Lost Samuel Beckett Play

[David Casseres]

Somewhere, Beckett is chuckling at all this, but it's deliberately inaudible.

On 4/27/06, Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be
> Lost Samuel Beckett Play
>
> April 26, 2006 | Issue 42•17
>
> PARIS—Just weeks after the centennial of the birth of
> pioneering minimalist playwright Samuel Beckett,
> archivists analyzing papers from his Paris estate
> uncovered a small stack of blank paper that scholars
> are calling "the latest example of the late Irish-born
> writer's genius."
>
> The 23 blank pages, which literary experts presume is
> a two-act play composed sometime between 1973 and
> 1975, are already being heralded as one of the most
> ambitious works by the Nobel Prize-winning author of
> Waiting For Godot, and a natural progression from his
> earlier works, including 1969's Breath, a 30-second
> play with no characters, and 1972's Not I, in which
> the only illuminated part of the stage is a floating
> mouth.
>
> "In what was surely a conscious decision by Mr.
> Beckett, the white, uniform, non-ruled pages, which
> symbolize the starkness and emptiness of life, were
> left unbound, unmarked, and untouched," said Trinity
> College professor of Irish literature Fintan
> O'Donoghue. "And, as if to further exemplify the
> anonymity and facelessness of 20th-century man, they
> were found, of all places, between other sheets of
> paper."
>
> "I can only conclude that we have stumbled upon
> something quite remarkable," O'Donoghue added.
>
> According to literary critic Eric Matheson, who
> praised the work for "the bare-bones structure and
> bleak repetition of what can only be described as
> 'nothingness,'" the play represents somewhat of a
> departure from the works of Beckett's "middle period."
> But, he said, it "might as well be Samuel Beckett at
> his finest."
>
> "It does feature certain classic Beckett elements,
> such as sparse stage directions, a mysterious quality
> of anonymity, a slow building of tension with no
> promise of relief, and an austere portrayal of the
> human condition," Matheson said. "But Beckett's
> traditional intimation of an unrelenting will to live,
> the possibility of escape from the vacuous
> indifference that surrounds us—that's missing. Were
> that his vision, I suspect he would have used
> perforated paper."
>
> Scholars theorize that the 23-page play might have
> been intended to be titled Five Conversations,
> Entropolis, or Stop.
>
> In addition, an 81-page document, also blank, was
> found, which, for all intents and purposes, could be
> an earlier draft of the work.
>
> "I suspect this was a nascent stream-of-consciousness
> attempt," O'Donoghue said of the blank sheets of
> paper, which were found scattered among Beckett's
> personal effects and took a Beckett scholar four
> painstaking days to put into the correct order. "In
> his final version, Beckett used his trademark style of
> 'paring down' to really get at the core of what he was
> trying to not say."
>
> Some historians, however, contend that the play could
> have been the work of one of Beckett's protégés.
>
> "Even though the central theme and wicked sense of
> humor of this piece would lead one to believe that
> this could conceivably be a vintage Beckett play, in
> reality, it could just as easily have been the product
> of [Beckett's close friend] Rick Cluchey," biographer
> Neal Gleason said. "And if it was Beckett, it's not
> outside the realm of possibility that, given his sharp
> wit, it was just intended as a joke. If Beckett were
> alive today, he might insist that it's not even a play
> at all. It could be a novella, or a screenplay."
>
> Enthusiasts still maintain that the "nuances,
> subtleties, and allusions to his previous works" are
> all unmistakably Beckett. They also claim to have
> found notes and ideas for this play in the margins of
> Beckett's earlier works.
>
> There are already plans to stage the play during the
> intermission of an upcoming production of Waiting For
> Godot.
>
> http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47722
>
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