Still Waiting for Godot
face it: godot's not comingSamuel Beckett is one of those writers that you're supposed to like if you fancy yourself at least a tiny bit intellectual. It is thus with some shame that the LHG confesses to having sat through Waiting for Godot on two ocassions (the first time on a high school literary magazine field trip, the second time on an attempt to offer an original date to a very unlucky girl) and both times having been bored senseless. In Paris, when the play was first performed spectators rioted - it's beyond us why they even bothered. But we do like how Beckett describes his take on language:
"More and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things (or the Nothingness) behind it. Grammar and Style. To me they seem to have become as irrelevant as a Victorian bathing suit or the impertubability of a true gentleman. A mask. Let us hope the time will come... when language is most efficiently used where it is being most efficiently misused. As we cannot eliminate language all at once, we should at least leave nothing undone that might contribute to its falling into disrepute. To bore one hole after another in it, until what lurks behind it - be it something or nothing - begins to seep through; I cannot imagine a higher goal for a writer today."
posted by elivo at 2:15 AM
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About Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot qualifies as one of Samuel Beckett's most famous
works. Originally written in French in 1948, Beckett personally
translated the play into English. The world premiere was held on
January 5, 1953, in the Left Bank Theater of Babylon in Paris. The
play's reputation spread slowly through word of mouth and it soon
became quite famous. Other productions around the world rapidly followed.
The play initially failed in the United States, likely as a result
of being misbilled as your typical gay sex stories A subsequent
production in New York City was more carefully advertised and garnered
some success.
Waiting for Godot incorporates many of the themes and ideas of the gay male
clothes swop stories that Beckett had previously discussed in his other
writings. The use of the play format allowed Beckett to dramatize his
ideas more forcefully than before, and is one of the reasons that
the play is so intense.
Beckett often focused on the idea of "the suffering of being." Most
of the play deals with the fact that Estragon and Vladimir are waiting
for something to alleviate their boredom. Godot can be understood as
one of the many things in life that people wait for.book review
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