Beckett Samuel - Samuel Beckett Is Closed

Published by Foxrock Books/Evergreen Review in association with OR Books/Counterpoint Press.
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First printing 2018.

Samuel Beckett Is Closed 2018 Michael Coffey

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Text and jacket design and typesetting by Laura Lindgren.
Set in Carre Noir, Century 731, CA Cula, Magma, and Sofia.

Printed by Berryville Graphics, Virginia.

hardback ISBN 978-1-944869-59-5 ebook ISBN 978-1-944869-54-0

Excerpts from Samuel Becketts Long Observation of the Ray The Estate of Samuel Beckett. Reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of Samuel Beckett c/o Rosica Colin Limited, London (p. 120). The torture scenarios are adapted from Mohamedou Ould Slahis Guantanamo Diary , edited by Larry Siems, Little, Brown, 2015. The torture investigation procedures are taken from The US Army Field Manual on Interrogation 3452 , and the investigation into detainee treatment is based on the Schmidt-Furlow investigation, under the auspices of the Senate Armed Service Committees Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody. Reports of terrorist attacks in Paris are adapted from Google-translated Agence France Press reports at the time.

Being is constantly putting form in danger.
Samuel Beckett

B: Total object, complete with missing parts, instead of partial object. Question of degree.

D: More. The tyranny of the discreet overthrown. The world a flux of movements partaking of living time, that of effort, creation, liberation.... The fleeting instant of sensation given back, given forth, with context of the continuum it nourished.

Sam U el Beckett and Georges Duthuit,
from Three Dialogues

PART ONE

I.

Its not cricket, Sam.

Ive spent the last three years reading only the writings of Samuel Beckett.

Tell me a story, she says that ll put me to sleep.

The detention and interrogation operation covered a three-year period and over 24,000 interrogations.

So we wont be here for five days. The prospect of nine innings gave me a fright. Wed be panting here through August.

I exaggerate a little: I have read newspapers and the books of friends and a few literary journals, but Ive not wandered in search of other major writers to discover or reread. I have read (and reread) only Beckett (and books about his work), while also becoming a member of the Samuel Beckett Society, subscribing to the Journal of Beckett Studies out of Edinburgh University, attending a Beckett conference, in Phoenix, and visiting the Beckett Collection at the University of Reading in England, then Antwerp, with Halifax next, as the Beckett conferences roll on.

I can confirm that my stories do put her to sleep, on those occasions when I am stirred to render an old account or, as happens more often of late, am summoned by my beloved to perform. This powerto put people down, to take them under, to usher them from this side of the veil to the otherChrist, Im nodding out myself. What I mean to say is thisthat it is my voice simply that serves as a calmative.

This investigation found only three interrogation acts in violation of techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual and Department of Defense. The report found that the interrogation of a high-value detainee resulted in degrading and abusive treatment but did not rise to the level of being inhuman. The report found no evidence of torture.

I will. Thats our man there? A crisp ale would do me, in this heat.

Afraid the best weve got here is Rheingold, [ singing ] the dry beer . They sponsor this spectacle.

Id drink bog water from a galosh right now.

Two over here!

I am sixty-two years old. How many years of reading do I have left? Lets say twenty, which is a little optimistic but not unreasonable. Im healthy. Lets assume so. My eyes are good.

I mix them up, the rhythms of my speech, all my cadences, of which I have a fewfast or slow, chipper or lugubrious, and the accents as wellmy old rural honk or the Irish brogue, for the poetry. And then theres the timbre, and the register, and that subtle interplay of adduction and abductionI am talking open and shut here. Puffs of air. It is certainly not the content of my stories that induces unconsciousness, or so I tell myself, for I must in order to live with the choices I have made! Which is to say, were I in fact capable of delivering pure device-agnostic content that could alter states of being, I should have found a different career, hiring myself out to surgeries and day-care centers, say, where putting people under is to be wished, and then making my texts available (for a subscription) for others to intone. There I go again, nearly comatose.

You have been identified as having conducted an assignment at GTMO, Cuba, since 9/11/2001. The Inspection Division has been tasked with contacting those employees who have served in any capacity at GTMO. Employees should immediately respond to the following: If you observed aggressive treatment, which was not consistent with guidelines, respond via email for purposes of follow-up interview; if you observed no aggressive treatment of detainees you should respond documenting a negative response. The above email was sent to 493 FBI personnel who had served at GTMO.

Were they in town, Id have taken you to see the first-place Yanks.

Now why is that?

To see a little professionalism, and the great Mickey Mantle.

These are... amateurs then?

Virtually... and retirees.

Pensionersthe pure game, for the love of it. Nothing like it. [ Grandly, as if quoting ] The presence of promise is a curse. [ Snidely ] Thanks, Mother. Maa.

At this age, I know who it is I want to readthough, really, have I read all of Shakespeare or Dickens or (any of) Balzac? Should I? I have not read the bulk of Proust even prochaine, prochaine . So it is Beckett. I just dont know why. The dedicated Beckett reading began as I waited out the publication of my first book of stories. These stories were much about identity and adoption and fathers and heirs both literary and otherwise and I did not know what the books reception would tell me about myselfI would have to wait and see. I sometimes think I dont like waiting but the opposite is trueI find waiting for something inherently excitingand waiting for a book to be published is particularly exquisite; I even find waiting for something miserable, like, say, a colonoscopy, a luxury, as every day that is not the dreaded day has a certain satin lining. Even so, during such an interim as prepublication represents, I was concerned about having a focus to my activities.

Its a funny thingat least I pretend to laugh at itthat she cannot sleep these days. I dont mean that she never sleeps, for she does, and not only with the aid of my soporifics. She can sleep perfectly well and on her own in boxcars rolling over land and in the theater houses of an afternoon, or at the back of the slow taverns we frequent when we are flush, availing ourselves of the steam-table fare and the Four Roses. Oh, will she sleep! But come time for the bedsheets or the pallet or the rug, I mean night-night, in our kip, shes as jumpy as a puppet on a string. Whered that come from? Rhymes with spring, now I remember. One of my tropes, spring is, funny how that happens in these little canters.