I liked this story a lot, but it just didn't godot anywhere.

I read this book while hang-gliding over the coast of Liechtenstein. It was difficult to grip the jacket of the book, not only because I was airborne, but because the night before I was in Moscow having vodka and gasoline with Luis San Baptista Rodolfo Sr., a ex-foot soldier for the Revolutionary FALN, and my head was POUNDING! I told Luis over a dinner (red cabbage over braised Skeletor Dolls) I had never seen the last episode of Family Ties, and he instantly grew furious, and cried out, "Matushka! Matushka! My cauliflower is on fire!" and thrust a copy of "Waiting for Godot" into my pocket, and whispered into my big toe, "Listen, my friend, I only have a credit card, so I put on my visa and you give me cash, no?"

I immediately understood Luis' implicit instructions: the only proper way to read Beckett truly, to feel the power of his words, is to do so while manning non-mechanical aircraft.

At first, I found Beckett's dramatic universe too glib, even watery, like a Burmese jungle cat. I found the dialogue too reliant upon the use of words. I thought the use of characters instead of sandwiches or tuxedos was trite and derivative. I also found the verdant pastures of Liechtenstein simply enchanting from an aerial point of view. Several times, I found myself questioning my decision to question my decision to use McDonald's wrappers from the Basque Region for the material of my hang-glider's wings, but then I realized, that's the point: having no discernible narrative thru-line is STILL a narrative thru-line all the same. Beckett's brilliance touched me at last. (But without permission, so I'm suing him in the Hague.)

So, I'm giving this a 5. Not a strong five. But not a weak five either. The sort of 5 that actively worked out for the high school rugby team, but then spent college taking it easy, drinking Irish Car Bombs, and now, years later plays Ultimate Frisbee on the weekends and sometimes runs in Central Park in the evenings, if not doing Bikram Yoga in Soho.

بعد از مسخ کافکا ،این دومین کتابیه که اینقدر منو منقلب میکنه ⁦
⁦⁦ಠ_ಠ⁩

100th book of 2021. Artist for this review is Spanish painter Salvador Dalí (1904-1989).

During the slight easing of some lockdown or other last year I travelled on the train to Brighton to meet with some women on my MA course to workshop our writing. I hadn’t much been out of W——, it felt strange. At first I got the wrong house and was stood outside for some time pressing the doorbell and clicking my tongue. Luckily no one was in and I soon realised I had the wrong place entirely. Trying again, I found the right place and I. appeared from below ground and welcomed me. The downstairs was quite light (considering it was below the road level) and had a large dining table, the kitchen and a toilet in the back. S. was already there. All others had cancelled. I busied myself with the first dog and kept attempting to call the other one (from his bed) over to me quietly. Eventually the second dog heaved itself up and hobbled over to me—it only had three legs. I patted it feeling guilty. Tea was made, biscuits laid out. The table was rather large and behind I. at the head was a mantelpiece. As she was talking to S. I looked over her head at the trinkets lined up on it and was sure there were several photographs of Samuel Beckett lined up amongst other things obviously bought from her travelling and family photos. He has a fairly distinctive face anyway but I was sure I could see his badger-streak hair. I said, ‘I’m not wearing my glasses, but is that Samuel Beckett up there?’ A part of me was excitably wondering if he was some distant relative. But no. ‘My mother adores him,’ I. replied; ‘she sends me postcards all the time about how she is and what she’s up to, and they always have Beckett’s face on them.’ She took one down and turned it over to reveal a postcard-back scrawled with handwriting. ‘She thinks he’s so dishy.’

My first introduction to Beckett was Molloy which I found interesting but difficult to read and difficult to follow the ‘point’. I’ve had Malone Dies sitting beside me for a few months and was going to read it next but then I found myself in the library the other day piling books and books into my arms and dropped Waiting for Godot in with the rest. It was about time to read Beckett’s most famous, I thought. So, the Theatre of the Absurd. How is it? Answer: Absurd. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but also got what I was expecting: two blokes waiting. It’s boring, but it’s so boring it becomes un-boring. It’s so seemingly pointless that it becomes blazingly significant. It reminds me of (codename) Swan once saying in a lecture about how he always sees young people lined up on train platforms as if the trains never come. He jokingly voiced the desire to write a novel about people waiting for these trains that never come. The Godot Train.


"The Persistence of Memory"—1931

I won’t go into all the stuff that’s inevitably said about this play all the time, probably since people first sat and watched it performed. Beckett famously said, 'I told him that if by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot. This seemed to disappoint him greatly.' And that’s about all he said as he was also quite well-known for being silent about the ‘meaning’ of his work. So rather than talking about all the existentialist stuff, the meaning of life in the waiting, whether we believe Beckett about Godot/God, the suicide contemplation, everything else, I will instead just say that the play did leave me feeling rather empty. Somehow it did trigger me to somehow consider my own existence. I was either bored reading it or amused but either way had the premonition that it would stay in my head a little while. Is something instantly good if we cannot stop thinking about it? My stock answer for why I adore reading so much is because it allows me to think about things I don’t normally think about. Or think about things I do think about but think about them differently. Waiting for Godot has essentially done both of those things and therefore qualified to be ‘good’/’worthwhile’/’profound’. And so by identifying that within myself, I suppose this is a very fantastic play.

I have seen this play several times; years ago I saw a local theatrical company put on a very impressive production. I decided to read the play because there are still so many questions I have about the core meaning that Beckett was trying to convey. So here is my interpretation: I find WfG 'existential horror' - essence 'stripped' of existence - the central question obliterated by illusory pantomimic gestures that echo our collective 'sound and fury' through the corridors of time. As with any corridor one has a choice of what 'door' to go through; only to find a perversion of Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel (California) - there never was a front desk manager.

That passed the time.

All we’ve to do is to sit for a while with ourselves, leaving all what we’ve invented ourselves to be busy with apart, the people thronging us around, the works on due, the dates to meet, the places to reach, the days to come. Just make the life silent outside you, sit and think about all that which has gone by the wind, sit and look at ourselves real deep, at our past actions, the struggles of us that transformed into strengths, the loves we weren’t brave enough to embrace or the ones who left us considering unworthy, the moments we cherished most and kept re-playing in the mind until memory lifted them down in subconscious, the triumphs we savored , the people we wanted to be ,the words we had to say, the lies we desired to speak or the truths we spoke and bemoaned for, it’s been all for nothing!
What it is to be in the world? To be born and follow a long-been scripted routine, with a little alterations from others? This is what we’ve been doing, this is what we’ll keep doing, and we the routine robots, actors on the stage waiting for our roles from the director, and in wait, musing the audience! With our gibberish talks, plot less story, helpless hope, and too tired to move to some next stage, waiting for the director to assign roles. This is where the actors need to sit and realize. There’s not going to come any director, there’s never been any, alone are they and alone is the stage to be performed, all they’ve to do is to invent roles for themselves, to accept the stage without director, and to honor themselves as the ultimate authority.
Waiting for Godot can easily secure its place from a sublime absurdist play to a ridiculous continuity of nonsense, no matter how meticulous you’ve been to decipher the meaning between lines, how deep you dug and how many times, it offers nothing save the performed words, as there isn’t been any cryptic meaning, and this is the beauty of the play, it leads you to no definite end, as there is never been a methodical beginning. What strike me unaware is it’s being the play version of Camus’s suggested ways to confront absurdity of life in his "Myth of Sisyphus", Suicide being the foremost, characters suggest to hang themselves as they wait for godot to pass time, they tend to indulge in a religious narrative, the Denial of absurdity as proposed by Camus, consequently one’s philosophical death, the characters at length also ponder to accomplish erections, another petty way to confront the absurdity of life by sheer oblivion of its presence, but they never reach up to acceptance, as did Sisyphus, so shall they always be waiting for godot and grieved at his not coming.
And as of godot, “the great success of Waiting For Godot Has arisen from a misunderstanding: critics and public alike were busy in allegorical or symbolic terms a play which strove at all costs to avoid definition” (Ben-Zvi 142). puts Beckett himself.
As there’s never been any Godot to wait for!

edited:04/11/2019

One of the prompts for my current reading challenge is “a book you started but never finished” and Waiting for Godot was the shortest of the three books on my DNF list, so here we are. Listening to it on audiobook was a bit more bearable than my previous attempt with a printed edition, but I guess I'm still just not smart enough to get it? It's kind of like an even more irritating Groundhog's Day, which remains one of the only films I've ever walked out of the theater on, so I suppose I'm nothing if not consistent.

“Hepimiz deli doğarız. Bazılarımız öyle kalır.”

This is a must to read/ watch/ listen. Whatever way you like it.
A beautiful play, Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett. Apparently it is absurd, but I don’t want to say that it is as absurd as life is. Not yet. I prefer instead to keep searching for that something beyond the very absurdity and what is meaningful.
Another straightforward confession: I did not actually read the play but watched it on youtube video of 2 hrs. In fact, I rarely choose to watch a live performance over reading (the play). This time was an exception. And it was indeed sheer magic to see the characters alive, even if virtually. For almost 2 hrs I haven’t moved except to uplift my legs against the bed wall couple of times (by the way, I found out that if you put your legs up against the wall for 20 minutes your body will thank you later because of some real proven benefits (ie improved circulation and drained fluids, improves digestion (flatter belly), relaxed nervous system, better sleep, foot pain relief, so trust and exercise it!).
Last but not least, I eventually understood why my mother always applied this title to whatever action she was expecting me to perform. I was a sort of Godot who failed to make a wanted or timely appearance upon the call. I know, I know, it is not something to be proud of. Now I know.
SO, within the play nothing much happens or, maybe too much happens.
There is this small incident where two tramps (why so! I don’t know), Vladimir and Estragon, are on stage. They are there to wait – I mean just as everybody else in the world is waiting – nobody knows exactly for what. Everybody is waiting, hoping that something is going to happen: today it has not happened, tomorrow it is going to happen. Of course, this is crystal clear, isn’t it? This is the human mind: today is being wasted, but it hopes that tomorrow something is going to happen. And those two tramps are sitting under a tree and waiting… waiting for Godot. Nobody knows exactly who this Godot is. The word sounds like God, but it only sounds, and who knows, all these someone(s) we are waiting for are all Godots...
These two tramps are there just to wait. What they are waiting for is the coming of a man, Godot, who is expected to provide them with shelter and sustenance (so maybe that’s why they are tramps). Meanwhile, they try to make time pass with small talk, jokes, games, and minor quarrels…Oh yes! Maybe another big truth. That is what life is composed of: we are engaged meanwhile with small/big things, small/big talk, jokes, games…tedium and emptiness. But, the great thing is going to happen tomorrow. Godot will come tomorrow.
’Nothing to be done’ is the refrain that rings again and again, and then, in the midst of the first act, two strangers – Pozzo and Lucky storm onto the stage. Pozzo seems to be a man of affluence; Lucky, the servant, is being driven to a nearby market to be sold. Pozzo tells the tramps about Lucky’s virtues the most remarkable of which is that he can THINK. To show them, Pozzo snaps his whip and commands ’Think!’ and there follows a long, hysterically incoherent monologue in which fragments of theology, science, sports, and assorted learning jostle in confusion until the three others hurl themselves on him and silence him.
What is our whole thinking? What am I saying when I say ’I am thinking’? What can I think? What is there to think? And through thinking how can I arrive at truth? And so on and so forth… But there should be an experience. Maybe thinking won’t help me much, still I will go on thinking and thinking, and it will be like saying “nothing to be done”...
Anyway, as mentioned few paragraphs above, the curtain rises: two vagabonds are sitting and waiting for Godot. Who is this Godot? They don’t know, nobody knows. Yes, of course, again and again repetition. We learn something by repetition. It seems that even Samuel Beckett, when once was asked, “Who is this Godot?” said, “if I had known, I would have said so in the play itself.”
Nobody knows. But the word Godot sounds like God. That is significant. Who knows God? Who has even known? Who can say, who can claim, I know? Godot sounds like God, the unknown: it may be all, it may be nothing. Still they are waiting for Godot. When they don’t know who this God is, why are they waiting? It is maybe because if you don’t wait for something you fall into something that scares you. Could be inner emptiness, vaccum, nothingness, tedium, boredom, etc…So better to avoid it.
There is a beautiful saying "Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shall return."(Genesis 3:19) Alright, nothing much to debate on that however, we can add that, between and betwixt, a drink comes in handy. Just for the sake of diversity, of course.
So, man is eventually a vagabond because we can’t say or don’t have answers to simple questions, such as, from where do you come? where are you going? where are you right now? oh yes, I can shrug my shoulders, although they seem stuck a bit these days..
Anyway, Beckett is right; those two tramps seem to incapsulate the whole humanity. But, in a way, they are truer, honest. They decide in an angry mood (curse/swear) that enough is enough and they will leave tomorrow morning. But tomorrow again, the sun rises and they are in the same place and waiting, and again asking when he is coming. They have completely forgotten that last night they had decided to leave. But where to go? Nowhere to go!
Summarizing up, there are two basic truths revealed: first - nothing ever happens; things appear to happen, but one remains the same. We don’t judge based on external appearances, of course, because those always change even against our will; and second - we have been going and going and going from one place to another, from one mood to another, from one level to another, but we are not reaching anywhere. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Hence, the overall conclusion is perfectly in line with this joke:

An old chicken farmer is very proud of his brood, so when two smartly dressed city gentlemen ask to look at them, he quickly obliges.
A very fine bunch of chickens, says one of the men
Thank you, sir, replies the farmer
And what do you feed them on? asks the second man
Special chicken fertilizer, imported from China, says the old man, proudly.
A-ha! cries the first man. Just as we suspected. That is illegal. You will be fined two thousand dollars.
A month later, two more well-dressed men show up and ask the farmer what he feeds to his magnificent chickens. The old man, wiser than the first time, says, I just feed them on shit.
A-ha! say the men. We are from the Health and Hygiene Department, and what you are doing is illegal. You will be fined two thousand dollars.
A few weeks later, another city gentleman arrives and asks the same question. This time the farmer shrugs and says, Listen, mister, I just give them fifty cents each and tell them to go to the market and buy what the hell they want!

تقول الكاتبة المسرحية "سارا رول" في كتابها "مائة مقالة لم أكتبها" بأنها أخذت ابنها الصغير يومًا لمشاهدة عرض باليه، وبعد انتهاء العرض سألته عن رأيه، فقال : كان جميلاً ولكنه لم يعجبني!

دفعتها الإجابة للتفكير في ما لو كان البالغين يمتلكون نفس القدرة على هذا التفريق "الحيادي" بين الذوق وبين النقد. إذ جرت العادة، خصوصًا بين نقاد المسرحيات بحسب قولها، أن يحكموا على عمل ما بالسوء فورًا إذا لم يعجبهم أو يرتقي لذائقتهم!

أمّا أنا فقد دفعتني إجابة ابنها للتفكير في كل الأشياء الجميلة التي لا تعجبني:

لوحة الموناليزا
أغنية "هلو" للمغنية أديل
تمثال الحرية
قصائد أدونيس
مدينة لندن

و .. مسرحية "في انتظار جودو"!

أعترف أن العمل جميل ويحمل رسائل فلسفية عظيمة، ولكنه بكل بساطة لم يعجبني؛ ربما لأنني أؤمن بأن المسرحيات تُكتب لتُشاهَد لا لتُقرَأ!

What the fuck did I just read ?

THINK!

Yes, I should. I should think about it more.
I should sit back in silence and contemplate.


WAIT!

I will. Yes, I will.
No, not for Godot.
"Godot". Haah, funny name. I hope he looks cool.
But can we see him? I don't know. Do you?

Waiting for Godot would be the most foolish thing to do. I think so.
Okay. So, What have you been doing all your life?
Don't tell me you were "Waiting for Godot." Seriously!

Aaah .. I don't know. I am not gonna wait for Godot.

Hmmm..


Uhhhh..




Should I?





Fffuuccckkkkkkk.....

Life is such a mess. So are we.
I should go now. I have got so much to do. I want Truth, the truth about Life.
For that, I need to think and understand everything.
And wait. Yes.
No. Not for Godot.

Oh, Godot. Do you know the Truth? Do you have answers?
If Yes, I can wait for you. Oh Yes, I can.



SHIT! What the fuck am I talking about.
I will come back and talk when I know what I am talking about...


Adieu.