HABIT AND SPONTANEITY IN SAMUEL BEC='S ENGLISH ...

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people nay be being treated ironically. This rmy or my not be the
case,, but it is certainly inportant if we are to. get any further. in our
understanding of Beckett, and the continued use of out-of-contv, %t
quotations from Beckett's people that are nerely assurmd to reflect
the author's own views succe-e-ds only in perpetuating what could be a
f mdairental misunderstanding.
Thirdly and lastly, this e. *Icerpt from Alvarez' book reveals the
kind of nuddle-headedness that plagues so marry atterrpts to determine
the relevance of stateimnts such as those made in Proust to Beckett's
art. A relatively minor exanple of this is the fact that Alvarez is
here claiming that Pozzo and Vladimir have entered the perilous zone
of suffering, while earlier in the book he describes Waiting for Godot
as an eyairple of "the art of boredom, not suffering"
28
.
Mre serious
is the basic misunderstanding that he reveals of what Beckett means
by a "period of transition" and by the "suffering of being". If,
as Alvarez clairrs,, Beckett had changed his mind about the possibility
of a "macabre transubstantiation of grave-sheets into swaddling
clothes",
then Beckett must also have changed his mind about the
perilous zcnes of suffering: the suffering of being replaces'the
boredom of living only during the periods of transition, and if
grave-sheets are transubstantiated into swaddling clothes tl-, en there is
no possibility of'suffering at all. The fact that there is at least
a nomntary lapse after one habit dies before the next has tirm to
form represents the single hope in Proust - as, I would suggest, in
Beckett's art. To cancel it out, to claim that Beckett changed his
mindi, may conceivably be justified, but the question deserves consid-
eration rather than an off-hand conTrent,, and the attention of a critic
who at least understands the reaning and the inplications of his cm
and Beckett's argunents.
These three faults that I have found with Alvarez - his inadequate
reading of the text, his 'unjustified assunption that Beckett's people
are necessarily voicing the writer's own views, and his rmddle-headedness
about the rreaning and the inplications of concepts Beckett uses in
proust - are by no rneans peculiar
-to Alvarez. It is, howoe-ver, inpossible
to give such detailed attention here to all those vdio have made sliMilar
28. lbid, p. 22.