Wow. Can I just take a moment to say wow? Beckett does it again with Mercier and Camier. I've read a dozen of Beckett's works; I've been reading him since high school, but this is the first novel I've read that he had written. Honestly, this book is pretty much a shittier version of Waiting for Godot, but still good. Which doesn't really help my case, because I just finished criticizing Chekov and Pessoa, and here I am defending a piece I probably shouldn't. There are some technical errors I'd point out if I didn't totally love Beckett. So I'm biased. Sue me.
Mercier and Camier's travel results in no change: that's the point of the story. From beginning to finish, the two staccato characters encounter everything from bars to crossroads, meeting interesting characters along the way. However, though different events happened, there was absolutely no change in the lives of the characters or the way they continued to operate after the story ended. Beckett stays with this theme throughout his career, and it's directly a reflection on the way the world operates in his eyes.
Based on the way Beckett writes, I'd have to say he's one hell of a pessimist. Life's just a big pointless mess, with so many events occurring but to no end. He's a total existentialist, practically the poster boy for that movement. Mercier and Camier totally expresses that point, at one point a woman is bleeding and writhing, and one of them says something along the lines of "Hmm, what's to be done about this?" and the other says "Ah, yes, I think there is a lesson to be learned from this. A lesson." and then they move on. So hilarious.
They meet Watt at the end, a strapping man of high stature. After a short conversation, he loses it. Breaks the cane over the table, throws it into the liquor shelves and screams "Fuck life!" Obviously Beckett was giving us a character who represented the ideal, but was shallowly repressing his hatred for life's cruel virtues, and when it finally broke out, Mercier and Camier saw it. You know, Mercier and Camier are our eyes in the sky, our unbiased, unchangeable characters who represent neutrality. It's really the shit going on around them that Beckett's point lies. Some say Beckett never has a point, but that's total bullshit. Everyone has a point.
i love this book.
ReplyDelete"In the end he said, I am Mercier, alone, ill, in the cold, old, half mad, no way on, no way back. He eyed briefly, with nostalgia, the ghastly sky, the hideous earth."
A brilliant and entertaining read.
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