“Alone together. So much shared.” –Becket, Ohio Impromptu
Thinking about what to write about formally next. Now might be a good time to turn to fiction, as I am no longer part of a research university and don’t have the scholarly resources that a big school might provide as material with which to write non-fiction.
Martin McDonagh, a contemporary playwright/screenwriter, had a funny remark to the effect that people say, “write what you know,” because they are “too f—ing stupid” to imagine anything. That may sum me up for the moment. It takes a leap of ego/faith/creativity to use your own life experience as material for fiction, but it is the readiest material at hand. Part of you wonders who would care. Part of you doesn’t want to divulge personal information. I think all fiction writers use their lives as material, but the great ones have a rich and carefully organized imagination too.
I am thinking of turning to Samuel Beckett again as source material. I know Beckett can be a rabbit hole because he is so ambiguous, so much has been written about him, and people like me who claim to know him often don’t know what they are talking about.
But this virus lockdown seems to be making people turn inward. I think one of the reasons Beckett repels some people is that he deals with issues like solitude, solipsism, and the desire for suicide. But if even our authorities are telling us to stay at home and avoid socializing, isn’t this a “new normal”? We are supposed to sit at home, watch screens or read books. and avoid human interaction. Dr. Anthony Fauci recently advised that people stop shaking hands forever; what are we coming to? What Beckett saw of the 20th century seemed to have made him a pessimist and something of a solipsist, as negative as that last word is in our society. Was his attitude warranted and prescient?
One critic said what Beckett was proposing wasn’t so much anti-social behavior as asceticism. It seems an austere path anyway. One of the most important intellectual influences on Beckett was the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, known as a proponent of asceticism, self-denial, and pessimism. Another important influence was the Beglian thinker Arnold Geulincx, whose saying “Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil veles” or “where you are worth nothing, there you should want nothing” was used as a centerpiece of Beckett’s early novel Murphy. Solitude was an important subject for Beckett from a young age. In one of his earliest manifestos, he claimed art is not expansive but rather a significant contraction, “the apotheosis of solitude.”
I suppose the problem people have with solipsism is that, if it isn’t combined with rigorous personal rectitude and ethics, it can lead to monstrous behavior. Schopenhauer was an atheist. If you don’t believe in God and think your own existence is the only thing that can be proved (not saying Schopenhauer thought the latter), what is stopping you from total self-indulgence? I don’t think Beckett was an atheist with a capital “a.” He seemed more like a radical skeptic and a pessimist. This may be a hair-splitting distinction.