The Overarching Bleakness

Life is often bleak and people are often cruel. This is what Samuel Beckett understood and he used words to punctuate the stream of events in our often grimy lives. Sometimes there are no words to be said and Beckett is “The Master of you can’t say anymore”.

We are all just going through life and sometimes someone like Beckett helps us see ourselves again….as if in dream…a mirror of the sky…a fragment of purpose.

Sometimes, some writers are willing to step out and look at us going through life and help us make sense of it or recognise the nonsense of it.

Beckett does this in our language, with our kind of provinciallity, which we all have and he captures it, he bottles it and helps us to smell ourselves whenever we like.

Adapted from “What’s so great about Beckett” BBC Radio 4. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pn2s2

Photo: Commuters in Ruaraka head home after an evening downpour.