/lit/ - Literature

His name alone carries and shields Trinity College from the hacks and pseuds that followed him. Whenever some loser 20 something writer pops up in Ireland, they have to live with the unshakable knowledge that Beckett is looming large over them across every single medium there is to write in. They might be successful, they might make money, but they will never topple him in the eye of the critic, or literaryfag, such is his standing and this makes them fucking seethe. Beckett bridges the gap from Joyce to the "modern world" and because of that trinityfags will never escape him. Joyce dying in 1941 almost makes him some "relic" something you can forget or toss away in the modern mind, but having Beckett in colour photographs burning shit or being on television, writing for television, having people alive who knew and spoke to him who are maybe only in their 50s all tie him to the now.

When Beckett died Irish literature basically died with him with only Heaney keeping speed but as a poet instead of an all-rounder. (not to discredit Heaney of course he was a much better poet than Beckett) Since then there has not been a single writer from Ireland or indeed the world that managed to do what Beckett did in any direction nor has there been an attempt to. Beckett didn't just write stories or plays for the purpose of conveying a philosophy or story like the vast majority of writers do, especially today, but he also used the medium itself to attack the capabilities of language and even the human senses. Joyce did the opposite with Finnegan's Wake. The work itself and how it was written was trying to convey something and not just the "plot" and what have you. Modern writers on a whole have collapsed and no longer attempt such experiements and put everything into "Character development", "plot devices" etc.
If Watt was written today it would be the most interesting novel written in about 50 years and would be the most impressive work of prose for nearly the exact same same time, maybe even further. Nobody tries to write a book like Watt today and most writers aren't capable of it.

First tip is to ignore everybody who says to read any author/poet/playwright from the 21st Century and the safe edgy dose that is Patrick Mccabe, he is the sort of starting point for the modern notion of everything to do with out culture and history is shit and evil and we should be ashamed etc. The real, talanted members of our artists are as follows
Joyce
Beckett
Yeats
Syng
Heaney
Kavanagh
Wilde
Gogarty
O'Casey
Moore
Behan
Gregory
Shaw
Swift
If you read all of these there is no reason to read a single other Irish author. Since the death of Beckett we haven't had an original and boundry pushing prose writer or playwright and Heaney dying was the nail in the coffin for our literary golden age. All we serve up now, as mentioned above, is complete dogshit of authors using the style of the great authors for no reason other than to appear intelligent or impressive and/or providing stories of how awful Ireland is and how somewhere else is better. It has gotten to the point also, where Irish authors who have ahd their entire worldview and personality warped by American culture that when they write characters they aren't even Irish; Sally Rooney is a master at this. Compare the dialogue of 'As I was going down Sackville Street' by Gogarty to Normal People by Rooney and you'll see what I mean. Synge, while being an aristocratic Dubliner managed to capture the pockets of rural conversation and spirit too: Riders to the Sea is an excellent example showcaseing our unique way of speaking in the rural areas of the country and I again implore that you compare it to Rooney's dialogue.

>>21587351
I like Godot to be honest, I think it's a great way to introduce somebody to Beckett properly in a raw form.
>>21587574
>Eimar McBride
Man I did not like A Girl is a Half Formed thing at all to be honest. There didn't seem to be anything interesting or needed with her attempts to copy Beckett. You could have written her story in a much more conventional way and nothing would have changed. Sally Rooney did the same with removing any sort of punctuation marks with her dialogue and it just added nothing to it. The story itself (McBride's that is) didn't seem to convey anything deeper to me than what is in vogue now: misery porn. It didn't explore anything other than what was happening to the characters. When Molloy is talking about his sucking stone routine and eventually ends up saying he ends up losing them anyway it's conveying a philosophical message with it. It's harsh to compare her to Beckett but if you're trying to emulate somebody.......

>Beckett's shitposting again
Go to bed Sam