I would write down a few of the similarities between "The Skin of Our Teeth" and Finnegans Wake.

1. The first I noticed was the continual references to the bible and Greek mythology, especially continual references to creation, Cain and Able, etc. There are also several references to the Muses as well as other myths. It seems that Wilder is, much like Joyce, trying to fit as much as possible into a few pages.

2. The second similarity that I noticed was that Wilder actually states what we have been discussing as part of the purpose of Finnegans Wake, that is the fact that in our dreams we are part of a different world from that when we are awake. In fact, one of the characters, Sabina I think, actually refers to this openly in the third Act.

3. The third similarity I would point out is the return to the beginning of the play much like Finnegans Wake returns to the beginning. The plays transition actually makes it obvious, literally restarting the play at the end but the concept is the same.