October 2013: Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett is our October author. Have you read his infamous Waiting for Godot, if so what were your thoughts? What others of his works have you found worthwhile? What do you think of his intellect and views? Do you know what work(s) you'll read this month?

I haven’t read Waiting for Godot, but I did see Waiting for Guffman…does that count?

Beckett has been a struggle for me, probably because he's touted as a genius. I abandoned Murphy but it gets rave reviews so one day I may tackle it again.

I’m working through Beckett’s trilogy. I’ve read Molloy a while back, so my goal will be to read Malone Dies and maybe The Unnamable for October.

Yes, I've read Waiting for Godot, as part of the coursework for a college class I took on 20th century drama. I was not crazy about it. There were a few bits here and there that were interesting but only after much discussion in class illuminated them. Overall it was a little too postmodern, nothing-is-happening-here for me. I'm thinking I probably won't pick up another Beckett work and will skip over this month.

#3, I agree. I studied Beckett in drama school. His work is notable for the period in which it was written which introduced the so-called Theater of the Absurd. It was based on a single existentialist theme and became tedious after hitting the same note over and over again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Absurd

>4 vwinsloe: I've read/seen other absurd works (or ones that had echoes of the absurd) and liked them fine enough. Waiting for Godot just didn't do it for me.

My husband read it for one of his courses recently, and afterwards we watched the 2001 movie, which made me want to read it even though it's probably better acted out. But I process things like that better by reading, so... It seemed quite interesting. Also I saw a quote of his where he pretty much called some critic or something an idiot for trying to claim he was writing about god, and that if he wanted to write about god he would have said god! hahaha. That just made me like him, I love wit, so yeah I'm quite curious about his work. I'm not sure if I want to start with that one, though, having already experienced it, or trying out a different one.

I've previously read Waiting for Godot, Murphy, and the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable.

I'll probably read Watt, but I have several of his shorter works on hand in case this looks too challenging.

Steven, what did you think of the selections you've read already? Are there titles you'd recommend, or not recommend?

Well, Waiting for Godot has already been discussed, so I probably don't need to add anything there. I enjoyed it, but it does get a bit tediously repetitive. For those who are also reading Marguerite Duras for the Author Theme Reads group, you'll find her short novel The Square is very similar.

Murphy is an early work, fairly conventional, and a rather bitter satire of Irish manners. The closest thing I can compare it with is The Ginger Man by J. P. Donleavy. I didn't care a whole lot for either.

There is debate whether the other three should be called a "trilogy." Beckett apparently didn't think of them as such. Molloy and Malone Dies are independent of each other. The Unnamable makes reference to characters from both novels, but also from other previous works of Beckett including Murphy and Watt. Molloy and Malone Dies are kind of like Kafka, only more so--if that makes any sense. The Unnamable is a very difficult, allegorical piece that draws heavily on the cave allegory from Plato's The Republic. It's my favorite of all of them, but you have to have read several of his other works for it to make any sense. It reads like a dying man's retrospective on his life and work, only he was still fairly young when he wrote it.

Interesting, thanks for the commentary! :)

Don't forget to read your Beckett soon! ;)

I admit I'm afraid of Beckett - it's right up there with Joyce and Woolf. I don't think I will enjoy or understand their works :(

Well you could always pick one up from the library and give it a shot! If you don't try, you'll never know! If you read 50pgs and hate it, then you just give it right back to them. :)

That's true... I did read Waiting for Godot in my university days which was quick to read and I found the black comedy rather amusing. After reading Steven's comments above I'm not going to go anywhere near The Unnameable. I might try Watt as almost every single review on LT says that it's funny which is promising.

I picked up Eleuthéria from the library. We own Waiting for Godot since my husband read it for class, but I wanted to read something different, not his (presumably) most well-known work, ya know? And the library had just a few options (which don't include any of those Steven mentioned). I'm in the midst of Creation now, but I'll get onto it by next week the latest. :)

Finished Creation last night, so read Eleuthéria this evening. It was... interesting. It's sort of similar, in a way, to Waiting for Godot, but I think it's a little less... abstract? I mean, it still is, but it seems a little more, I don't know, straight-forward, understandable... lol. There were a handful of bits that made me LOL, which is always good. Overall I consider it a positive experience.

I saw Not I performed recently and it blew me away (I'd only seen the Billy Whitelaw recording previously). I'll try and read something before the month is out.

I finally started Malone Dies last night. I am only 20 pages in (but my copy only runs 110 pages) and it is a lot more readable and enjoyable than I was expecting. Of course it is still weird. Malone is an old man alone in a room, by his own choice, waiting to die. His only contact with the outside world is watching the neighbors through the two windows in his line of sight and the hand that leaves a soup bowl in his room and takes away the chamber pot. To pass the time he makes up stories. It is rather entertaining because as he is telling the story he breaks in with his own criticisms or commentaries to them.

I think Beckett only did things that are... offbeat. lol. They're interesting, though, even if you can't really make full sense of it. :)