COL49 _Courier's Tragedy_

[MalignD at aol.com]

It's possible we're quibbling around what exactly is and is not "absurd" or 
"absurdist."

That aside, you write:

<<There is a constantly-unfulfilled promise of some "transcendent" meaning in 
_Godot_ too ...>>

I think that's incorrect.  There is the hopeless belief in such a promise, 
quite a different thing.  A promise implies a promiser and there is none.

<<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. >>

But we don't know if that's true, do we, that the result is a chaotic absence 
of meaning.  The accumulation of signs might point to an historical Trystero. 
 In fact, one of the imperfections of the book (in my opinion) is that the 
meaninglessness is shifted at the end entirely onto the reader.  For all we 
know, everything comes clear for Oedipa five minutes after the book's end, 
with the crying of lot 49 and the appearance of the bidders.  Her situation 
might not be absurd at all; rather, she simply has lacked necessary facts.

<<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.    ...  There are 
references to Albee's 'The Zoo Story' and one of Osborne's plays too ...>>

And of course to Hamlet.  But I don't see what that has to do with whether 
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is itself absurdist (I happen to think 
it is not), any more than our referring to Godot makes this correspondence 
absurd (although it may be so). 

<<Stoppard's plays -- in the 60s and early 70s, up to _Travesties_ at least 
-- are generally regarded as Absurdist. >>  

I don't think this is true.  Regarded by whom and where?

<<... I'm not certain what you're classing as the "major works".>>

R&G Are Dead; Travesties; Jumpers; The Real Thing; Hapgood; Arcadia; The 
Invention of Love.

Best,

MalignD