Titling for Sake of Title

An observation: Beckett sometimes pairs nouns with unconventional verbs. In "Dante and the Lobster," Belacqua fears that someone may "inflict an appointment" on him, or that he may "have conversational nuisance committed all over him" (Vol. IV 82, 81). In Not I, someone is spared "love such as normally vented" (Vol. III 402). In these passages, verb and verb phrases imbue ordinary subjects—appointments, conversations, love—with the attributes of toxic, industrial waste.

This effect works particularly well in "Dante and the Lobster" because of Belacqua's apparent aversion to dealing with people. Locking himself into his room, he seeks "tranquility" and fears the intrusion of others. In his first interaction after leaving home, he hurls abuse at a humble grocer.

Beckett uses a similar technique in Nohow On, but, in this work, he attaches verbs to noun-ified versions of those verbs, or nouns to verb-ified versions of those nouns. Thus a "devised deviser devising," a man reasoning with "what reason remains," and the same man unable to "create while crawling in the same create dark as his creature" (Vol. IV 443, 429, 446). Devisers devise, reason facilitates reasoning, and creatures are created.

In a way, pairing a verb and noun in this way creates redundancy, and can even erode the words' meanings, as happens when one repeats any word enough times. But, in another, approaching a concept (creation, for example) via different words (create, created, creator, creature) provokes one's awareness that language is infinitely more complex than the ideas it functions to convey.