Sucking Stones: The Programmer Psyche in Beckett

Slides accompanying a Barcamp presentation in Chiang Mai, 2012 (http://simonrobson.net/2012/07/01/sucking-stones.html)

Transcript

1. Sucking Stones
   Geeks ‘n Coders through a Literary Lens
   @shr
   Sunday, 9 June 13
   

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2. Samuel Beckett
   13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989
   1969 Nobel Prize for Literature
   http://www.cambridge.org/uk/literature/beckett/
   Sunday, 9 June 13
   

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3. “The sun shone, having no
   alternative, on the nothing new.
   Murphy sat out of it...”
   Murphy (1938)
   Sunday, 9 June 13
   

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4. “He sat in his chair this way because
   it gave him pleasure! First it gave his
   body pleasure, it appeased his body.
   Then it set him free in his mind”
   Murphy (1938)
   Sunday, 9 June 13
   

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5. “For it was not until his body was
   appeased that he could come alive in
   his mind, as described in section six.”
   Murphy (1938)
   Sunday, 9 June 13
   

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6. “And life in his mind gave him
   pleasure, such pleasure that pleasure
   was not the word.”
   Murphy (1938)
   Sunday, 9 June 13
   

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7. Sucking Stones
   -
   a meditation in 1,700 words
   Molloy (1938)
   http://www.samuel-beckett.net/molloy1.html
   Sunday, 9 June 13
   

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8. But this was only a makeshift that could not long content a
   man like me. So I began to look for something else ...
   For I was beginning to lose all sense of measure, after all this
   wrestling and wrangling
   I gazed at them in anger and perplexity
   One day suddenly it dawned on me, dimly, that I
   might perhaps achieve my purpose without ... but
   simply by....
   Sunday, 9 June 13
   

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9. I firmly believe that other solutions to this problem might have
   been found and indeed may still be found, no less sound, but
   much more elegant than the one I shall now describe
   Here then were two incompatible needs, at loggerheads.
   For I would never have been sure of not making a
   mistake, unless of course I had kept a kind of register
   But however imperfect my own solution was, I was
   pleased at having found it all alone, yes, quite
   pleased.
   Sunday, 9 June 13
   

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10. And the solution to which I rallied in the
    end was to throw away all the stones but
    one, which I kept now in one pocket, now in
    another, and which of course I soon lost, or
    threw away, or gave away, or swallowed
    Molloy (1938)
    Sunday, 9 June 13
    

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11. Sunday, 9 June 13
    

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12. Sunday, 9 June 13
    

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13. I am interested in the shape of ideas even if I do not
    believe them. There is a wonderful sentence in
    Augustine. I wish I could remember the Latin. It is
    even finer in Latin than in English:
    “Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved.
    Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.”
    That sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape
    that matters.
    Sunday, 9 June 13
    

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14. “Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.
    Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-
    digger puts on the forceps. We have
    time to grow old. The air is full of our
    cries. But habit is a great deadener.”
    Waiting for Godot (1949)
    Sunday, 9 June 13
    

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15. “Do not despair–many are happy much of the
    time; more eat than starve, more are healthy than
    sick, more curable than dying; not so many dying
    as dead; and one of the thieves was saved.”
    “At the graveside the undertaker doffs his
    top hat and impregnates the prettiest
    mourner. Wham, bam thank you Sam”
    Jumpers, Tom Stoppard (1972)
    Sunday, 9 June 13
    

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16. “Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let
    us do something, while we have the chance! It is
    not every day that we are needed. But at this
    place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us,
    whether we like it or not. Let us make the most
    of it, before it is too late!”
    Waiting for Godot (1949)
    Sunday, 9 June 13
    

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