Samuel Beckett's 'Ping' as an Open Text

We expect modern short stories to be light reading, requiring very little of our mental energy and time. Yet ‘Ping’ by Samuel Beckett is a confounding contribution to the genre. The story is a single paragraph composed of broken sentences. It insists on a tense and difficult grammatical style and requires deep concentration from the reader. This is shown by the story’s first sentence, which attacks very basic narrative conventions: ‘All known all white bare white body fixed one yard legs joined like sewn’ (p. 29). This sentence’s subject, the ‘body’, sits awkwardly between a stream of statements that fail to conform to traditional grammatical rules. Immediately, the reader’s understanding is sent into disarray.

The story’s key term, ‘ping’, holds the text together. It appears thirty-four times, haphazardly intruding into the story’s narrative. The term may or may not appear and the reader anticipates its arrival as the story moves on. 

Sometimes, 'ping' appears multiple times within the same clause, such as: ‘Heat haught eyes light blue almost white fixed front ping murmur ping silence’ (p. 29). The significance of ‘ping’ relies on its uncompromising repetition throughout and the overall effect hammers ‘ping’ into the reader’s consciousness. A final interpretation of the story depends on what this key term and its associations mean to the reader. Thus, the reader’s role is vital to the creation of meaning in ‘Ping’.

Samuel Beckett, Paris 1979. © The Richard Avedon Foundation.

In literary criticism, reader-response theory looks at the relationship between text and reader. It claims that the reader is always an active agent in the creation of meaning. The Italian critic and novelist, Umberto Eco, proposed a distinction between what he called ‘open’ and ‘closed’ texts. Accordingly, ‘open’ texts require the reader’s ‘close and active collaboration in the creation of meaning; whereas a “closed” text (e.g. a whodunnit by Agatha Christie) more or less determines . . . a reader’s response’ [1]. Here, I argue that Beckett’s ‘Ping’ is a deliberately ‘open’ text which, through its experimental form, demands a radical response from the reader. With this idea in mind, ‘Ping’ has the potential to create multiple valid interpretations dependent on how the reader approaches its key term.

The Oxford English Dictionary defined ‘ping’ as a ‘short high-pitched ringing sound’ [2]. The word conjures images of a mechanical note, both metallic and tinny. Based on this definition, the reader may infer that (1) ping is a sound external to the story’s character; (2) the sound is material (i.e. produced by a machine); and that (3) the ping sound has an impact on the character’s narrative – that is, ‘ping’ shapes the subject of each sentence it appears in. These things are definite, but fail to unlock any deeper meanings the story holds.

The story’s mystery unfolds through the reader’s close observation. The character is within an indoors setting and confined to a bed in a glaring white room. Terse, exact language reveals this position.

Hands hanging palms front white feet heels together right angle. [. . .] Bare white body fixed white on white invisible. [. . .] Light heat white walls shining white one yard by two. [. . .] White feet toes joined like sewn heels together right angle invisible. (p. 29)

In precise terms, the story’s narrative voice creates a sense of space through patterned language. White dominates the colours of the character’s situation. The body’s feet are in right angles. White walls shine ‘one yard by two’. All this gives some sort of picture of what is going on. But the nature of these terms means that the reader can only view such a picture through a glass darkly.

In this space, the character senses things, including the noise ‘ping’. I think ‘ping’ signifies the sound of a typewriter bell, but not for reasons specific to the character’s environment. Rather, ‘ping’ is the sound Beckett hears as he types the story out. It is a metafictional device.

For instance, ‘ping’ appears between significant gaps in the writing. At one point, the word starts a sentence.

Given rose only just bare while body fixed one yard invisible all known without within. Ping perhaps a nature one second with image same time a little less blue and white in the wind. (p. 30).

Whilst most sentences in ‘Ping’ basically mean the same thing, the above example provides two different ideas within two different clauses. The story’s key-term acts as a signpost; it indicates the introduction of a new idea. Beckett directs our attention to the artificiality of his fiction by indicating where and when he is changing the subject. He shows that this story is the mere product of his typewritten thoughts.

However, other readers may lead the story’s meaning in another direction. Dan O’Hara has argued that ‘Ping’ is autobiographical. It draws on Beckett’s experiences with ill-health in the years leading up to 1966, the year of the story’s composition. Beckett had an operation for a benign tumour in 1964 and suffered dental complications in the following years. Doctors also diagnosed Beckett with double cataracts, which, according to biographers, led to intense fears of losing his eye-sight altogether.

Beckett spent a long time in the hospital bed, which set O’Hara thinking. He agreed that ‘ping’ is onomatopoeic but does not signify the sound of a typewriter in the story; instead, it is an electro-cardiograph (ECG). Thus, ‘Ping’ is set within a hospital room and depicts someone’s consciousness probably sometime after surgery [3].

O’Hara defends his argument through a ‘materialist theory of artistic production’ and acknowledges, too, that 'Ping' can have multiple interpretations [4]. Here, the idea of an ‘open’ text lends a useful interpretive framework to confront this story’s complexities. The story means numerous things, and this is a fact made acceptable by the way Beckett intended it to be that way.

Source:

Samuel Beckett, ‘Ping’ in Malcolm Bradbury (ed.), The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories (London, 1988), pp 29-31.

Notes: 

[1] J. A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (4^th edition, London, 1999), pp 726-28.

[2] Maurice White (ed.), Pocket Oxford English Dictionary (11^th edition, Oxford, 2013), p. 684.

[3] Dan O’Hara, ‘The Metronome of Consciousness’ Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, 22 (2010), pp 436-38.

[4] ibid., p. 439.