Sunday, January 25, 2009

On being funny--in an Irish way?

I am not a good reader of Beckett's, but occasionally I open an earlier work, Murphy, for example, and read a couple of pages. This to taste Sam's crazy style. Any one page contains such a paragraph as:

For an Irish girl Miss Counihan was quite exceptionally anthropoid. Wylie was not sure that he cared altogether for her mouth, which was a large one. The kissing surface was greater than the rosebud's, but less highly toned. Otherwise she did. It is superfluous to describe her, she was just like any other beautiful Irish girl, except, as noted, more markedly anthropoid. How far this constitutes an advantage is what every man must decide for himself.

Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

An abominable sense of humour!