Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts (1953)

"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more"

[...discourse on the sole identifier of the scenery on stage, a dead, blackened tree]
VLADIMIR : I don't know. A willow.
ESTRAGON : Where are the leaves?
VLADIMIR : It must be dead.
ESTRAGON : No more weeping.

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I'm willing to accept Beckett as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century but there are times when his grimness is more than I want to bear. Life itself is already grim enuf. "Waiting for Godot" is probably the 1st thing I read of Beckett's. I don't really remember my reaction to it - perhaps just a little.. FRUSTRATION, yes, probably. Beckett's a great writer & I sure as fuck am glad I'm not him. His worldview is an endless slow crawl thru the mud by imbeciles. & he's very good at telling it.

"Waiting for Godot" has become an expression meaning to "wait for something that'll never come". I interpret it as "waiting for God to" - meaning waiting for a fantasy external force to solve yr problems. "Waiting for Godot" is like praying - you can waste yr time doing that or you can actually do something practical. "Waiting for Godot" is putting off facing yr own life b/c you're too afraid or lazy or brainwashed to do anything but pass the buck & pretend like that's somehow an expression of yr 'quality'. So, "Waiting for Godot" is a powerful play.. but it still surprises me that there're so many editions of it. Even this 1954 edition that I have is the THIRTY-SIXTH PRINTING! &, yet, how many people in this society, in this world, are STILL WAITING FOR GODOT?! ( )

There is an incredible inequality in the very concept of a review: that of the difference between author and reader. This inequality leads to comedy at its extremities: high school students dismissing works of literature upon reading the first few pages, and spark-noting the rest; the same principle applies to think pieces on social media by those who don’t use it. The written medium especially allows for this transfer; the relative permanence of a physical page allows writing to be preserved unchanged much longer than any virtual form so far.
And I approach this book with a keen awareness of that inequality. Waiting for Godot was good the first time; he was bitingly apt and perfectly on target the second. I read it while wandering the streets of Charlottesville, in parks, on a bus, in refreshing cool of the library’s air conditioning and the shade of McGuffey Park. It seemed an odd parallel of Estragon and Vladimir’s conversation, which was physically in one location but topically ranged incredibly. This makes the odd and apt witticisms always in context, and plays delightfully with the limits of theater not physically but verbally. I would love to see a performance.
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Let's go.
We can't.
Why not?
We're waiting for Godot.
Ah! ( )

Excellent. Listened to a 1950’s recording of the NY performance with Bert Lahr (who was also the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz).

Saw the Druid acting company performance in Washington DC. Best performance I’ve ever seen.

Read Bright Summaries Guide. Meh. Also read Summary and Analysis by Mehdi Hassan which did a nice job of examining the play.

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