Did Beckettt start it off?*

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

16 March - views from a train out of King's X

Following the pattern of The Unnamable - English translation (his of his French orgiginal) only? – in many other works, he left out punctuation.

So one might be confronted with a highly ambiguous title Imagination dead imagine, where one could be being urged to imagine one’s own imagination being dead, imagination in general being dead, or, despite one’s or imagination in general being dead, to imagine – maybe all of those at once.

At any rate, such is the confusion with which I met on being first told Enjoy! - since I knew (without being conscious of the facet**) that the verb is only transitive, an object was clearly missing: I cannot just enjoy full-stop in the way that I could be asked to smile or laugh, but I must enjoy something (did you, too, abbreviate that to ‘sthng’?).

that It’s really about as meaningful as saying Laugh me through that one, will you?, only that’s not one lazy word, however well intentioned the utterer.

So if, kindly though it was meant, you miss have been wished that you would enjoy the pint / gig / meal / exhibition, catch that person during the course of said food, drink, event or show, and cryptically say, in a nice friendly way, with a smile, drawing out the syllables En – joy – ing!.

Then, when it is time for another pint or a coffee / dessert or the cheeseboard, or just to go, adopt the same kind approach and, doing your best Cheshire Cat imitation (though not going as far as to disappear in the process!), drawl Ennnn – joyyyyed.

Now, I grant you that you will then be taken for anything from Gollum to Forest Gump (with Mr Bean in-between), but you’ll have had your say / bowl of cherries / magic ring taken away and hurled into the intense fiery heat, and you’ll feel better for it:


Believe! Do! Enjoy!


End-notes

* Maybe not, but he had a working signal-box in the grounds where he lived at Ussy-sur-Marne.

** A variant reading has 'faucet'.


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here