One thing to notice about Beckett (and the article kind of makes this clear) is how much glee he took in his pessimism. He wasn't depressed, he was articulating something.
There are a lot of fun things in there. I like the letter whose text was "No."
Agree. I think a big part of his work and letters try to show/remind how the menu of human emotions and feelings is far more vast and complicated than many people internalize. And seemingly incompatible emotions can be happening at the same time. Becket did appear to take some pleasure in nudging people back towards the uncomfortable reality.
Only tangentially related to the article, but: if you haven't read any Beckett, you owe it to yourself to check out at least Waiting for Godot and Endgame, two relatively short plays that alternate nicely between black comedy and surreal despair.
And if you can't tell what it's all about or make sense of what's said, then wait until you feel such despair yourself (after a loss, because of depression, betrayal, existentual anxiety, loss of faith, etc., and try again).
In college, when I had finished reading Murphy I could hardly get out of my chair and leave the apartment to go to class to discuss it.
Muscle atrophy? ;)
Agreed. Though I would recommend that anyone attempting to read "Waiting for Godot" first start by reading about the philosophy of the absurd, and early 20th-century artistic movements like Dada and surrealism. Those are the very basic keys you need to understand the work of Beckett, that is work that remains opaque to the viewer/reader unless they do some groundwork.
Oh man, I watched Waiting for Godot on Youtube, and it was tough to get through.
The older I get the more I realize that the absurd theater is depressingly real, and the other stuff is what's absurd. Beckett et al were telling the truth, putting before our eyes all the absurdity that we learn to overlook.