COL49 _Courier's Tragedy_

[jbor]

on 8/18/01 9:34 AM, MalignD at aol.com at MalignD at aol.com wrote:

> but I don't find Pynchon and Beckett similar.  Beckett's characters
> (to simplify a great deal) seek meaning where there is none to be found,
> listen for answers where there will only be silence.  None will come, but
> still they persist.  That's the absurdity of their situation.  I can't go on;
> I'll go on.  

Yes, those are some of the similarities:

"But there was silence. ... " (112.16 ... )

"Next day, with the courage you find you have when there is nothing more to
lose ... " (126.12)

There is a constantly-unfulfilled promise of some "transcendent" meaning in
_Godot_ too (the tree starting to come into leaf in the Second Act, the
Godot-God-pierrot thing), which is a theme that _Lot 49_ takes up. There are
differences in medium and style, certainly.

> Oeida's situation in COL49, it seems to me, is not an absurdist, meaningless
> void.  There is a pattern of signs and events that Oedipa perceives; indeed,
> there may be a Trytero or an intricately ordered hoax played on her by
> Inverarity.  (Or as is noted in the book; she may be imagining a Trystero; or
> she may be imagining someone playing a hoax on her.)  In all cases,
> nevertheless, there is pattern and structure, even if only of her own mad
> device.  How correctly to read the signs is a way of stating her problem;
> Beckett's chracters get no signs.
> 
> I also agree with Thomas that Pynchon's usual method of dense, connected layer
> s of meaning is stylistically the opposite of Beckett's paring away, leaving
> nothing at last but a voice in a head listening to itself, wishing it would
> shut up.

There is an over-accumulation of signs in _Lot49_, an excess of pattern,
"revelations which now seemed to come crowding in exponentially" (56.4), all
of which results in exactly the same chaotic absence of meaning.
Psychologically it threatens to bring Oedipa to the same point of inertia
(peregrinations about "God" and mortality, contemplation of suicide) as Vlad
and Est. (Actually, in _Godot_ it's the banter and punning wordplay which
elicits a similar multiplicity of possible or potential "meaning".)

> Also, I don't think Stoppard an absurdist.  After Magritte, perhaps, or The
> Real Inspector Hound, but certainly not his major works, do you think?

There are any number of direct allusions to _Godot_ in _Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead_, and close proximity in the slapstick humour and
burlesque patter between the two central characters. I think Stoppard
himself acknowledged the parallels. There are references to Albee's 'The Zoo
Story' and one of Osborne's plays too, apparently, though despite
appearances to the contrary Stoppard claims not to have read Pirandello's
_Six Characters in Search of an Author_ at the time of writing. Stoppard's
plays -- in the 60s and early 70s, up to _Travesties_ at least -- are
generally regarded as Absurdist. The later plays like _Arcadia_ less so, I
suppose, but I'm not certain what you're classing as the "major works".

best