person
also known as Beckett
Irish novelist and playwright, brought in by Cameron McEwen over a point of method: faced with the same problem McLuhan solves with scattered quotation marks in Take Today, Beckett writes one footnote covering the whole book. Cameron also names the middle-period novels as among the funniest things ever written. New to him — dialogue 65.
Across the dialogues
65
Enters as the solution to a typographic problem — his single footnote in Watt is offered as the economical alternative to McLuhan''s scattered quotation marks
The economical solution to McLuhan's problem — one declaration up front where McLuhan marks every instance, which is why McLuhan's typography looks like a tic and Beckett's does not.
"Samuel Beckett has a footnote. He says that he's not going to note for every single sentence in the novel that the person who is talking is talking only to himself. He says this is not necessary to say in every single case because it's always the case."
A rare unhedged aesthetic judgment from Cameron, and one made about comedy in books usually read for their bleakness.
"I'd recommend Samuel Beckett's middle period novels like Murphy and Watt as some of the funniest things that have ever been written by a human being."
Connections
compared withTake Today
Beckett's blanket footnote is contrasted with McLuhan's practice of quoting individual words.