COL49 _Courier's Tragedy_

[jbor]

on 8/19/01 2:08 AM, MalignD at aol.com at MalignD at aol.com wrote:

> 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.

But the "promiser" in _Godot_ is surely "Godot" himself, in whose existence
and appearance there is a persistent faith, for want of a better term, just
as the "promiser" in _Lot49_ is Pierce Inverarity. This motif of the absent
father/Father is a feature common to both texts as well, and Tim's point
about the physical details in Godot is a valid one.

We don't know if Godot rocks up with shovels and pick-axes and medical
insurance forms for Vlad. and Est. five minutes after the play is finished
either. As a reader/spectator I was left with much the same sense of
uncertainty and unease afterwards, though I found both works very funny in a
similarly surrealistic, slapstick way *during* each "performance". Both
texts have spawned a whole range of disparate interpretations, continue to
do so, even despite Beckett saying that the

    early success of Waiting for Godot was based on a fundamental
    misunderstanding, critics and public alike insisting on interpreting in
    allegorical or symbolical terms a play which was striving all the time
    to avoid definition. (cited in Alec Reid, _All I Can Manage: More Than I
    Could: An Approach to the Plays of Samuel Beckett_. Dublin: Dolmen,
    1968, p. 31.);

and Pynchon's 1984 comment that he was less than impressed by his work in
_Lot49_. The point I would make from the range of reader responses is that
the indeterminacy and uncertainty have been deliberately inscribed in both
texts which is the reason they are so open to interpretation. We never know
what's "true" about or in (or out of) either text. The way each writer
achieves this effect is different, I agree (style, medium etc).

Kenneth Tynan once commented on the "pervasive tone of privileged despair"
in Absurdist plays, and it's something which strikes me as representative of
Oedipa's predicament also.

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

The film version of _Ros and Guil_ which Stoppard directed? The 'Shakespeare
in Love' screenplay? I'd class the first of the three at least as absurd, if
not Absurdist.

> -- are generally regarded as Absurdist. >>
> 
> I don't think this is true.  Regarded by whom and where?

CWE Bigsby. _Tom Stoppard_. Harlow: Longman, 1979.
Ronald Hayman. _Tom Stoppard_. London: Heinemann, 1982.
Jim Hunter. _Tom Stoppard's Plays_. London: Faber, 1982.

There are more references to critical works on Stoppard in Elizabeth Reitz
Mullenix's article, 'Preying Upon the "Theatrical Parasite": A
Re-Examination of Stoppard's Influences in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern'.
Illinois Shakespeare Festival, 1997.

http://www.arts.ilstu.edu/shakespeare/research/rosencrantz.html

Stoppard himself hasn't gone much beyond expressing admiration for Beckett,
I admit, and certainly hasn't embraced the "T. of the Absurd" label. But
even in the later work some of the influence is still perceivable.

On-line bios:

http://encarta.msn.com/index/conciseindex/6E/06E83000.htm

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/stoppard.htm

http://www.syracusestage.org/headshot_real_stoppard_tom.html

http://www.angliamultimedia.com/millib/reference/info/Tom+Stoppard/2

More on-line essays here, though I've only had a cursory glance at each:

'From Beckett to Stoppard: Existentialism, Death, and Absurdity'

http://home.sprintmail.com/~lifeform/beckstop.html

'Lecture on Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'

As with this last essay, I'm inclined to the view that it's Eliot's
'Prufrock' which is as, if not more important to Absurdism, postmodernism
et. al. than 'The Wasteland' and _Four Quartets_; and that it's Ros. and
Guil. rather than Hamlet who serve as the template for the Modernist -->
postmodernist literary "hero/anti-hero" (eg Mason and Dixon in _M&D_).
No-one needs to agree on any of this: it's just a personal opinion; and I
respect and acknowledge that there will be others.

best