Waiting for Godot

Oh yes, this was exactly the thing to read after Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Tom Stoppard’s R&G (or G&R) definitely bring to mind Samuel Beckett’s Didi and Gogo (or Gogo and Didi). I was thinking this morning about whether I would have preferred to read Waiting for Godot before I read R&GAD … I’m not sure. There was something about the joy I felt making the connection, but from latter to former.

I felt the same thing when I read Hamlet“>Infinite Jest.”*":/pages/legal#affiliate It was so cool to think, “Wow, Hal is Hamlet with out the met!” and “And his mom is living with his uncle!” and “His father…” well, not quite the same as Hamlet’s father… you should just read that part for yourself. But he (Hal’s father) does sort of haunt him (Hal). In a way. Anyway. I digress.

Back to WFG. I had recently read this post, Revising Prose, by Jason Z. of 37 Signals. And I really liked the dull vs. dynamic diagram near the end. The gist is that if you put a hard return after each sentence in your paragraph and the right “rag” is pretty even, the rhythm of the paragraph is more likely to be dull than if the “rag” is more, well, ragged. When you’re reading drama, with lots of dialog and few soliloquies, you can really see this. And when it’s Beckett, you really, really see it:

It’s really pretty, isn’t it? I love the shapes the white space makes. And it was really pleasing to read, too. It just moved along so nicely.

I’m tellin’ ya. I’m totally going off topic here. I know as a kid I loved to read. Mom would take us to the library a lot and I’d get as many books as she (and the library) would let me. And in high school, Ms. Burch really got me to love contemporary and classic literature — so much so, that that was actually what I read for pleasure.

Of course, then… later I got a job… and then a car… and then old enough to go to bars… and… well… I didn’t read as much as I had previously. I still read, just not as often — probably not daily.

When I started hanging around with Patrick and Jason, they both were heavy readers and often would talk about what they were reading, so I sort of got back into it. I’d at least read daily. But not well, I don’t think. And certainly not quickly (I’m still sorta slow).

And now, after 20 years with Patrick, while I don’t spend my whole day reading, I think the quality of my reading is really pretty good. I think I may pay more attention or something. Or maybe it’s just that he always recommends the best stuff for me to read. Or maybe it’s that I love it when I’ve read something really cool and I have to run into his office to tell him about it and it seems like it makes him happy. Probably all of it.

OK. Back to WFG. Again. There’s so much I want to say about this short work! but I’ll just say this one last thing. I asked Patrick if it was supposed to make you think “Waiting for God.” He said there are people who take it that way. I can see that.

Man, this was a long one. And my writing’s not quite that of Beckett… or Stoppard… or DFW… or Shakespeare. Not even close. So stop reading this and go grab something good to read.

But come back again soon and read some more stuff on Hurley House, OK?