39 Books: 1995

Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or too late, or not at all; unless, of course, not yet. Untimely medications. Of the first, Robert Pinget's Be Brave applies. Again, lightness rather than heaviness, when there was hope, the illusion thereof. All too early.

Pinget was a friend of Beckett's who, in their correspondence, told him "Don't lose heart, plug yourself into despair and sing it for us". Be Brave was published in French soon after Beckett's death, and then a few years later in a translation by Barbara Wright by Red Dust of New York alongside Théo or the New Era. Together they add up to 62 pages. Be Brave is divided into 138 numbered entries in a notebook kept by Monsieur Songe (Mr Dream) as a commentary on his struggles with writing something substantial. The book exists on the threshold before its birth:

33

Possible development.
No more table, no more bed, no more house.
A street corner. Deserted. It's Sunday.
He's sitting on the ground, huddled up against a wall.
Someone passes by and gives him a couple of sous.
A conversation starts up.
A conversation starts up...
Come on, be brave...

Kafka said he life was a hesitation before birth, which in The Judgement becomes a death. Monsieur  Songe and his creator is aware of the paradox.

117

In the end he himself will become the worm that feeds on his carcass.
Could be said more elegantly, but elegance in this case...

Things improve when he remembers previous 'deaths' in the echoes of the plot of The Inquistory, Pinget's 400-page, punctuation-free question and answer novel (a paperback I own but have read only part because, again, it was too soon, too late, or perhaps, at least I hope, not yet. But what does it mean for a book to be on time? How do we know why, or even if, a book has any meaning or worth for us, and if that meaning or worth is not merely an epiphenomenon determined by the fleeting circumstances of our self-absorbed day that we project back onto the book?).

There is despair in Be Brave, but also singing. But that is said too soon; this is not clutching public approval from the jaws of private grief. Perhaps singing depends on despair, and so despair is released into the world within the Trojan Horse of singing, and silence would therefore be ideal. "Could there be a muse of silence?" Monsieur Songe wonders. If there is, he realises, it is a game lost in advance.