Near the end of Beckett’s life he wrote this in his short essay, “Worstward, Ho!”

“First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all.”

Andrea Schlottman (who has an interesting take on Beckett)talks about the meme-ification of Beckett by the entrepreneurial class:

Mark O’Connell, a writer for Slate, describes the ironic meme-ification of the “fail better” quote like this:

“The entrepreneurial fashion for failure with which this polished shard fits so snugly is not really concerned, as Beckett was, with failure per se—with the necessary defeat of every human endeavor, of all efforts at communication, and of language itself—but with failure as an essential stage in the individual’s progress toward lucrative self-fulfillment.”

As O’Connell notes, Samuel Beckett was interested in failure, full stop. Not failure as a necessary path toward riches, or fame, or (everyone’s favorite buzzword) “innovation.” Just failure.

Our workshop leader from the New York City Writing Project’s Creative Writing Lab assigned us optional prompt that I thought  also related to an assigned reading of Zadie Smith’s “Fail Better”:

Write a familiar story- a story you have heard, story you have told, maybe several times, a story you may have discussed, a story that has stayed with you, but a story you have NEVER WRITTEN before.

Considering Beckett’s WWII experience I am not surprised by his dark take.  In my response to Caitlin’s prompt,I just don’t have that bleak experience of tragic absurdity that Beckett had.  Here is my translation of Beckett’s ‘fail better’ which I think is probably a failure.