More Pricks than Kicks

More Pricks than Kicks.

The life of Belaqua - a potential, if not, possibly escaped mental patient, whose fornications range unilaterally, exclusively, amongst Dublin’s most schizophrenic female class (from Alba to Ruby, from Lucy to Thelma to Smeraldina) – encompasses all of the bizarrely relatable passages that comprise ‘More Pricks than Kicks’. The individual chapters are vignette-like in that they follow the oddest moments of Belaqua’s life that fit part to whole in the scheme of pinning down the characteristics that (often, if not always) form his character. That is not to say that I think Beckett has intended ‘More Pricks than Kicks’ to be a character study, but more so as an illustration of the ‘everyman’ of the environment that he has encountered in Dublin; a pastiche of social, cultural idiosyncrasies in attitudes and habits of Dubliners, and moreover Westerners. In addition, it acts also as a critique on other texts that have attempted to do this in the past that have been perhaps a little to narrow in their scope. (The scope of MPtK is wide and high, to say the least) What comes to mind is Goethe’s, The Sorrows of Young Werther and even in the chapter of Smeraldina’s letter Goethe is even mentioned. What's more, is that it's distinct from every other chapter, and even mimics the style of The Sorrows of Young Werther. While the form of ‘S. of Y. Werther’ is entirely epistolary, I imagine this novella as an encapsulation of what Werther's life might actually have been like, and not a self-account of how he interpreted his own life… The numbers of allusions are numerous and there even seem to be, what I will call, slant allusions: those that seem to give the impression of a hint or allusion but remains ambiguous and not entirely accurate. A good example of this would be the name of ‘Hermione Nautzsche’, in the ‘What a Misfortune’ chapter, which brings to mind, ‘Nietzsche’, a definitive influence on Beckett. There is even reference to one of his central ideas of the Ubermensche, which seems to imply that Nietzschean philosophy was on his mind when writing the novella, though he does not reference any specific doctrine there of. In stead it seems that he, if anything, applies some of the doctrine into practice – giving it a home. I do not think that it is a far stretch to suggest that Belaqua shares qualities with Nietzsche’s ‘last man’ archetype, though it is never announced… but more analysis is required for to gain any authority.

As a final thought I would like to comment on the incredibly modern register of Beckett’s diction: essentially slang. Many a time I came across a phrase or a saying that mimic’s (but I guess precedes) “what the kids are saying these days”. A short list: “But his little enjambment joke was pretty hot” (is that not Paris Hilton?), “Slip out quick”… there are many more but I had not marked them all. The point is, it shows that Beckett was ahead of his time in many ways. Another being his constant entering into the text: reminding the reader of what had happened in previous chapters. This is a metaphysical conceit in literature that was nearly abandoned in Modernist text and then revived in Post Modernism. Much in the same fashion it seems that Beckett skipped a few movements and found his own that strongly resembles whatever it is that goes on these days.

In all, I do not really know how to explain this text or even know how to begin to elucidate my reactions to it, because there are so many things to consider, to question and to ruminate on. And like every other text of his we have read, at the risk of sounding lazy and repetitive, it seems a large feature of his writing is to cultivate this nebulous confusion about what is and isn’t important in life and literature. To create order in chaos, by paradoxically setting them as equals