`Structures in Beckett’s Watt by John C. DiPierro. York, South Carolina: French Literature Publications Company, 1981. 116 pp.
The
reader of Structures in Beckett’s ‘Watt’ should consider carefully the
warning John D. Erickson offers us in his preface to the effect that ‘perhaps
the most original aspect of this study’ is DiPierro’s procedure which
approximates the very way Beckett himself proceeds (p. ix). In truth, the
conclusions DiPierro reaches are not unfamiliar. We learn: that Beckett has
performed a number of interesting linguistic experiments which add to the
dimensions of the characters and to the thematic aspects (p. 29), that the plot
and ‘situation regarding Watt are carefully designed (p. 49), that what
appears simple may acquire a variety of meanings (p. 49), that character
structure and plot are closely related (p. 49), and that Beckett’s structure
reflects his ideas (p. 60).
If
the conclusions are not surprising, the methods of proving them often are. For example,
DiPierro dismisses previous critics’ interpretations of character names as ‘amusing
and unconvincing’ and promises instead the rigors of a ‘thorough, scientific
examination’ (p. 29). He then provides us with passages and notes such as the
following:
One can easily dispose of the names of the minor
characters in this group, Spiro and Graves. Spiro’s name is clearly Greek in
origin. (One need merely refer to the first name of a recent Vice President of
the United States.) It gives us a Mediterranean flavor. It is also indubitably
Jewish, most likely of that branch of Jewry known as Sephardic whose people
were numerous in Greek-speaking areas. (p. 26)23 For the Jewish aspect
see the New York telephone Directory, Manhattan 1976-77 (New York,
1976), p. 1306. Also under `Spero’, p. 1305. The Greek root of Spiro also
appears in such Greek names as Spironis, Sprides, etc. (p. 45).
Unlike
many less courageous authors, DiPierro is not unwilling to take to task his
predecessors, chastising them for evaluating Beckett `without examining the
intellectual conceptions behind his novels’ (p. 66). Nor is he diffident about
dismissing ‘trifles’, passing over the debate on Watt’s missing ladder as ‘One
of Beckett’s puns, which need not detain us’ (p. 68). Nor is he hesitant to
introduce the speculative, annotating his reference to Bardsley’s English Surnames (1889) by asking, ‘Was
Beckett aware of the possibility, known already in Bardsley’s well-known
work in the 19th century? On the surface it seems to have no application to his
Knott. But, then, one can always indulge in Wattian speculations and come up
with twelve solutions’ (p. 45).
In
short, Structures in Beckett’s ‘Watt’
is a compendium of the foolish things we have all at some time thought,
said, or, to our eternal embarrassment, published. The catalogue is complete
from the graphic to the biographic, from nondistinctive definitions to
fragments and tautologies, from blithe assumptions to patent inaccuracies,
from Einstein to Buddha.
DiPierro
has run the risk of the imitative fallacy in his first four chapters in order
to make us experience the critical equivalent of the ‘nothingness’ he
celebrates in all four of his epigraphs. Only in the final chapter does
DiPierro return to his own voice and imply a motive for his madness: By
approaching Watt rationally we tend
to slip into the trap that eventually undoes Watt. For we demand clear
statements, precise narration expressed by well-defined narrators,
concise situations in an artificial literary sense. Yet none exist in that
fashion because none exist in real life. By thus approaching Watt we deny the ur-instinct which
had been so suppressed in Watt that it had ceased to operate (p. 102).
By
parodying critical methods and highlighting their inadequacies, DiPierro
attempts to restore to Beckett scholarship an instinctive and intuitive
appreciation of Watts artistry and
humor. He attempts to save us from that portion of ourselves that resembles
Watt, that humorless, ‘half-baked scholar-clerk with his
compulsions and illusions who often goes mad or becomes merely ‘neurotic’ (p.
101).
No
doubt many readers will find Structures
in Beckett’s ‘Watt’ witty, others will see it as parasitic; many will be
delighted by its games, others offended by them; and many, such as myself, will
find the work too depressingly close to the errors we daily confront in our
students and in ourselves. As DiPierro observes, ‘There are many Watts among us’
(pp. 19 and 93).