ESP.LITERATURE

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now. So said Samuel Beckett (1961 interview; dated but relevant). The words have become a ‘famous’ quote, repeated within the small circle of literati who ponder such abstractions.

Outside my window, sitting on a limb of the flowering cherry, is a fledgling hairy. A woodpecker. Perched inelegantly on the wire cage of the suet feeder is the fledgling’s mother. Peck peck peck. She takes a bit of suet to her fledgling. Feeds it. Stellar jays object and flit in the limbs above this pair.

This is the ‘mess.’ Or much of the mess. Or little. Or, perhaps, I mistake form for mess. Or mess for form.

I’ll go on.

Mess is elusive. Form is laughable. Accommodation is, according to psychologist Jean Piaget, a process of altering your existing ideas or beliefs when slapped in the face by information that doesn’t fit what you already think you know.

If you are conscious, this is a daily occurrence.

Indeed. If anyone were interested in accommodating the mess … Or, if anyone thought there was a mess to accommodate … Some do, obviously; but, apparently, some do not. The best selling genre according to the statistics of the publishing industry is Romance. A nice little niche-mess that the genre accommodates nicely. Apparently. Close behind Romance are Detective and Science Fiction.

I don’t think Beckett had Romance novels in mind. Or any other genre, for that matter. Those who seek a form to accommodate the mess are dancing on the head of a pin. Others, with other fish to fry, may be doing a two step across the parking lot; or perchance may just be sauntering through the vicissitudes of life like a fart in a windstorm. And, as always, None Of The Above has its oysters to shuck.

What Beckett seems to have arrived at is minimalism. And space. Like the architecture of Mies van der Rohe. He is more relevant in this century than he was in his. Too much of everything these days. Too many books; too many writers. Not enough space.

I have written about the 19th century in previous posts. Between 1837 and 1929, the number of books produced rose exponentially. Educational opportunities (fueled by two acts of Parliament), the rapid growth of publishing, and advent of circulating libraries, were largely responsible for this growth. The number of titles in fiction alone was estimated at 45,000 titles.

Consider (statistics gathered from Wikipedia: What? You thought I was actually going to research this tripe?) :

1830s–1850s: The novel became the leading literary genre, with early Victorian publishers releasing roughly 100 to 200 new novels each year.

1860s–1890s: The boom of the “three-volume novel” (the “triple-decker”) and circulating libraries drove massive growth.

1890s: The industry was producing over 700 to 1,000 new titles annually.

1900s–1920s: As mass-market paperbacks, magazines, and modernism took over, tens of thousands more fiction books were authored globally.

In 2025, Publisher’s Weekly claims 4.2 million books were published with 3.5 million of those self-published. All fueled by we know what.

What do all the numbers prove? I wish I knew.

Beckett (The Unnamable, 1953) knew this: The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse …

The search for the means to occupy our minds, to assuage our despair, to put an end to angst, is what enables the angst. We all search for some means to accommodate the Weltzschmerz.

If you’re feeling no pain, how lucky for you. Probably dead and don’t know it.

Statistically, it seems that Life (or life, it matters not) is just a pig’s breakfast.

I can prove anything by statistics except the truth. So said 19th century British Prime Minister George Canning. Mark Twain said it better: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. I’m told that Homer Simpson said: Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that.

Social scientists claim that as many as 115 billion humans have walked the Earth over the past 10,000 years. Currently, the world population stands at 8.3 billion people, and that number grows by 75 million people annually (0.85 %). Some still read. Many are just button pushers (what is a keyboard but buttons—tap tap tap).

And there is this from Beckett (Molloy, 1951): For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.

To be beyond knowing? Less is more irrefragably.

Someone needs to write a book about that.

Nevermind. No doubt already done.

No doubt.

Check the Chinese. Ask Huang Po, next time you see him. He’ll give you the straight scoop.

Ha! Mystic claptrap.

Beckett laughs out loud. He pulls off his trousers. Well, shall I go? he says. I will, he says. He pulls up his trousers. Sits. Curtain.