Book review: Watt by Samuel Beckett

Book review
Watt
by Samuel Beckett
Grove Press (1953)
214 pp

There are as many literary writing styles as there are writers. If I were a gentleman, I would tip my hat to Mr. Beckett for getting as much critical acclaim as James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace. But I am no gentleman, thank God, and writers who are deemed to be iconic for the sake of being iconic do not hold sway with me. It’s about time that literary swells are knocked down a tad and put into their rightful place.

Let’s start with Samuel Beckett. Watt could only have been written by an author who is a genius, a crank, and a bore. A mad-mad (angry and insane) genius who takes delight in tormenting his audience while he cleverly believes his own mythology—I am going to show them how great a writer I am.

Beckett describes many things ad nauseam, but there’s no sense of place or character. I know much of the book takes place in a house because there is a ground floor, a first floor, and rooms. Who are these murky and maudlin characters, the servant Watt and his master Mr. Knots? We never really find out.

The sad sack litany of the Lynch family is condescending and the strange maladies that beset them (A woman bleeder, for example) are meant to be funny in a ribald, morose …bawdy….five generations, twenty eight souls. As it turns out, these numbers are incorrect. Some star-struck Beckett fan thought to count them. The same dog with different names comes to feed on the ground floor, led by twins who are dwarves.

Technically speaking, the lack of quotation marks around dialogue is often practiced by literary writers, but it is irritating and confusing, especially when coupled with loads of he said/she said/exclaimed/cried. Beckett’s nonsensical dialogue melding into his repetitive prose gets so stuck in the weeds that the reader never has a chance to explore the garden.

The repetitive rants and riffs of chamber pots, keys, bells, snoring and the great clambering up and down steps faster than the speed of thought; a painting that is a circle and a center; the fish woman Mrs. Gorman; he liked the scent of fish and presumably she liked the scent of stout; big-bellied big-bottomed, and variations thereof; cows, bulls and boar, and variations thereof; a committee of men includes Mr. O’ Meldon, who stares at the boils and blackheads in the nape of Mr. Magershon’s neck; all of this activity is set forth in a singsong cadence so obsessive and obnoxious that it could not lull a child asleep.

No decent reader deserves two pages of krak! Krik! Krak! Krek! I cried out, “spare me and be quick about it.”

With all of the dreck and unnecessary rubbish, Watt ponders a great question, one of enduring importance: “Was the picture a fixed and stable member of the edifice, like Mr. Knott’s bed, for example, or was it simply a matter of paradigm, here today and gone tomorrow, a term in a series, like the series of Mr. Knott’s dogs, or the series of Mr. Knott’s men, or like the centuries that fall, from the pod of eternity.”

Finally, we have gotten somewhere, Mr. Beckett! It’s only fitting I should finish reading Watt in the wee hours of St. Patrick’s Day, making it appropriate to exclaim Malarkey. Blarney. Balderdash. Bunk. Nonsense. Enough of this inane exaggerated talk! I’ve had my Beckett experience

Here is my version of the Beckett style in Watt: I didn’t want to read the book, but the book was there, so I read the book. The book wasn’t given to me. This book was not a gift as books can be. I did not find the book. The book found me, well, not really. The book was for sale at a store. I did not go to the store to buy a book. It was in a bookstore where I spotted the book. The author’s picture is on the cover of the book. The cover of the book is yellow and black. I bought the book. I did not have to buy the book. I could have stolen the book. I don’t steal books, although I have thought about stealing books, but I did not steal this book. I did buy the book. I took the book home. I looked at the book. I did not read the book right away. I had other things to do other than to read the book. It looked to be a good book. I read the book. It was a dumb book. I don’t know why I bought the book. The book was there, so I read the book. The book is a dumb book. I don’t know why I bought the book. I thought the book would be a good book.