"Your papers!": Archiving Beckett and Beckett's Archive of the Self

Abstract

“Your papers!” barks a policeman at Samuel Beckett’s Molloy, an order that causes him no small confusion as “the only papers I carry with me are bits of newspaper, to wipe myself, you understand.”1 The concept of “foul papers” has a long and honorable pedigree. To the Elizabethans the drafts of a text were “foul,” with the “fair copy” from which folio texts would follow usually produced by a scribe. The only time most contemporary readers encounter an author’s handwriting is after the text’s completion, whether at a book-signing or, a slightly more rarefied setting, in a special collections reading room. Anyone who has struggled with Beckett’s handwriting will recognize the desire for a sanitized version of his foul papers, however more pungent the thrill of encountering Beckett in the raw; but for most people hologram frontispieces, such as decorate Faber & Faber’s new Beckett editions, will probably represent an optimal upper limit of textual authenticity.