If anyone's interested there is a literary Christmas quiz here:

http://www.bookgroup.info/041205/christmas_quiz.php

that horrible man samuel beckett

Don't remember anyone saying or even suggesting that. From what I saw folk were having an interesting discussion.

I can't see why you'd get so annoyed and offensive just because everyone hasn't agreed with you 100%, and when your initial post has generated intelligent discussion (with the exceptions of your suggestion that what's been said is 'bullshit' and that

Besides, painting is a far superior mode of expression to writing

- which is one of the silliest things I've ever heard.).

Happy xmas.

Nik

all the people do on this forum is seem to pat each other on the back. 'oh how lovely dear, want to come round for tea after you drop the kids off at school?...oh loved your latest book..and who is this coming on the forum going on about that horrible man samuel beckett!'... Bullshit.

I know...let's all log onto painting forums and tell the members their work is shit And let's e-mail Rembrandt and tell him his self-portrait looks more like Noddy Holder.

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I didn't mean to hit the 'post' button. That was me merely thinking out loud.

Don't remember being patted on the back for this bit of thinking aloud, or patting anyone else for theirs.

An analogy might be with serialism in music: immensely radical, immensely important in the history of music, but not the only story in contemporary classical music. And yet serialism was seen by some - who for cultural reasons happened to acquire critical and professional dominance and then defended that dominance furiously - as the only way for serious music to go: everything else was old hat fit for nothing more than film scores. For twenty-odd years all other musical avenues - equally radical in different ways - were closed off for anyone who wanted to be taken seriously as a composer, and a generation of gifted musicians went almost unheard as a result. It's taken another generation again to prove that this is stultifying - even poisonous - nonsense: and to be 'allowed' to use the possibilities of their art form, not by denying serialism or its importance, but by recognising that it's simply one more instrument, to be used or not according to their creative purpose at the time. Fortunately, at the moment (though I have my nightmares), serious literature and its analysis is less purely dependent on a narrow coterie of university-trained writers (as opposed to writers who choose to inhabit a university setting, which is different) than music was in the 50s-60s-70s. It's a form of creative provincialism, not to be able to see beyond the boundaries of a certain set of ideas and forms, after all, whether that province is Lake Wobegon, or the Left Bank.

Of course, there's a really delightful irony embedded in this discussion, which has escaped us all. I agree with Sibelius that if the purpose of such discussions is to make us better writers, then discussing what makes writing great writing is the only useful way to go. Meanwhile, anyone trying to make a case for a writer being the 'best ever' writer has to define their terms, by explaining why some kinds of 'best' - some criteria of merit - should be priveleged over others: which is more valuable, the nutritiousnss of bouef bourguinon or the theatre of crêpes suzette?, as it were. Any argument about the value of a writer or a work - to be an argument worth having - has to have an accompanying meta-argument about which values matter - as Helen says, sales, world-changing, universal approbation? But a large part of the project of Beckett, like Joyce, Eliot, and any other modernist writer you care to name*, and an essential element of their influence, was to destabilise the very concepts of absolute values, of certainty about merit, of objective judgement and its separation from subjective appreciation. No one, nowadays (thank goodness) can pronounce, Leavis or Eliot-like, about 'first class' writers, or knock, say, Scott or Milton off their public pedestals simply because they don't conform to some a priori definition of 'great', and therby deprive several generations of readers from being introduced to them. In other words, to argue for the primacy of a writer who argued for the non-primacy of any judgement except death is amusing, but a tad circular.

Or saying that Beckett was a horrible man:

By the way, are we talking about Beckett the novelist or Beckett the dramatist? I think it's questionable how influential the former has been - as Sibelius says, Joyce got there first. On the other hand I yield to none in my devotion to the latter, and no one could deny his influence on the drama and theatre which has followed, often perhaps in small ways in apparently very different dramatists' work. But that still doesn't make him the greatest dramatist ever, only one of them.

Emma

Which is the best cheese, French or British?

British of course!! British cheese is the best in the world, ever. Honestly, you people should know that.

I can't advance a coherent argument in support of this assertion, but it is agreed with by several cheese experts (whose names I can't remember at the moment).

Ah Emma, serialism. Yes indeedy. I always thought it was clever and ground-breaking in a kind of maths and science way, but I can never see myself thinking what I need to listen to right now is one of Webern's pointillist compositions - serialism was too cold, it lacked passion - or at least easily recognisable passion.

Oh dear, Brightlad, now you're just being juvenile. Never mind, let's hope Santa brings you a colouring book this Christmas so you can indulge your passion for art.

At the end of the day at least I can console myself that I have the kind of soul that can receive and 'get' someone like Beckett but you lot are a bunch of redundant clacked-out writers who think that writing is about scribbling about your sad little comfortable lives.
Writing is only gosssiping anyway, and most writers I wouldnt trust as far as I could throw them( with the exception of samuel beckett, but he was more an artist than a writer).

Grow up.

So, brighlad, you consider yourself superior because you can comprehend a single author - Beckett.
Writers, by comparison, can comprehend many hundreds of authors - not just Beckett.

Actually brightlad, the more I think about this, the funnier it gets. So level with us, eh, are you taking the piss? Because if you're not, if you're being serious, the that really is funny.

Nik

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then

Brightlad - this is a joke right? S

I'm assuming it it. Gave rise to an interesting discussion, though, even if that wasn't the original intention.

Emma

It appears Brightlad is either:

1. A disembodied head sticking out of an urn and feeling a little bitter about life.

2. An attention-seeker who thinks that if he/she throws their dollies out of the pram often enough we might keep picking them up.

I'm definitely going for number 2.

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By the way Brightlad, what exactly does clacked-out mean?

LoL Sibelius!

1. A disembodied head sticking out of an urn and feeling a little bitter about life.

I've done Beckett, and I can tell you, if you didn't feel bitter about life before you spent hours in an urn, you certainly do afterwards.

Emma

The disembodied heads you refer to is from the play called 'play' by samuel Beckett.
As a painter I find all this sort of imagery in Beckett very haunting. The urns in which the characters are encased represent their psychological cages..a bit like the cages in francis bacons paintings.
Of course, I dont expect you lot to get that kind of reference...you have the sensitivity of a brick.
If you lot of failures would actually read Beckett then you might learn something about writing...for example, economy of language,the effective use of imagery etc.
'clacked-out' means exhausted.