"The thing to avoid"

The Unnamable (1958) is the third of three novels by Samuel Beckett often published together by Grove as Three Novels, the other two being Malloy (1955) and Malone Dies (1956). My thanks to The Paper Hound for ordering this book for me and, my god, delivering it to my door!

I intended to read (all of) The Unnamable after Vivian Gornick mentions it near the end of The Odd Woman and the City (2015), when an aging actor friend choses to recite a segment of it for his final public performance -- only it wasn't The Unnamable from which Gornick's actor recites an excerpt (my mistake), but Beckett's Texts for Nothing (1959). Here's the line that struck me: "No need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough."

Of course I didn't realize this until now, so there's no going back; why waste the electricity? Instead, a little piece of The Unnamable, a bit near the beginning, from the centre of the second paragraph:

"Where there are people, it is said, there are things. Does this mean that when you admit the former you must admit the latter? Time will tell. The thing to avoid, I don't know why, is the spirit of system." (286).