Beckett, Cervantes, Joyce and the Tour de France...the wonders of literature.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is possibly the most boring piece of literature ever written. I read it for a dramatic lit class I've been taking this quarter and the professor told us that, after it premiered in Dublin a critic wrote that in Beckett's Waiting for Godot nothing happens twice. I'm a huge fan of word play and that pun is a truly great one, but it's an understatement. In truth nothing happens far more than twice in the play.

However, the class discussion of the play was remarkably interesting despite the source material. There are, apparently, tons of critical essays on Waiting for Godot that address the question of who Godot is. Many of these essays, if not all, were written within Beckett's lifetime and he addressed the speculation by saying that if he knew who Godot was he would have said so thereby indicating that speculating about who (or what) Godot might be or represent is a waste of time. However, my professor felt, and I agree, that one of the speculations was, at least, entertaining.


He told us that one Beckett scholar noticed several mentions of cycling in Beckett novels and he looked through old Tour de France participants and found that there was one named Godot. It's not surprising that Beckett might have been interested in, or even a fan of, cycling given that he lived much of his life in France. I find it puts the, otherwise totally boring, play in a hilarious light though. If you consider that perhaps Vladamir and Estragon are cycling fans waiting by the side of the road after the peleton has long since passed, waiting for a slow rider to finally pass by, it makes it all so much more funny.

When questioned, in class, about where in the world we assumed the setting of the play to be my initial response was that it's not in the world and several people had come to that same conclusion. However, when I thought more about it I realized I'd made a connection somehow between Waiting for Godot and Don Quixote and I'd imagined the play taking place somewhere in Spain as a result. So, we discussed the idea of authors communicating with each other through their works and the idea that the communication between artists of different generations exists in some other place than reality, someplace outside the world.

Now though, I have this image in my head of Beckett and Cervantes, perhaps the ghosts of Beckett and Cervantes, sitting by the side of the road, under a tree, somewhere up in the Pyrenees, maybe on the Pla-de-Beret, watching the Tour de France, waiting for the Lanterne Rouge to finish the race and talking about politics and art and history and war and love and really good whiskey.

Also, the professor mentioned that Beckett was once nearly engaged to James Joyce's insane daughter which has made me really want to read biographies of both Joyce and Beckett. Of course, first I have to finally finish reading Don Quixote.