Nothing But Pie or Cake

Aw, you guys are going to be super pumped that Faulkner reminded me of Beckett again! In ABSALOM, ABSALOM! the characters (and author) begin to bleed together: "Yes. Maybe we are both Father. Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished... Yes, we are both Father. Or maybe Father and I are both Shreve, maybe it took Father and me both to make Shreve or Shreve and me both to make Father or maybe Thomas Sutpen to make all of us." That made me think of the way title characters from other Beckett novels ("All these Murphys, Molloys and Malones") impose themselves on the narrator of THE UNNAMABLE some decades later. [Though it strikes us belatedly that Faulkner and Beckett share a wellspring in Joyce, which may, in this particular case, be the connection. - ed.] Back to Faulkner, and a character who "believed that the ingredients of morality were like the ingredients of pie or cake and once you had measured them and balanced them and mixed them and put them into the oven it was all finished and nothing but pie or cake could come out." Ha ha, that doesn't remind me of Beckett, I just like it. If you are on twitter you probably follow somebody like that.