Samuel Beckett Brain Chew

I unearthed my fascination for the absurd during high school drama class. It was in there that I was first exposed to Monty Python; Wallace & Gromit; Harold and Maude... and a variety of other plays, movies and television shows that still, to this day, make my "favorites" list (thank you, Mr. G).

It was also in drama class that I first read Samuel Beckett; we started "light" with Waiting for Godot but then graduated to Endgame in Drama II. In both instances, I found myself obsessed with the minimalist stage design and "nonsense" dialogue which sounded like Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" at best; and absolute nonsense, at worst. But I knew there was something more to it... that all of the "nonsense" meant... "something" (even if it was more than I was able to grasp at the time).

I may have been the only student in the class who was actually bummed when we'd end our study of Beckett and move on to someone else. Years later, I wound up extending my literary interests to include Edward Albee and a vast catalogue of postmodern poetry & prose (in other words: just about anything that makes me go "hmmmm").

[The C&C Music Factory song notwithstanding.]

This is just a roundabout way of saying The Onion recently published an article on Mr. Beckett that I found pretty amusing.

And some people call me verbose...