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Friday, August 25, 2006
Inconceivable
So I made a post at Crooked Timber about what seemed to me a curious personal connection - a 7-year old Richard Rorty served Whittaker Chambers sandwiches at a Halloween party. And someone in comments tops that one easily by informing us that Samuel Beckett used to drive Andre the Giant to school. Can this be true?
Comments
I remember many years ago on Radio 4’s Today program Brian Redhead claiming that Wittgenstein wheeled him into the operating theatre when he had his appendix removed as a child.
Ludwig, not Paul.
It is quite true (or at least AtG used to tell this story quite often during the shooting of The Princess Bride). They lived in the same neighborhood and little André was simply too big to fit on the schoolbus. When I think of the conversations those two must have had!
AtG is dead, and “The Princess Bride” is an unreliable secondary source if you ask me. I don’t know about AtG’s reputation for honesty or otherwise. It’s plausible that in all his years in wrestling, AtG never met anyone who knew who Beckett was, so he first told the story on the movie set.
At Crooked Timber I’ve requested clarification as to the status of Beckett’s cricket career. He’s credited with two great games over two years. Some of the several hundred people on the site where he’s listed have only one great game, but it seems that he only ranks as one of the top thousand Irish cricketers.
"I’ve requested clarification as to the status of Beckett’s cricket career. He’s credited with two great games over two years.“
There’s nothing in his stats (two first-class games for Dublin University against Northamptonshire in 1925 and 1926, scoring 35 runs in his four innings and conceding 64 runs without taking a wicket) suggest that either was a ‘great game’. His batting average was 8.75; that’s low. He never took a wicket. That he ranks in the top thousand Irish players says much more about the lack of great Irish players (for Cricket is not such a big game over there) than it does about Beckett’s ability. The only thing in his favour is the fact that he only played two games, which makes the averaging unreliable; but maybe if he’d played more his average would have gone down, not up.
As a bowler he may have thought to himself: I must miss the bails again; miss the bails better. Or is that too obscure a Beckett joke?
I’m now puzzled as why he was listed at all. Maybe in honor of his Nobel.
However, a lot of thos listed seem to have had similiarly mediocre careers. Perhaps everyone who ever played even one game is listed? That seems unlikely.
“Thousand” in my other post was a ballpark figure based purely on guessing how many people the side listed.
“Thousand” in my other post was a ballpark figure.
‘... cricket-pitch figure ...’
Everyone who plays even one first-class match is listed in Wisden; them’s the rules. They wouldn’t include somebody just because he won a Nobel. To the Wisden people, cricket is much, much more important than any silly Swedish prizes.
That’s clear then. This was in no sense a hall of fame, but rather a complete listing of everyone. I guess I should ask what a “first-class match” is.
And we still haven’t settled the Andre question. The whole back seat of one of those dinky little car is probably bigger than a school bus seat.
"I guess I should ask what a first-class game is ...”
I could direct you to a definition of the term if you like; but cricket is one of those things the cultural significance of which is very hard to explain to a non-Commonwealth interlocutor. For example, as we speak the biggest news story in the UK, and I daresay in Pakistan, by a long way is this one.
Tales of Cali Weird: Jack Parsons, rocket scientist and founder of JPL as well as Cal Tech faculty member, was an avid occultist and follower of none other than Aleister Crowley. Lit. connection? A young L. Ron (as in Scientology) was for some time pals with Parsons, prior to Parsons’ somewhat mysterious death by self-detonation in his Pasadena garage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons
You have to wonder if Beckett didn’t commit so wholeheartedly to aporia and negation after being on the last batting side of a 5-day test, lasting all 5 days, yet not beating the opposition’s combined score, thereby getting a draw.
‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on,’ indeed.
I can top all that. Hugh Hefner and George Steiner were roommates at the University of Chicago. And Steiner lost his virginity with a Hefner arranged hooker.