Horner's Corner

Tag: samuel beckett

Ever Tried. Ever Failed…

by on Dec.17, 2011, under literature


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Desperately Seeking Sam

by on Jan.05, 2010, under Uncategorized

Samuel-Beckett

Photograph by John Minihan

Desperately Seeking Sam

Remembering Beckett twenty years after his death

Roger Boylan

I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence. –Samuel Beckett

The first and last time I saw Samuel Beckett, he was walking down a Paris street, the Rue Rémy Dumoncel. At least, I think it was Beckett. The height was right; the near-skeletal thinness was right; the location was right—near the nursing home where he died not long after. I think he was wearing a hat and coat, but I can’t be sure. It was twenty years ago.

Seen always from behind whithersoever he went. Same hat and coat as of old when he walked the roads. –Beckett, Stirrings Still

But I never got close enough to be certain. I was across the street, behind a row of parked cars, admiring, if memory serves, a silver Porsche. Unusually for July in Paris, it was a gray, drizzly day, what Parisians call “la grisaille,” and it was a bit misty, as if in November. Despite all that, I could easily have crossed over and asked my suspect if he was, in fact, the One True Sam. But I didn’t. I funked it. He disappeared. Six months later he was dead. And I had wanted to meet him for years.

More via Boston Review — Roger Boylan: Desperately Seeking Sam.

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