Status Updates From In nessun modo ancora

I return to these last stories, all read in the past, as I would to a mordant and wizened old friend!

Worstward Ho, ★★★☆☆ - I prefer the idea over the execution. The repetitive use of 'ooze' makes me think we're dealing with a creation myth but told through Beckett's gaze. It's dark and depressing. Husks of people - 'shades', as they're frequently referred to. 'Lidless' stares; 'sunken skulls', and everywhere 'voids'. Language is reduced to runic fragments, awkwardly thrown together to create jarring speech.

On the snow her long shadow keeps her company.

She needs nothing. Nothing utterable.

Suffice to watch the grass. How motionless it droops. Till under the relentless eye it shivers.

True too that the eyes then agaze for the viewless planet are now closed. On other viewlessness. Of which more if ever anon. There the explanation at last.

Grace to breathe that void. Know happiness.

Ill Seen Ill Said, ★★★☆☆

- Company, ★★★☆☆, Some of those memories are haunting. That's because Beckett is being as sparse as possible with his words. We're briefly lulled into these lilting dream spaces. The memories concerning young love were particularly poignant. The rest, however, was a bit dry. Felt like the aftershocks to his 'Trilogy' - none of the momentous, rage-filled proclamations of the latter. Tedious reflections at best.

You are on your back at the foot of an aspen. In its trembling shade. She at right angles propped on her elbows head between her hands. Your eyes opened and closed have looked in hers looking in yours. In your dark you look in them again. Still. [...] She murmurs, Listen to the leaves. Eyes in each other's eyes you listen to the leaves. In their trembling shade. --- [Page 31, third paragraph]