Watt

Confession: I’m sort of in love with this book. Correction: not sort of.

I tried to read Watt* by Samuel Beckett, oh, probably 10 years ago or so. I couldn’t do it then. Maybe I didn’t have enough patience. Or maybe my mind wasn’t in the right place. Or maybe I didn’t have the right reading background yet. Whatever the reason, I simply could not read this book then.

I’m reading it now. My bookmark is almost in the middle of the book. And I love it. I think every day I walk into Patrick’s office and tell him how much I love this book.

So long story short: this book is not for everyone.

It is, haha, actually, short story long. And dense. The story is short, but long and dense. 254 pages long. Dense, dense, dense. But awesome. The length and density. The story, well, the story is secondary, I think. To the density and length. Or the length and the density. And the length, I guess, too, is secondary. To the density. It’s the density. The density of the language. It’s poetic. OK. Now. That’s it. The poetry. That is primary. Everything else—the story, the length, the density. Secondary to the poetry. But maybe that’s not entirely true. Maybe everything else—the story, the length, and the density—is the poetry. Without everything else—the story, the length, and the density—can their be poetry? Sure. Yeah. True. Poetry doesn’t depend on story or length or density. Sometimes poetry doesn’t want story or length or density. Just words.

There are lots of words in Watt. I’m not going to count them. But there are lots. Just trust me.

OK. Non-sequitur here. I may love this so much because I think of Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity* by David Foster Wallace. The part near the beginning when he talks about how, you know, you wake up early in the morning before it’s actually time to wake up and you start thinking metaphysically… about the floor. And why you trust the floor. Why you trust it will be there when you put your foot on it. And it will hold you up. It won’t collapse and send you into the basement to lie in a pile of rubble. Why? Because the last time you stood on it it held you up. It didn’t collapse and send you into the basement to lie in a pile of rubble. So this time will be the same. Right? Or will it? And then. And then. And then. What is it? Is it real? How do I know it’s real? Am I awake? Does that make a difference? Is what my mind conceives when I’m awake more real than what it conceives when I’m asleep? Isn’t reality really just in my mind anyway? Isn’t (as my speech teacher in college always said) “perception situated in the subject”? Isn’t my perception mine alone? And isn’t that real?

Yeah, so this book makes me do that. In the daytime. After I’m all the way awake. No question about it. I’m awake.

…

…

Or am I?