Samuel Beckett

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 2:16pm

I recently got the BeckettOnFilm box-set from the library, and I think it's really, really good. I just don't understand any of it. There's no doubt that the words are beautiful...but seriously, what does it all mean? Maybe I am just too dim of wit to appreciate it fully, or maybe nobody can.

All of the plays seem to be available on youtube too, if you're interested.

Does anybody here know what it's all about? What's the appeal?
"Play" Kristin Scott Thomas etc., director Anthony Minghella (15 mins)

[gvanover]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 2:28pm

From everything I've read on PLAY, it is the confessions of a man who had an affair, his wife and his mistress. Even more intriguing is Beckett's 1965 short play COME AND GO. I've been reading and studying this summer and it is one of the most riveting things I've seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fftmNSWQBJY

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 2:40pm

But why are they in giant urns with crusty, plague-ridden faces?

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 7:32pm

Jay, it might help to read Martin Esslin's THEATRE OF THE ABSURD, but do keep in mind that Esslin is a critic inventing a movement. He isn't actually a playwright and the playwrights in question never considered themselves "absurdist" or part of any movement.

My own take is that the playwrights who are lumped together in that volume (Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, et al.) are each in his own way reacting to the collision of big ideas (Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, British Imperialism, American Manifest Destiny, etc.) that literally wrecked the world and killed millions in the mid-20th century. At the same time, each playwright is as different from the others as he can be.

They are all men who grew up in a world that told them existence could be defined by some great belief system (add Christianity to my list above) and all felt sorely betrayed by that promise.

Esslin says they write about a world that is "senseless". I'm not sure I agree, but I do think their stage worlds defy easy definition.

It sounds like you are experiencing Becket exactly as I imagine he would like: with an appreciation for the beauty of his language and stage worlds but without reducing them to a singular "meaning". If that frustrates you, Beckett would probably nod and smile, saying, "Yes, life can be frustrating."

But beware of any critic who tells you a Becket play is "really about" x, y or z. That critic is almost certainly wrong.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 7:33pm

But why are they in giant urns with crusty, plague-ridden faces?

I don't know. I can think of a dozen reasons. I don't know.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 7:44pm

LOL We studied both Play and End Game in class quite a few years back, and I'm pretty sure we watched the versions in those box sets. And I swear that was the kind of first question from half the class (I mean why are they in these settings, etc). My prof's answer was pretty much the same as Gaveston's, LOL. To be honest--and I don't think by any means this makes me particularly smart--to ask that question never occured to me. Maybe because I had a history with Beckett, I just kinda... expect it. (which probably is NOT what he wanted the reaction to be).

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 8:37pm

Perhaps some modern plays like modern dance, paintings and even novels aren't subject to the usual question "what does it all mean"? Sometimes the words being beautiful or for that matter ugly, sometimes the intuitive response we have to the work - perhaps difficult to put into words - is all there is.

And speaking of theater of the absurd, where do you think Beckett would have set Eastwood's speech last night?

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 8:42pm

Students are conditioned to put labels on art work so the labels can be memorized and regurgitated on tests. It isn't your class' fault, Eric.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 10:32am

Thanks, Gaveston - that book sounds interesting. I only ask the question because with Beckett I'm fairly certain that there is good reason for all the bizarreness, some metaphor that I don't quite get...it's not like some of these pretentious pieces of modern art sculpture where in fact the emperor is naked.

Beckett's worlds are so bleak and weird, perhaps they are just another tool to create tone and mood - I really have no clue. Like you say, perhaps there are ten reasons. Or perhaps he felt no obligation to set things in the real world. Why should he?

Also, you are so right about regurgitation - unfortunately, I find that independent thinking gets me lower marks.

[hermajesty]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 11:36am

I'll never understand why Beckett is so revered albeit he was an educated man. His plays don't make sense. Waiting For Godot is a good example, nothing happens, it just drones on about nothing. If one tried writing a play like that today, it'd be ridiculed and rejected by editors everywhere.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 3:47pm

You obviously haven't seen some recent plays I appreciate that viewpoint, but I don't agree. Of course you could just claim that anyone who gets something out of his plays is merely pretentious, but obviously there's something there for a good number of people.

Jay-Lerner said: "Thanks, Gaveston - that book sounds interesting. I only ask the question because with Beckett I'm fairly certain that there is good reason for all the bizarreness, some metaphor that I don't quite get"

I think the problem is you're looking for a very concrete, or literal metaphor (I'm not sure if a metaphor can be literal in this sense, but you get my point). And there isn't one--at least I'm pretty sure there isn't...

[hermajesty]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 4:55pm

Well, to me it's the same with Pinter, he never had an ending to his plays....could he not think of one? The skill of a playwrite is to write a beginning a middle and an end. Pinter never did, one was always left wondering what happened at the end. He never wrote a conclusion, he never tied up all the loose ends! I can't get why he was so revered.

Updated On: 9/1/12 at 04:55 PM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 5:09pm

What Pinter plays are you talking about, exactly? I think you just don't like theatre of the absurd in general, which is fine--and some Pinter falls into that category, but a lot doesn't (not to mention his film work--The Servant, Accident, The Go-Between, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Pumpkin Eater, Betrayal, Comfort of Strangers all have quite definite endings...)

I think a lot of Beckett does too. Certainly Endgame comes to the only end it could.

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 5:29pm

This discussion brought a memory of mine to mind that will be interesting to all of you who are debating whether the plays "do or do not mean anything."

Canadian author Yann Martel, author of the soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture "Life Of Pi," wrote a novel called "Beatrice and Virgil." In the short novel, probably just a little too long to be called a novella, a struggling author finds himself working as an editor-slash-ghostwriter for a Beckettesque taxidermist turned playwright. As he struggles with the absurdist tone of the piece, the editor becomes increasingly convinced that there is a secondary level at which the play operates, and his inability to put his finger on it drives him to distraction.

Like all Martel, the ending throws everything into question without actually being a "twist."

[hermajesty]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 5:49pm

The Birthday Party was just one that freaked me out. I think its the case of 'the kings new clothes'. As i said, try submitting a play like that today and one would be ridiculed and rejected straight off.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 6:00pm

I love Yann Martel, darquek! I started a thread recently urging people to read Life of Pi, and just finished Self a couple of days ago. Good point about Beatrice and Virgil!

I disagree with hermajesty about Beckett (and Pinter) - I don't need a conventional plot at all...I just don't want it to go over my head completely.

The point about submitting a play like that today doesn't really make sense...even if it were true, it says more about the editors/theatres/mass-markert than the actual quality of the play. If you want a good plot, read Harlen Coben - Beckett and Pinter are a different kettle of fish entirely. Don't judge them for not achieving something they never attempted to do.

[hermajesty]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 6:01pm

Each to their own Jay. I am a playwrite and know what I am talking about

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 9:55pm

Playwright.

I am a barista at Starbucks and know what I'm talking about.

[hermajesty]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 10:03pm

LOL excellent, I didn't mean to be rude, I was too abrupt. I meant... I understand writing etc

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 10:07pm

I don't mean to be rude either, but re: Beckett and Pinter - call me when you have your Nobel prize...

Beckett - 1969
Pinter - 2005

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 10:22pm

hermajesty, I think it's fine if you don't like Beckett. I would never tell you or anyone that you MUST appreciate an artist just because he has become revered by others.

But I would ask you to consider that Beckett knew his audience expected action; it had been the basic building block of Western drama since before Aristotle wrote his POETICS in the 4th century B.C. So you might ask yourself how Beckett played with our expectations and why.

This is NOT to say that all or even most plays should be "like" GODOT. I agree with you that most attempts to imitate it have failed miserably.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 10:27pm

Also, you are so right about regurgitation - unfortunately, I find that independent thinking gets me lower marks.

Just a piece of advice to any students here from someone who took 10 years of college classes and spent even more years teaching: we all like to think people are listening when we speak.

Take a paragraph or two to let your instructor know you retained what s/he said during lectures and then proceed with your own opinion, even if it contradicts that of your teacher. I followed that rule and never had a problem.

Updated On: 9/1/12 at 10:27 PM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 10:36pm

Hermajesty, Birthday Party and other early Pinter certainly fits into that same Theatre of the Absurd category (if you can categorize)--along with early (OK, and some later) Albee, early Lanford Wilson, etc etc. But most later Pinter wouldn't-at least as much, and they do have endings. So I wouldn't lump them all in with Birthday Party.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 10:36pm

Beckett's worlds are so bleak and weird, perhaps they are just another tool to create tone and mood...

I do not pretend to speak for Beckett. But it might be important to remember that when he began writing, most of Europe lay in rubble, people had been slaughtered by the millions in Asia, and Japan had seen two of its larger cities leveled by atomic bombs. With the US and USSR in possession of nuclear weapons and locked in endless cold war, a lot of people thought the world's prospects looked bleak.

I don't mean to reduce Beckett to mere nihilism,* but that was the context in which he wrote.

* For example, one way to read GODOT is to say that as long as we wait and hope, we still have life. Consider the alternative.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 10:45pm

Didn't he even say Endgame's setting was meant to reflect a post atomic world? Certainly the description of what they see out of the window sounds like many post-apocolyptic film worlds.