CoL49 and Godot

[Dave Monroe]

Very quickly.  Actually, this, I think, is one of the
similarities betwixt Beckett and Pynchon, although
it's perhaps not quite what either of you are talking
about here.  The way in which names, in particular,
but words in general, esp. unusual ones--and both Bec
and Pyn (howzat for a Beckettian duo?) do exhibit a
painstaking idiosyncracy when it comes to word
choice--often seem to point to several to many things
all at ones, without ever quite pointing directly,
unequivocally, univocally at them ...  

Beckett protested that, had he meant God, he would
have written God, but it is disingenuous NOT to expect
"Godot" to suggest "God," "little God," "diminished
God," what have you.  Not to mention the strange case
of one M. Godeau, from Balzac's play, Le Faiseur ...

http://www.geocities.com/kamikaze_contralto/Godot/text_files/influences_resonances.html

Then there's Pynchon, "Oedipa," "Lot 49," et al. 
Neither Bec nor Pyn, one rightfully suspects, can
plead ignorance when it comes to historical,
philosophical, literary, etymological, et al.
allusions, overtones, resonances, what have you ...

Both also seem to tend to the obliquely allegorical,
Bec in nigh unto medieval fashion, Pyn tending more to
the baroque, but, in either case, a function of
writing intensely allusive yet elusively
underdetermined texts.  They always seem very
pointedly to be about SOMETHING, but they do not
point, well, pointedly to just what that might BE. 
Which, upon refelction, might well be why Bec and Pyn
are my favorite authors, at that ...

Okay, have been trying not to get involved in this
discussion so's I can get my act together to host the
first half o' Ch. 6 (which will obvioulsy NOT start
Tuesday, so, Soren, let me know when you're ready to
pass the baton once John's passed it to you), but,
well, my 0.02 samoleans ...

--- Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
wrote:
> Tim Strzechowski wrote:
> 
> > Very true, and the wordplay and banter are only a
> > small part of the "over-accumulation of signs" in
> > _Godot_.
> 
> Try as I may, but I can't see any "over-accumulation
> of signs" in Godot. Not for the reader, who
certainly 
> may feel inclined to ponder some of the mentioned
> objects and their possible meaning, and definitely
> not for the characters. Very different from
> COL49, IMHO.

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