"ALL MEN TALK, WHEN TALK THEY MUST, THE SAME TRIPE": Beckett, Derrida and Needle

Wylie
Author(s): Paul Stewart
Source: Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui, Vol. 14, After Beckett / D'après Beckett (2004), pp.
237-250
Published by: Editions Rodopi B.V.
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 ALL MEN TALK, WHEN TALK THEY MUST,
THE SAME TRIPE":
Beckett, Derrida and Needle Wylie

Paul Stewart

The intertextual relations between Beckett and Derrida are considered

through theprism of Murphy and Wylie's assertion that all men talk
the same tripe "once a certain degree of insight has been reached".
This does not question the validity of possible paradigms of intertex
tual relation, yet itdoes question the value of those relations, making
them inevitable as if the "quantum" of the intellectual "wantum"
cannot vary. This valueless (and hence non-judgemental) relation acts
as an escape into a non-agonistic form of influence, and turns prog
ress into repetition which can only be short-circuited by choosing not
to talk at all.

This article might be re-entitled "Beckett and...?" for the question that
shadows all else in this article is how one reads that and. This has
become a great concern for post-foundationalist critical encounters
with Beckett in whichthe and has served to yoke together Beckett
with Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Badiou, Merleau-Ponty, Adorno,
Habermas, Heidegger and Nietzsche, to mention only those philoso
phers broached in the recent Beckett and Philosophy (2002).
The quality of this and has come in for some long deserved
scrutiny, for the and carries with it the concepts of relation and influ
ence. One comment of Richard Begam's from his article "Splitting the
Difference: Beckett, Derrida and theUnnamable" might serve to focus
this question: "[...] virtually every major metaphor in Derrida is also
to be found inBeckett" (1992, 887). There is a balanced temporality
within the phrase; the act of findingmetaphorswithin Beckett and
Derrida is one that can be carried out simultaneously, it seems, as if
Beckettian and Derridean pages were open before us on the desk and
we take in both at once in the same gaze. The chronology of any pos
sible influenceis quietly pushed to one side, yet not quite the side

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which Begam has reserved for Beckett within Derrida's work. And
how is one to take the "virtually" of that sentence? Almost all? Less
than? Or should we perhaps have simulation inmind, a further level of
representation constructed through themedium of the critic?
The question of the chronology of that and is one that has been
tackled in a number of ways. Is the and a recognition of simultaneity
or of history, with Beckett as the prior term in a phrase such as "Beck
ett and Derrida"? The latter formulation has been carefully avoided by
Begam in the phrase above, and yet it briefly appears in the introduc
tion to his book Samuel Beckett and theEnd ofModernity: "I am [...]
interested in reading the discourse of poststructuralism through Beck
ett. Such an approach reveals that as early as the 1930s and 1940s
Beckett had already anticipated, often in strikingly prescient ways,
many of the defining themes of Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida"
(1996, 4). Early as, anticipated, prescient. This regard for chronology
is immediately, one might say literally, sidelined: "Indeed we might
begin to understand Beckett as a kind of subtext or marginalium in
French poststructuralism, the writer who spoke most resonantly to
those thinkers in France who came after Sartre and reacted against
him" (1996, 4). Once the marginalium has been reinstated, then the
simultaneity of Beckett and Derrida (or Derrida and Beckett one might
now say) is restored. The problem with a chronological and is again
stated by Begam in the same book:

I am concerned with the tendency among critics to treat the

postmodern as the antithesis or negation of the Enlighten
ment tradition, a form of "overcoming" inwhich the mod
ern is ultimately replaced by the anti-modern. The problem
with such an account of the postmodern [...] is that it per
petuatesprecisely thekind of thinkingitwants to free itself
from.

(1996,9)
If the and is read historically then this overcoming becomes more of a
pressing concern and Derrida either becomes the overcoming of
Beckett, or Beckett (as a sub-text
with all its impliedessentiality)be
comes a foundation for Derrida; an uncomfortable position for post
foundationalist thought. Begam scrupulously avoids this Aufhebung
pitfall when he relates Beckett's reactions to Proust and Joyce, and the

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same desire is present when talking of Beckett and Derrida, or Bar
thes, or Foucault. In the case of Proust and Joyce, Beckett works both
within the traditionof modernismwhich they representand from
without in order to dissolve modernism, not to overcome it. Begam
sees the same pattern in the works of Derrida with deconstruction at
once working within so-called Enlightenment thought and from with
out. With perfect logic, therefore, Begam places Beckett on the mar
gin of the Derridean page, albeit in occult form; there simultaneously
ifwe only know how to look for it. In "Splitting theDifference"
Begam states the relationship with reference to Derrida's article
"Tympan" and to his concept of the tympanum.

Beckett's textmay [...] be palimpsestically read as a buried

or occult marginalium which, standing beyond Leiris and
before Derrida, mediates between the two. It consequently
functions as a tympan in the full French sense of the term, at
once a figure related to speech (the tympanum or ear drum)
and thence to Derrida for presence, and a figure related to
writing (the tympan or printer's mechanism) and thence for
Derrida to absence.
(1992, 886-87)

One might wish to question the possessive in "his concept of the tym
panum" for the metaphor is of course available to be read with the
occult opening of the page from The Unnamable.

[...] without an ear I'll have heard, and I'll have said it,
without a mouth I'll have said it, I'll have said it inside me,
and then in the same breath outside me, perhaps that's what
I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, per
haps that's what I am, the thing that divides the world in
two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that
can be as thin as foil, I'm neither one side nor the other, I'm
in the middle, I'm the partition, I've two surfaces and no
thickness, perhaps that's what I feel, myself vibrating, I'm
the tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the
world, I don't belong to either[...] (1994, 386)

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The chronologyof the and is negotiated by AnthonyUhlmann in
Beckett and Postructuralism in a rather different way. For Uhlmann,
historyprovides thejustificationof theand but it is a historynot of
direct influence but of social and intellectual milieu:

If the works of Beckett and philosophers such as Deleuze,

Foucault, Serres, Derrida and Levinas have numerous and
striking points of intersection, then it is partly because they
have encountered or existed within the same non-discursive
field milieu, that time and place which produced the same
series of problems, the same problem-field...
(Uhlmann,34)

With the same problem-field acting as the link for an and,

Uhlmann then encounters the problem of relating the supposedly sepa
rate disciplines of philosophy and literature. Using Deleuze and Beck
ett's critical comments inProust and "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce",
he argues thatwhilst the problem-field remains the same, the trajecto
ries of thephilosopherand author in reactingto thatfield differ;for
whilst the philosopher moves towards a statement of a concept which
expresses a particular event (as the general contains the specific), the
author, through sensations within a fictional world, embodies the con
cept. As Uhlmann puts it:

The writer and the philosopher might at times be said to ap

proach similar ideas or set of ideas from different starting
points. The philosophers often set out from the concept so
as to describe a sensation, whereas [...] Beckett often sets
out from sensations which indicate or congeal about con
cepts
(Uhlmann,28).

This, of course, entails a certain sort of critical activity within which

the concepts of sensations of the philosopher are compared with the
sensations of concepts as they appear in literature.
Uhlmann further secures the status of the and by adapting
Deleuze and Guattari's concept of counterpoint. The work of art en
ters into new relationships through time. It is re-contextualised as its
passage through history activates new relations. In a similar way,
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philosophy can enter into counterpoint with the work of art: "new
concepts, should the resonance be strong, might shed light on the sen
sations of existing works of art and enter into counterpoint with them,
helping us to recognize aspects of thework we might previously have
passed over" (Uhlmann, 37).
Both Begam and Uhlmann, then, frame their thinking on Beck
ettwith a thinkingof theand, of the linkagebetween thewriter and
philosopherwhich is so oftenfelt, butwhich is so difficultto theorise
precisely because such theorising must avoid serious pitfalls, particu
larly that of chronological influence on post-foundationalist thought.
The same problem is expressed in an interview with Derek Attridge
with Derrida's now famous claim that he felt "too close" to Beckett's
work tobe able to countersignit(Derrida 1992b,61).
Beneaththe theories of linkage, however, lie the metaphors of
linkage. A brief survey of Begam's introduction to Samuel Beckett
and the End ofModernity gives the following: Beckett as a "subtext"
or "marginalium", (4) "affiliations", (8) postructuralism might be
"traced back" (which might be read as another instance of
to Beckett
chronological influence creeping back in). Just within Uhlmann's
introduction to Beckett and Postructuralism, are uses of: "striking
resonance", "proximity or neighbourhood" (4), "analogous to" (5) "in
accord with" (8) an encounter based on "circular transmutation" (11),
"identification", "resonances between," (17) "striking points of inter
section," (34), "resonate" (38). It is to this resonance that I wish to
turn, perhaps in accord now with theUnnamable: "But it's a matter of
voices, no other metaphor is appropriate" (Beckett 1994, 327).
The matter of resonance, of sounding like, can be raised in con
nection and Derrida via the resonance of that philosopher
to Beckett
with theworkof a German mystic, Angelus Silesius, specifically The
Cherubinic Wanderer. Derrida (who splits himself into dual voices,
creating a text which I find reminiscent of, or resonant with, The
Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit,) initially raises the issue of
belonging; does Angelus Silesius belong to negative theology?The
question is complicatedby the statusof negative theology itself,in
somuch as can one speak of an "itself in this regard. "Are there sure
criteria" asks the text of Sauf le Norn, "available to decide the be

longing, virtual or actual, of a discourse to negative theology?" (Der

rida 1995,41).

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 If one cannot assign The Cherubinic Wanderer an uncompli
cated and assured place within the discourse of negative theology, one
can situate itwithin a pattern of resonances which includes decon
struction. Derrida quotes the following of Silesius' epigrams:

To become Nothing is to become God

Nothing becomes what is before: if you do not become
nothing,
Never will you be born of eternal light.
(6:130)
The text is then glossed:

This coming to being starting from nothing and as nothing,

as God and as Nothing, as theNothing itself,thisbirththat
carries itselfwithout premise, becoming-self as becoming
- or -
God Nothing that is what appears impossible, more
than impossible, themost impossible possible, more impos
sible than the impossible if the impossible is the simple
negative of themodality of the possible.
(Derrida 1995,43)

"This thought", the text claims, "seems strangely similar to the experi
ence of what is called deconstruction." This strange similarity, this
resonance, occasions how such a familiarity might be thought. Once
of thepossibilityof the impossiblehas beenmade, a
the identification
further resonance leads the text on toHeidegger:

The possibility of the impossible, of the 'most impossible,'

of the more impossible than the most impossible, that re
calls, unless it announces, what Heidegger says of death:
'die Moglichkeit der schlechthinnigen Daseinsun
moglichkeit' ('the possibility of the absolute impossibility
of Dasein').
(Derrida 1995,44)

This begs thequestion,which is dulyput: "I wonder ifthatis a matter

of purely formal analogy. What if negative theology were speaking at
bottom of the mortality of Dasein?" And the resonances go still fur

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ther: "All the apophatic mystics can also be read as powerful dis
courseson death,on the(impossible)possibilityof theproperdeath of
being there that speaks, and that speaks of what carries away [...]"
(44).
The text of Sauf leNom has very rapidly made some extraordi
nary moves based on strange familiarity. A textwhich was dubiously
part of negative theology has resonated with not only deconstruction
but alsowithHeidegger and led to theclaim thatall apophaticmystics
are "at bottom" speaking of the same thing: Heidegger, Derrida, Sile
sius, and Meister Eckhart, would seem to be the suggestion. It can be
-
noticed that what started out as the problem does The Cherubinic
-
Wanderer belong to negative theology has been superseded as a
means of linkage: "What ifnegative theology were speaking at bottom
of themortalityofDasein?" (44). The problemof belonginghas been
replaced as a means of belonging.
One of the problems that always has to be considered when
writing of Beckett and Derrida, is the latter's stance which saves his
name from such an overt conjunction, as so evocatively expressed in
his interview with Derek Attridge: "This is an author to whom I feel
very close, or to whom I would like to feel very close; but also too
close" (Derrida 1992b, 61). In Sauf leNom, Derrida talkingabout
Silesius like the Derrida we don't have; the Derrida who talks
sounds
of Beckett. The terms with which Derrida approaches Silesius could
be transferred onto Beckett. A few quotations should make this clear.
Derrida writes of negative theology that it consists "through its claim
to depart from all consistency, in a language that does not cease test
ing thevery limitsof language" (1995, 54). The descriptionwould
hold true for the Unnamable, who banishes all hope of consistency:
"how proceed? By aporia pure and simple? Or by affirmations and
negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later? Generally speak
ing?" (Beckett 1994, 294), andwho certainlytests the limitsof lan
guage ("it's the fault of the pronouns, there is no name for me, no
pronoun for me, all the trouble comes from that, that, it's a kind of
pronoun too, it isn't that either, I'm not that either, let us leave all that,
forgetabout all that"(408)).On amore general level thatpossibilityof
the impossible adequately describes the Unnamable's condition and
apparent task: "Where I am there is no one but me, who am not" (358)
or: "I have to speak in a certain way, with warmth perhaps, all is pos
sible, first of the creature I am not, as if he were he, and then, as if I

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were he, of the creature I am" (338), or "It's a lot to expect of one
creature, it's a lot to ask, that he should first behave as if he were not,
then as if he were, before being admitted to that peace where he nei
ther is, nor is not, and where the language dies that permits of such
expressions" (337).
If one takes the final quotation, the resonances between Beckett
and Silesius begin to be heard. The goal would seem to be a state of
peace beyond language. This goal is expressed by Silesius by the
word God (which hence stands for a name for the unnamable, no less
than theUnnamable inBeckett's novel) in such epigrams as:

God Is beyond Creatures

Go where you cannot go; see where you cannot see;
Hear where there is no sound, you are where god does
speak.
(1:199)

But Silesius also seems to be aware that part of the problem is that as
soon as God is named as God he is circumscribed by language, and
hence cannot be God. One must, therefore, go past the name to the
unnamabality:

One Must Go Beyond God

Where ismy dwelling place? Where I can never stand.
Where ismy final goal, toward which I should ascend?
It isbeyond all place.What shouldmy quest thenbe?
Imust, transcending God, into a desert flee.
(1:7)
No less than Beckett's Unnamable, Silesius' is conditioned by impos
sibility, as Derrida quite correctly points out. Of course, because out
side of language the unnamabality cannot be approached through lan
guage, and yet that is all we have. So whilstwe go beyondGod, we
end up in a desert,a metaphor in languagefor thatwhich liesbeyond
thedeath of language,just as Mahood is supplantedbyWorm, and
Worm, theUnnamable speculates, by Jones, ad infinitum.
If Beckett and Silesius resonate with each other, then should
Beckettbe added to the listof apophaticmystics ofwhich Saufle Norn
speaks? "All the apophatic mystics can also be read as powerful dis

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courses on death" (Derrida 1995, 44). We might want to read that
"all" as being inclusive of Beckett. Again the question is begged: why
Derrida's reticence?
In order to approach this, I wish to return to the uncomfortable
concept of chronological influence which exercised Begam and Uhl
mann in their approaches to the matter of Beckett and. Both authors
are aware of this difficulty and seemingly for the same reason: a
Bloomian account of influence
raises problems of foundation and
overcoming. Yet, this personal, agonistic influence looms within
Begam's account in Samuel Beckett and the End of Modernity, in
which Beckett shadows thework of Derrida in particular, as ifhe were
some sort of eminence grise. On the one hand, Begam writes that
"there is a case to be made for the proposition that Beckett has deci
sively influenced the work of postructuralism's two leading practitio
ners, Foucault and Derrida" (1996, 185). On the other, Begam is not
the man to make such a case: "the literary negotiations that exist be
tween Beckett and poststructuralism are more a matter of intertextual
ity than influence, more a matter of allusive engagement than direct
imitation (186). However, Beckett remains and his works offer prior
terms towhich postructuralism's aims and methods can be traced.
Yet the embarrassment of resonances might offer a means of
approaching the Beckett/Derrida nexus without
resorting to agonistic
conceptions of influence. The title of the paper alludes toNeedle Wy
lie of Murphy. He has recently saved Neary from dashing his head
as they were, of the statue of Cuchlain and
against the buttocks, such
is administering advice and three star coffee in equal measures to
Neary whose "apmonia" has been confounded by the knock-back of
the cunning Miss Counihan. Neary wants Miss Counihan, but Wylie
states that this will not change Neary's difficulties. For once Miss
Counihan (just as Miss Dwyer before her) capitulates to his advances,
she will no longer be the striking and desirable figure set against the
plain groundof the"big bloomingbuzzing confusion"(Beckett 1973,
6), butwill recede intothatbackground leavingonly thedesire intact
behind. Or, as Neary, under Wylie's tutelage, puts it: "From all of
which I am to infer [...], correct me if I am wrong, that the possession
- -
Deus detl of angel Counihan will create an aching void to the
same amount" (36-37). All that can be done, according toWylie, is
Miss Counihan. This perhaps
the reliefof the particular symptom,

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 cynical but not necessarily pessimistic account occasions the follow
ing:

"There is only one symptom," said Neary. "Miss Couni

han."

"Well," said Wylie, "I do not think we should have much

a
difficulty in finding substitute."
"I declare tomy God," said Neary, "sometimes you talk as
great tripe as Murphy."
"Once a certain degree of insight has been reached," said
Wylie, "all men talk,when talk theymust, the same tripe."
(37)
How seriously is one to take Neary's comment? If indeed all is tripe
once a certain degree of insight has been reached, then we have no
need to read Murphy, nor any other book for thatmatter. If we take
Neary to heart, the and that has exercised this article will become an
irrelevance, because everything can be yoked together in like manner.
Given the list of "Beckett ands..." over the years we might feel this to
be the case. More seriously, perhaps, there would be no need to read
Derrida on Silesius once we have read The Unnamable and we need
not wonder about Derrida's reticence concerning Beckett because
Beckett has already said the same tripe as Derrida.
A more precise concern both for the terms ofWylie's statement
and the context inwhich it functions is needed.
Wylie is puncturing Neary's Gestalt optimism. Wylie sounds
like Murphy due to the conversation in chapter one of the novel, in
which Neary states what might pass as his principles of desire:

"Murphy, all life is figure and ground."

"But a wandering to find home," said Murphy.
"The face," said Neary, "or system of faces, against the big
bloomingbuzzing confusion.I thinkofMiss Dwyer." (6)

With the "big blooming buzzing confusion", according to C.J. Acker

ley's annotationsto the novel (1998, 8), Beckett is alluding to the
dictum ofWilliam James fromThe Principles ofPsychologywhich
forms one of the cores of Gestalt perception, and the "figure and
ground" isprobably takenfromRobertWoodsworth's 1931 editionof
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Contemporary Schools of Psychology from which Beckett took de
tailed notes (Knowlson, 737). Put plainly; Neary knows his psychol
ogy. His desire is one based on theories of Gestalt perception wherein
the individualentitycan flashforthfromthegrindingbackground.All
this is so much Greek to Murphy; a view with which Wylie would
concur.

Nearyrequires a figure against the background, a "single, bril

liant, organized, compact blotch in the tumult of the heterogeneous
stimulation"(7). Murphy baulks, and with good reason, for thebig
blooming buzzing confusion, which so exasperates Neary, bears a
striking resemblance to the third zone of Murphy's mind as stated in
chapter 6. Rather than distinct forms rearranged for Murphy's con
venient revenge, as in zone one of his mind, or for his indifferent
contemplation of distinct forms without parallel in zone two, the third
zone negates the fixity of such forms:

The third, the dark, was a flux of forms, a perpetual coming

together and falling asunder of forms [...] nothing but forms
becoming and crumbling into the fragments of a new be
coming, without love or hate or any intelligible principle of
change. Here there was nothing but commotion and the pure
forms of commotion.
(66)
The third zone partakes of the buzzing confusion which Neary strug
gles vainly against. With no intelligible principle for change, forms,
such as they are, are in a constant and confused state of flux rather
than cohering about a single principle in a moment of a beloved blotch
of which Neary speaks. And, of course, it is in the third zone that
Murphy as Murphy also disappears to become nothing but a "mote in
its absolute freedom." Murphy's desire, and desire may not be the
word, is for the confusion against which Neary's desire must figure.
Ironically, once Murphy's desire has been relinquished, its aim is
delivered via the medium of gas: you cannot will yourself into will
lessness.

This wider contexthelps to approach themore difficulttermsof

Wylie's assertion: once a certain insight has been reached. The in

sight, itwould seem, is that ofMurphy's third zone: a zone beyond, or

ratherbehind, thefigure; thegroundof thebig, buzzing confiisionin

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which forms are in constant flux. For Needle Wylie, it is pointless to
pursue the figure, because the ground will always prevail: Miss
Dwyer, once bright blotch, is now a part of the big buzzing confusion;
the form which isMiss Counihan will soon also be consumed in the
"perpetual coming together and falling asunder of forms".
The zone of buzzing confusion is the necessary insight which
occasions, I would argue, the same tripe fromMurphy, Wylie, Derrida
and Silesius (and one could add: Watt, Molloy, Malone, Mahood,
Worm, the Unnamable, the nameless ones which follow). To charac
terise it further, it is a zone without identity inwhich one's identity is
consumed; in short, death or nothing. This leads us conveniently
enough back to Derrida and Silesius. For the latter, to become nothing
is tobecome god, and of course the impossibilityis raised (aswith the
Unnamable) of an identity which coincideswith becoming nothing,
or, for thatmatter, of anything being nothing at all. And as Murphy's
third zone clearly indicates, to enter the flux of forms means a relin
quishing not only of one's own form but of the desire to relinquish
one's own form. It is this impossibility upon which Derrida focuses in
as becoming-God - or
his discussion of Silesius: "this becoming-self
-
Nothing that iswhat appears impossible, more than impossible, the
most impossible possible".
Derrida seems inSauf leNorn to be aware thatsomethinglike
the same tripe will always be disseminated. The answer to the self-set
question of whether there are sure criteria by which to judge that a
discourse belongs to negative theology appears to be no: "If the con
sequent unfolding of so many discourses (logical, onto-logical, theo
logical or not) inevitably leads to conclusions whose form or content
is similar to negative theology, where are the "classic" frontiers of
negative theology?" (Derrida 1995, 41). This "inevitability"leads to
the second of Wylie's terms: "all men talk, when talk they must".
Once the insightwhich partakes of recognisingnothinghas been
made, there is an imperative to talk. Of course, the resonance with the
Unnamable's "I can't go on, I'll go on" is apparent and need not be
further elucidated: it is a critical common-place that in the face of
nothing the Unnamable goes on talking, presumably endlessly. At the
end of The Cherubinic Wanderer, we have a variation: "I can't go on,
yet you'll go on":

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 Friend, let this be enough; ifyou wish to read beyond,
Go and become yourself thewrit and yourself the essence.
(6:263)

One of Derrida's voices glosses: "The friend [...] is asked, recom

mended, enjoined, prescribed to render himself, by reading, beyond
reading: beyond at least the legibility of what is currently unreadable,
-
beyond the final signature and for that reason to write" (41). The
discourse, occasioned by nothing, demands continuance beyond the
limits of Silesius' work in similar fashion to themanner inwhich the
trilogy keeps on going, through a series of scripted substitutions
moving aboutthe inexpressible, which may itself be viewed as the
dynamic of Beckett's mime Quad in which progression to the blank
centre creates furthermotion. A series, beginning in nothing, contin
ues about nothing, and in that series we might count Silesius, Derrida,
and Beckett. This is to place influencenotwithin the figureof the
writerbutwithin thedynamicsof inevitability
individual demanded of
nothing, and the individuals as necessary writers are faithful, not to
each other, but to the dynamic of the nothing. Derrida, Silesius and
Beckett must resonate because they must write about or around the
nothing. This could account for Derrida's reticence on Beckett, which
now becomes only a pseudo-reticence, for inwriting of Silesius, in his
writing itself, Derrida must also be writing of Beckett, and a writing
on Beckett must also be a writing on Silesius. To use Wylie's phrase
ology: the quantum of this particular discursive wantum cannot vary.
By shifting the influence away from the individual writer and on
to the dynamic of the discourse, the agonistic form of "progress" as
envisioned by Harold Bloom and the problems of "overcoming" and
chronological influence on post-foundationalist thought become of
little concern. rather than a linear progress, the intertextual
Indeed,
shape of thisWyliean theory is the shape of Quad: one figure squares
about the central space and is repulsed by it to continue walking; the

figureis joined by a second, thirdand forthand all are repulsedby the

central untrodden space and each traces each other's paths. Rather
than progress, the intertextual paradigm is one of repetition. This
repetition is conditioned by what remains; in Quad, the central space,
in Silesius God and in Beckett, the unnamable; and those three appar

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ently different remainders are themselves differing repetitions of each
other.

But Wylie is kind. In a book thatbegins with no alternative,

Wylie grants one: "all men talk, when talk theymust, the same tripe."
There is a choice between taking up the discourse and quietly sitting
with sealed lips. Yet thewriters, in and of Beckett, having no alterna
tive,write on the nothing new.

Works Cited

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