Fail better

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983)

I have some thoughts about Zadie Smith's "Fail Better" article in The Guardian, but I can't quite face them again tonight. I read it several days ago and all I could think of was my own failing and not the better-ing. I prefer to look at Beckett's magnificent face. If he had been a soft, chubby man would he have written the same things? I love this picture and could stare at it, okay, not for hours, but much longer than most author photos. I think I must have a thing for craggly poetic smokers because I remember feeling the same way about the photo on Auden's Selected Poems when I bought it in college.