VLVL Prairie and DL

[Dave Monroe]

"In his last full-length novel, COMMENT C'EST (1961,
How It Is) the protagonist crawls across the mud
dragging a sack of canned food behind him. He
overtakes another crawler who he tortures into speech
and is left alone waiting to be overtaken himself by
another crawler who will torture him in turn."

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/beckett.htm

"The book is divided into three sections: before Pim,
with Pim and after Pim. Who is Pim? Another traveler
in the muck. In the encounter, when the two cling
together--everything takes ages of time-- Pim is the
victim, and the narrator is the tormentor. The
relationship is born out of fear and need. Eventually,
Pim disappears--it is the way of the victim, to get
out--and the idea is developed that one is alternately
the victim and tormentor, very likely encountering
only the traveler immediately ahead or being
encountered by the one immediately behind."

http://mural.uv.es/mamomer/howitis.htm

"In Part 3, the narrator begins to hint at the
possibility that his mud world contains not only
himself and Pim, but also 'millions millions there are
millions of us and there are three' (Beckett, 114). He
explores and questions the source of the voice that he
previously identifies with Pim through mathematical
scenarios. By asserting both that millions of mud
creatures exist, and that only three exist, the
narrator alludes to his awareness of the presence of
any number of other creatures apart from himself and
Pim. In one of his scenarios, he randomly sets the
number of creatures at four, and proposes, 'let me for
example be numbered 1.... I frequent number 4 and
number 2 in my quality of victim and tormentor
respectively and number 2 and number 4 frequent number
3 in their quality of tormentor and victim
respectively' (Beckett, 118-119). By referring to
himself as cycling between the roles of both tormentor
and victim, the narrator deftly creates a scenario in
which he can play a role that conflates with the voice
like Pim does in Part 2."

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wadam/html/print.php3?sid=102

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://www.calderpublications.com/books/0714509523.html
 
--- Ghetta Life <ghetta_outta at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I can't find any reference to this.  What is it?
> 
> >From: Dave Monroe <monrovius at yahoo.com>
> >
> >Cf. Samuel Beckett's How It Is ...

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