How much is enough? How much is too much?
In "Enough," Beckett tells a story about someone who is totally submissive to a master. The story is couched in sexual metaphor, so it could be read with the narrator as a sexual submissive, but...
In class, Mike suggested that Beckett was up to his games again and that the narrator is a writer. This actually makes a certain degree of sense. Assuming that's true, it provides an interesting insight into how Beckett related to his writing enterprise. As many writers will probably agree, the muse can be cruel in her demands on the writer, especially when she is stirring, demanding a story be written. The writer is subjugated to the text.
This interpretation fits well with the text. It resonates with the imagery.
Of course, we know Beckett, as the narrator, did not throw off his master/muse, rather accepted this submission as part of his life.
This interpretation also makes me think of my midterm paper about "Texts for Nothing" which saw the fourth story as a struggle between character and writer. Here, the story is about the non-struggle between writer and muse. Still, it suggests that Beckett occasionally writes about writing, and that reading his stories in that context might reveal some interesting interpretations or reinterpretations of his work. Maybe Waiting for Godot is about a pair of writers waiting for the muse, feeling lost and non-existent without her. Maybe Pozzo is Lucky's muse, or vice versa.
Probably not entirely Beckett's intent, but it could make for an interesting paper. Besides, literary theory tells us the author's intent doesn't really matter.
Enough.
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