WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.899 I want you to picture someone for a second. Just 00:00:01.899 --> 00:00:04.719 imagine a Nobel Prize -winning author, you know, 00:00:04.719 --> 00:00:07.839 the kind of towering literary figure whose very 00:00:07.839 --> 00:00:10.679 name is basically synonymous with stark minimalism, 00:00:11.160 --> 00:00:14.699 the avant -garde, and just the absolute darkest, 00:00:14.779 --> 00:00:17.699 most unfathomable depths of existential dread. 00:00:18.140 --> 00:00:20.059 Right. So you're probably picturing someone very 00:00:20.059 --> 00:00:22.079 serious. Exactly. Someone sitting in a dimly 00:00:22.079 --> 00:00:25.620 lit, sparsely furnished room, agonizing over 00:00:25.620 --> 00:00:28.059 the sheer futility of human existence, maybe 00:00:28.059 --> 00:00:30.750 wearing a black turtleneck. Gaunt features, you 00:00:30.750 --> 00:00:34.149 know, a deeply furrowed brow just staring out 00:00:34.149 --> 00:00:36.450 a window at some bleak landscape. Right, exactly. 00:00:36.770 --> 00:00:39.149 But now I want you to take that exact same guy 00:00:39.149 --> 00:00:41.729 and I want you to imagine him as a first -class, 00:00:42.090 --> 00:00:44.329 highly competitive athlete. Which is just, I 00:00:44.329 --> 00:00:46.429 mean, it's so hard to picture. It really is. 00:00:46.810 --> 00:00:48.909 Imagine him sneaking through the shadows of occupied 00:00:48.909 --> 00:00:52.969 Paris as this daring anti -Nazi espionage agent, 00:00:53.350 --> 00:00:57.500 literally dodging the Gestapo. Perhaps most unbelievably 00:00:57.500 --> 00:00:59.979 of all, imagine him spending his mornings casually 00:00:59.979 --> 00:01:02.340 driving a young Andre the Giant to school in 00:01:02.340 --> 00:01:04.500 a modified pickup truck, just chatting about 00:01:04.500 --> 00:01:07.340 sports. It sounds utterly incompatible with the 00:01:07.340 --> 00:01:10.700 man who, you know, built a literary monument 00:01:10.700 --> 00:01:13.739 out of the concept of the absolute void. It does. 00:01:14.500 --> 00:01:17.400 But welcome to our deep dine into the life, the 00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:19.659 works, and the wonderfully absurd philosophy 00:01:19.659 --> 00:01:23.000 of Samuel Beckett. We are looking at an incredibly 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:26.319 comprehensive biographical and critical overview 00:01:26.319 --> 00:01:28.859 of his life today. And it is quite a life. It 00:01:28.859 --> 00:01:31.540 really is. So our mission for the two of us and 00:01:31.540 --> 00:01:33.760 for you listening right now, you know, the vital 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:36.540 third person in this room with us is to take 00:01:36.540 --> 00:01:39.819 a journey. We need to figure out how a man who 00:01:39.819 --> 00:01:42.500 dedicated his entire artistic life to exploring 00:01:42.500 --> 00:01:45.719 concepts of failure. nothingness and ignorance 00:01:45.719 --> 00:01:48.519 somehow managed to become one of the most towering, 00:01:48.700 --> 00:01:50.760 influential figures of the 20th century. Yeah, 00:01:50.760 --> 00:01:53.040 and to understand how he achieved that, we have 00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:56.219 to look closely at the entirely unexpected trajectory 00:01:56.219 --> 00:01:58.579 of his life. Because the man mapping the void 00:01:58.579 --> 00:02:00.480 didn't actually start there. Right, because I 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:02.579 always assumed a writer like Beckett must have 00:02:02.579 --> 00:02:05.700 emerged fully formed from some tragic, impoverished, 00:02:05.920 --> 00:02:08.099 bohemian background. You know, it feels like 00:02:08.099 --> 00:02:10.280 a prerequisite for writing about misery. Sure. 00:02:10.520 --> 00:02:12.780 But looking at these sources, his early life 00:02:12.780 --> 00:02:16.360 was actually Shockingly comfortable. Highly comfortable, 00:02:16.400 --> 00:02:18.719 actually. I mean, he was born in 1906 in Fox 00:02:18.719 --> 00:02:21.500 Rock, which is this very affluent suburb of Dublin. 00:02:21.979 --> 00:02:25.000 He attended the prestigious Portora Royal School, 00:02:25.080 --> 00:02:26.900 which is actually the same institution Oscar 00:02:26.900 --> 00:02:29.439 Wilde attended. And then he went on to Trinity 00:02:29.439 --> 00:02:31.960 College Dublin. And while he was a brilliant 00:02:31.960 --> 00:02:34.400 student, the thing that truly set him apart in 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:37.240 those early days was, well, it was his physicality. 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:39.479 He was a formidable athlete. Wait, so the master 00:02:39.479 --> 00:02:42.069 of existential dread was a jock? A very serious 00:02:42.069 --> 00:02:44.949 one, yeah. He excelled at cricket as a left -handed 00:02:44.949 --> 00:02:47.110 batsman and a left -arm medium -paced bowler. 00:02:47.469 --> 00:02:50.370 He even played two first -class games for Dublin 00:02:50.370 --> 00:02:53.289 University against Northamptonshire. Wow. And 00:02:53.289 --> 00:02:55.490 that level of play actually earns him an incredibly 00:02:55.490 --> 00:02:58.289 niche distinction. Out of all the brilliant minds 00:02:58.289 --> 00:03:01.169 to ever win the Nobel Prize in literature, Samuel 00:03:01.169 --> 00:03:03.409 Beckett remains the only one to be listed in 00:03:03.409 --> 00:03:05.969 the wisdom cricketers' almanac, you know, the 00:03:05.969 --> 00:03:08.689 Bible of the sport. That is wild. I mean, we 00:03:08.689 --> 00:03:11.069 tend to think of these avant -garde writers as 00:03:11.069 --> 00:03:14.610 just floating brains. Completely disconnected 00:03:14.610 --> 00:03:17.650 from the real world. It's a super common misconception, 00:03:17.930 --> 00:03:20.849 but his athleticism is actually crucial to understanding 00:03:20.849 --> 00:03:24.409 him. He was profoundly aware of the body, of 00:03:24.409 --> 00:03:26.930 movement, of physical endurance. Oh, very interesting. 00:03:27.009 --> 00:03:29.509 Yeah. Later in his work, when you see characters 00:03:29.509 --> 00:03:31.930 trapped in urns or buried up to their necks in 00:03:31.930 --> 00:03:35.210 sand, that obsession with physical limitation 00:03:35.210 --> 00:03:38.129 and the decay of the body stems directly from 00:03:38.129 --> 00:03:40.889 someone who once knew what it was to have absolute 00:03:40.889 --> 00:03:43.469 physical control. That makes so much sense. Right. 00:03:43.830 --> 00:03:46.289 But his intellectual life was accelerating just 00:03:46.289 --> 00:03:48.969 as fast. After graduating, he moved to Paris 00:03:48.969 --> 00:03:52.020 in 1928 to work as an Englishman. lecturer and 00:03:52.020 --> 00:03:53.819 that is where the great collision of his life 00:03:53.819 --> 00:03:57.159 happens. He meets James Joyce. Okay let's unpack 00:03:57.159 --> 00:03:59.259 this because meeting James Joyce in Paris in 00:03:59.259 --> 00:04:01.780 the 1920s wasn't just meeting a famous writer. 00:04:02.099 --> 00:04:04.840 Joyce was an absolute titan. Oh he was the center 00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:07.800 of the literary universe at that moment. A close 00:04:07.800 --> 00:04:09.620 friend introduced the young Beckett to Joyce 00:04:09.620 --> 00:04:12.319 and Joyce had this profound almost gravity -like 00:04:12.319 --> 00:04:14.580 pull on him. Right. Beckett basically became 00:04:14.580 --> 00:04:17.199 a sort of assistant helping research the famously 00:04:17.199 --> 00:04:19.160 impenetrable book that would eventually become 00:04:19.160 --> 00:04:21.389 Finnegan's Wake. I want to put this in perspective 00:04:21.389 --> 00:04:24.529 for you, the listener. Imagine being a brilliant 00:04:24.529 --> 00:04:27.069 young software developer. You're ambitious. You 00:04:27.069 --> 00:04:28.730 want to launch your own startup. You want to 00:04:28.730 --> 00:04:31.250 disrupt the industry. And your very first job 00:04:31.250 --> 00:04:33.790 is sitting at a shared desk with Steve Jobs while 00:04:33.790 --> 00:04:36.430 he's inventing the iPhone. That is a great way 00:04:36.430 --> 00:04:38.629 to look at it. Right. It would be overwhelmingly 00:04:38.629 --> 00:04:41.920 inspiring, sure. Right. But how paralyzing would 00:04:41.920 --> 00:04:45.420 that be? Like how on earth do you find your own 00:04:45.420 --> 00:04:48.199 voice or your own lane when you're working directly 00:04:48.199 --> 00:04:51.680 for a genius who is literally redefining the 00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:54.639 boundaries of your entire field? You are describing 00:04:54.639 --> 00:04:57.779 the exact psychological trap Beckett fell into. 00:04:58.199 --> 00:05:00.839 Joyce was the ultimate maximalist. His method 00:05:00.839 --> 00:05:03.899 was to pack all of human history, multiple languages, 00:05:04.540 --> 00:05:07.199 intricate puns, and basically every myth ever 00:05:07.199 --> 00:05:09.610 written into a single dense paragraph. Which 00:05:09.610 --> 00:05:12.089 is just exhausting to even think about. It is, 00:05:12.189 --> 00:05:13.850 and Beckett was desperately trying to write his 00:05:13.850 --> 00:05:16.149 own material during this time. He showed flashes 00:05:16.149 --> 00:05:18.509 of brilliance. I mean, he won a small literary 00:05:18.509 --> 00:05:21.089 prize for a poem called Horoscope, which he wrote 00:05:21.089 --> 00:05:23.509 hastily after reading a biography of Rene Descartes. 00:05:23.750 --> 00:05:26.649 Right. But overall, he was completely suffocated 00:05:26.649 --> 00:05:28.990 by Joyce's shadow. He had to realize he was never 00:05:28.990 --> 00:05:31.490 going to beat James Joyce at his own game. Exactly. 00:05:31.899 --> 00:05:34.360 And the paralysis of living under that literary 00:05:34.360 --> 00:05:37.500 shadow was heavy. But the actual city of Paris 00:05:37.500 --> 00:05:40.620 was about to offer him a much more literal physical 00:05:40.620 --> 00:05:44.180 danger. And this event completely shattered his 00:05:44.180 --> 00:05:46.220 understanding of how the world operates. Yeah, 00:05:46.379 --> 00:05:49.779 we are talking about January 1938. Beckett was 00:05:49.779 --> 00:05:52.399 walking down a street in Paris. A notoriously 00:05:52.399 --> 00:05:55.019 dangerous area. Yes. And he is approached by 00:05:55.019 --> 00:05:57.759 a local pimp who went by the name Prudent. This 00:05:57.759 --> 00:06:00.620 guy solicits him. Beckett refuses. And in response, 00:06:01.019 --> 00:06:03.459 Prudent pulls out a knife and stabs Beckett in 00:06:03.459 --> 00:06:06.860 the chest, nearly killing him. Oh my god. Just 00:06:06.860 --> 00:06:08.819 right there on the street. Just right there. 00:06:09.420 --> 00:06:12.040 The blade narrowly missed his heart. Joyce actually 00:06:12.040 --> 00:06:13.980 had to step in and arrange for Beckett to have 00:06:13.980 --> 00:06:16.300 a private room at the hospital to recover. Wow. 00:06:16.439 --> 00:06:19.129 So Joyce comes to the rescue. He does. And the 00:06:19.129 --> 00:06:21.310 massive publicity from the stabbing also brought 00:06:21.310 --> 00:06:23.269 Beckett back into contact with a woman named 00:06:23.269 --> 00:06:25.810 Suzanne Deschvaux de Menil. She would eventually 00:06:25.810 --> 00:06:28.449 become his lifelong companion and future wife. 00:06:28.709 --> 00:06:30.709 So the violence radically altered his personal 00:06:30.709 --> 00:06:33.269 life, too. The part of the story that blows my 00:06:33.269 --> 00:06:37.310 mind is the trial. So Beckett recovers, he goes 00:06:37.310 --> 00:06:39.269 to court for the preliminary hearing, and he 00:06:39.269 --> 00:06:41.790 finally gets to face his attacker. Right. He 00:06:41.790 --> 00:06:44.009 asked the question that would be burning in anyone's 00:06:44.009 --> 00:06:47.790 mind. Why did you stab me? I would expect a monologue 00:06:47.790 --> 00:06:50.569 about disrespect or a robbery gone wrong or something, 00:06:51.009 --> 00:06:53.170 but Pruden just looks at him and replies, I do 00:06:53.170 --> 00:06:56.050 not know, sir. I apologize. And Beckett just 00:06:56.050 --> 00:06:58.250 drops the charges. He lets the guy go. What's 00:06:58.250 --> 00:07:01.230 fascinating here is how perfectly this bizarre 00:07:01.230 --> 00:07:04.810 real world exchange mirrors the theater of the 00:07:04.810 --> 00:07:07.129 absurd that Beckett would later pioneer. Tell 00:07:07.129 --> 00:07:09.029 me more about that. Well, for anyone unfamiliar 00:07:09.029 --> 00:07:10.889 with the term, the theater of the absurd is a 00:07:10.889 --> 00:07:13.149 theatrical movement that abandons logical plot, 00:07:13.610 --> 00:07:16.230 realistic character motivations and clear dialogue. 00:07:16.689 --> 00:07:19.449 Instead, it uses irrational situations to reflect 00:07:19.449 --> 00:07:22.089 the fundamental meaninglessness of human existence. 00:07:22.569 --> 00:07:25.230 I put yourself in issues. You are nearly murdered 00:07:25.230 --> 00:07:29.189 on the street. Your life almost ends and the 00:07:29.189 --> 00:07:31.529 universe's only explanation is a polite shrug. 00:07:31.730 --> 00:07:34.589 I don't know. My bad. The dark comedy of that 00:07:34.589 --> 00:07:38.259 is just. staggering. The philosophical implication 00:07:38.259 --> 00:07:40.839 is huge. In traditional storytelling, you know, 00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:43.439 the kind of novels that dominated before Beckett, 00:07:43.800 --> 00:07:47.019 every action has a clear logical motive. Cause 00:07:47.019 --> 00:07:48.699 and effect. Right. A character does something 00:07:48.699 --> 00:07:51.019 terrible because of a childhood trauma or greed 00:07:51.019 --> 00:07:53.800 or revenge. But Beckett's lived reality just 00:07:53.800 --> 00:07:56.079 proved to him that violence, suffering, and life 00:07:56.079 --> 00:07:58.259 -altering events occur for absolutely no reason 00:07:58.259 --> 00:08:00.279 at all. Just totally random. Completely. It is 00:08:00.279 --> 00:08:03.860 an entirely incomprehensible universe. Decades 00:08:03.860 --> 00:08:06.139 later, when the author Solomon Rushdie survived 00:08:06.139 --> 00:08:09.240 his own horrific stabbing, he cited this exact 00:08:09.240 --> 00:08:11.379 response from Beckett's attacker to explain why 00:08:11.379 --> 00:08:13.600 he had no desire to interview the man who stabbed 00:08:13.600 --> 00:08:16.600 him. Sometimes looking into the void yields Absolutely 00:08:16.600 --> 00:08:19.339 no answers. Wow. And if a random stabbing in 00:08:19.339 --> 00:08:21.879 1938 taught him that individual violence has 00:08:21.879 --> 00:08:24.779 no inherent meaning, the events of 1939 forced 00:08:24.779 --> 00:08:27.360 him to confront that same meaningless chaos on 00:08:27.360 --> 00:08:31.500 a global industrialized scale. World War II breaks 00:08:31.500 --> 00:08:34.600 out. And being an Irish citizen, Beckett had 00:08:34.600 --> 00:08:37.299 an easy out. Ireland remained neutral during 00:08:37.299 --> 00:08:39.879 the war. He could have safely packed his bags, 00:08:40.240 --> 00:08:42.519 returned to the comfortable suburbs of Dublin, 00:08:42.860 --> 00:08:45.450 and just waited it out. Which a lot of people 00:08:45.450 --> 00:08:48.149 did. Exactly. Instead, he made the deliberate 00:08:48.149 --> 00:08:50.990 choice to stay in Paris, famously stating that 00:08:50.990 --> 00:08:54.090 he preferred France at war to Ireland at peace. 00:08:54.470 --> 00:08:56.690 And when the Germans occupied France in 1940, 00:08:57.490 --> 00:08:59.950 he didn't just hide in his apartment, he actively 00:08:59.950 --> 00:09:03.190 joined the French resistance. Specifically, a 00:09:03.190 --> 00:09:06.039 network called Rizzo Gloria. Right. He worked 00:09:06.039 --> 00:09:08.419 as a courier, which was incredibly dangerous. 00:09:08.820 --> 00:09:11.059 A courier wasn't just dropping off mail. He was 00:09:11.059 --> 00:09:13.480 receiving highly sensitive pieces of information 00:09:13.480 --> 00:09:16.279 like microfilm containing details about German 00:09:16.279 --> 00:09:19.240 troop movements. Geez. Yeah. And he was transloading 00:09:19.240 --> 00:09:21.039 them, then smuggling them to other operatives 00:09:21.039 --> 00:09:23.799 right under the noses of the Gestapo. If he had 00:09:23.799 --> 00:09:25.419 been caught with those translations, it would 00:09:25.419 --> 00:09:27.720 have meant torture and execution. And his network 00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:29.600 was eventually compromised, wasn't it? It was, 00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:33.870 yeah. Betrayed by a double agent in 1942. Dozens 00:09:33.870 --> 00:09:35.929 of his fellow resistance members were arrested 00:09:35.929 --> 00:09:38.490 and sent to concentration camps. Beckett and 00:09:38.490 --> 00:09:40.490 Suzanne were tipped off just in time. They had 00:09:40.490 --> 00:09:43.210 to literally flee their apartment and walk on 00:09:43.210 --> 00:09:45.610 foot, hiding in the woods, heading south until 00:09:45.610 --> 00:09:48.009 they reached the small, unoccupied village of 00:09:48.009 --> 00:09:50.570 Rissalon. And even then, he didn't stop. No. 00:09:50.710 --> 00:09:53.049 Even there, he secretly helped the local Maquis 00:09:53.049 --> 00:09:55.950 resistance fighters store weapons in his garage 00:09:55.950 --> 00:09:58.710 for sabotage operations against the German forces. 00:09:58.950 --> 00:10:01.389 I mean, for all of this immense bravery, the 00:10:01.389 --> 00:10:03.429 French government later awarded him the Croix 00:10:03.429 --> 00:10:06.960 de Guerre and the Resistance Medal. So how does 00:10:06.960 --> 00:10:11.320 this giant of literature describe his harrowing, 00:10:11.519 --> 00:10:15.320 life -risking, anti -Nazi espionage? He dismissed 00:10:15.320 --> 00:10:18.000 the whole thing as Boy Scout stuff. Boy Scout 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:20.159 stuff. It sounds overly humble, but you have 00:10:20.159 --> 00:10:21.940 to view it through his psychological state at 00:10:21.940 --> 00:10:24.279 the time. Okay, how so? Coming out of the war, 00:10:24.620 --> 00:10:26.980 having witnessed the Holocaust, the devastation 00:10:26.980 --> 00:10:29.929 of Europe, and the atomic bomb. He felt that 00:10:29.929 --> 00:10:32.350 any individual action was terrifyingly small, 00:10:32.909 --> 00:10:35.009 and that sheer scale of destruction directly 00:10:35.009 --> 00:10:37.110 triggered the most important artistic breakthrough 00:10:37.110 --> 00:10:40.129 of his life. It happened in 1945, right after 00:10:40.129 --> 00:10:42.929 the war. He was back in Dublin for a brief visit, 00:10:42.950 --> 00:10:45.309 sitting in his mother's room, and he had what 00:10:45.309 --> 00:10:47.899 he called a revelation. He looked back at his 00:10:47.899 --> 00:10:50.679 old mentor, James Joyce. He did. He realized 00:10:50.679 --> 00:10:52.919 that Joyce's entire method was about adding. 00:10:53.399 --> 00:10:55.740 Joyce assumed a position of total knowledge. 00:10:56.220 --> 00:10:59.139 He controlled the material, he expanded it, he 00:10:59.139 --> 00:11:01.779 layered it with endless complexity. Sure. But 00:11:01.779 --> 00:11:03.980 sitting in that room, Beckett realized that his 00:11:03.980 --> 00:11:07.200 own path had to be the exact opposite. He had 00:11:07.200 --> 00:11:09.580 to embrace impoverishment. He had to embrace 00:11:09.580 --> 00:11:12.440 a lack of knowledge. He decided his art would 00:11:12.440 --> 00:11:15.240 be entirely about subtracting. I love this visual. 00:11:15.580 --> 00:11:18.039 Think of literature as a massive block of marble. 00:11:18.220 --> 00:11:20.940 James Joyce was this artist who was constantly 00:11:20.940 --> 00:11:23.519 adding more and more clay to the top of it, trying 00:11:23.519 --> 00:11:26.360 to build an infinitely complex towering monument 00:11:26.360 --> 00:11:28.360 to human history. Yeah, a great way to picture 00:11:28.360 --> 00:11:31.740 it. And Beckett realized his job was to take 00:11:31.740 --> 00:11:34.299 a chisel to the stone and just keep chipping 00:11:34.299 --> 00:11:36.379 away, stripping off the plot, stripping off the 00:11:36.379 --> 00:11:38.440 omniscient narrator, chipping away until there 00:11:38.440 --> 00:11:41.200 was almost nothing left. Just the barest, thinnest 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:45.009 sliver of existence. But as an artist, how on 00:11:45.009 --> 00:11:47.309 earth do you sell impoverishment? I mean, people 00:11:47.309 --> 00:11:49.309 buy books or theater tickets because they want 00:11:49.309 --> 00:11:51.330 something. How do you make nothing compelling? 00:11:51.809 --> 00:11:55.029 Well, you do it by being brutally, devastatingly 00:11:55.029 --> 00:11:57.769 honest about the human condition. After the trauma 00:11:57.769 --> 00:11:59.950 of the Second World War, Bickett realized that 00:11:59.950 --> 00:12:02.940 mankind in the modern era is fundamentally A 00:12:02.940 --> 00:12:05.980 non -Knower. A non -Knower. Yes. We do not have 00:12:05.980 --> 00:12:08.299 the answers to why such horrific suffering exists. 00:12:09.019 --> 00:12:11.720 So to write traditional flowery fiction with 00:12:11.720 --> 00:12:13.600 an omniscient narrator who knows exactly how 00:12:13.600 --> 00:12:15.919 the world works felt intellectually dishonest 00:12:15.919 --> 00:12:18.379 to him. I see. To achieve this subtraction, he 00:12:18.379 --> 00:12:20.600 even started writing primarily in French instead 00:12:20.600 --> 00:12:23.100 of his native English. He said writing in French 00:12:23.100 --> 00:12:25.200 made it easier for him to write without style. 00:12:25.399 --> 00:12:28.019 Really? Yeah. He actively wanted to strip away 00:12:28.019 --> 00:12:30.399 the beautiful melodic prose of his mother tongue 00:12:30.399 --> 00:12:33.779 to get to the raw un - nerve of existence. And 00:12:33.779 --> 00:12:37.399 that raw nerve is what birthed his absolute masterpiece. 00:12:37.860 --> 00:12:40.980 Between 1948 and 1949 he writes a play called 00:12:40.980 --> 00:12:43.480 Waiting for Godot. Originally written in French 00:12:43.480 --> 00:12:45.779 as En attendant Godot and we really have to give 00:12:45.779 --> 00:12:48.259 immense credit to Suzanne here. Oh absolutely. 00:12:48.399 --> 00:12:51.080 She essentially acted as his agent fiercely shopping 00:12:51.080 --> 00:12:53.759 this bizarre rule -breaking manuscript around 00:12:53.759 --> 00:12:56.059 the theaters of Paris until she finally found 00:12:56.059 --> 00:12:59.519 a director Roger Plym who understood its unconventional 00:12:59.519 --> 00:13:02.000 vision. because it is entirely unconventional. 00:13:02.399 --> 00:13:04.899 You have two ragged men, Vladimir and Estragon, 00:13:05.320 --> 00:13:07.220 standing by a barren tree on an empty country 00:13:07.220 --> 00:13:09.740 road, waiting for a man named Godot. They talk, 00:13:09.820 --> 00:13:11.500 they argue, they complain about their boots, 00:13:11.779 --> 00:13:14.440 and Godot never shows up. Never. The famous Irish 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:16.879 critic, Vivian Mercier, reviewed it and gave 00:13:16.879 --> 00:13:18.740 what might be the greatest, most accurate summary 00:13:18.740 --> 00:13:21.259 in the history of theater criticism. He wrote 00:13:21.259 --> 00:13:22.860 that Beckett has written a play in which nothing 00:13:22.860 --> 00:13:25.759 happens twice, because act two is basically just 00:13:25.759 --> 00:13:29.620 a repeat of act one. Exactly. It dismantled every 00:13:29.620 --> 00:13:32.519 foundational rule of dramatic storytelling. There 00:13:32.519 --> 00:13:35.759 is no rising action, no character arcs, no clear 00:13:35.759 --> 00:13:39.740 climax, and no resolution. And yet, defying all 00:13:39.740 --> 00:13:43.059 logic, it became a massive, unprecedented global 00:13:43.059 --> 00:13:46.139 success. It really did. It resonated deeply with 00:13:46.139 --> 00:13:48.639 audiences everywhere, from intellectual circles 00:13:48.639 --> 00:13:51.659 in Paris to prisoners in San Quentin. So what 00:13:51.659 --> 00:13:53.990 does this all mean? Why did millions of people 00:13:53.990 --> 00:13:56.090 fall in love with a play where literally nothing 00:13:56.090 --> 00:13:58.389 happens? I want you to think about a time in 00:13:58.389 --> 00:14:00.870 your life when you were stuck waiting for something 00:14:00.870 --> 00:14:03.370 terrifying. Okay. Maybe you were sitting in a 00:14:03.370 --> 00:14:05.850 sterile room waiting for a life -altering medical 00:14:05.850 --> 00:14:08.289 test result. Oh. You were completely powerless. 00:14:08.730 --> 00:14:10.669 The thing you were waiting for hasn't arrived. 00:14:11.210 --> 00:14:13.169 How did you pass the time with the person next 00:14:13.169 --> 00:14:15.570 to you? You probably made weird jokes. You argued 00:14:15.570 --> 00:14:18.049 about trivial nonsense. You paced the room. You 00:14:18.049 --> 00:14:19.990 did whatever you could to distract yourself from 00:14:19.990 --> 00:14:23.370 the terrifying void of the unknown. That is exactly 00:14:23.370 --> 00:14:25.950 what Vladimir and Estragon are doing. If we connect 00:14:25.950 --> 00:14:28.370 this to the bigger picture, waiting for Godot 00:14:28.370 --> 00:14:31.330 is often falsely labeled as strict existentialism. 00:14:32.230 --> 00:14:34.470 But Beckett hated philosophical labels. He wasn't 00:14:34.470 --> 00:14:36.169 trying to write an academic textbook for the 00:14:36.169 --> 00:14:39.090 stage. The play resonates globally because it 00:14:39.090 --> 00:14:41.690 is actually about the universal human will to 00:14:41.690 --> 00:14:44.669 survive. It's about how we desperately rely on 00:14:44.669 --> 00:14:47.049 each other through mundane habits and shared 00:14:47.049 --> 00:14:49.990 humor to endure the passing of time in the face 00:14:49.990 --> 00:14:53.970 of absolute despair. It is deeply bleak but because 00:14:53.970 --> 00:14:56.429 of those survival mechanisms it is also incredibly 00:14:56.429 --> 00:14:59.450 funny. And speaking of survival mechanisms, his 00:14:59.450 --> 00:15:01.929 global fame from Godot brings us to what might 00:15:01.929 --> 00:15:04.490 be my favorite juxtaposition in literary history. 00:15:04.669 --> 00:15:07.690 By the 1950s, Beckett is this internationally 00:15:07.690 --> 00:15:10.389 renowned intellectual, the definitive voice of 00:15:10.389 --> 00:15:12.649 human isolation. He uses some of his earnings 00:15:12.649 --> 00:15:15.710 to buy land and build a cottage about 60 kilometers 00:15:15.710 --> 00:15:18.330 northeast of Paris. And what does the gaunt master 00:15:18.330 --> 00:15:20.970 of the absurd do in his spare time? He drives 00:15:20.970 --> 00:15:23.879 the local kids to school. He had a modified pickup 00:15:23.879 --> 00:15:26.539 truck to move materials for his cottage, and 00:15:26.539 --> 00:15:29.019 he would routinely offer rides to the neighborhood 00:15:29.019 --> 00:15:32.000 children who had to walk a long way. One of those 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:35.240 children happened to be a boy named Andre Rusimoff. 00:15:35.399 --> 00:15:37.399 Who the world would later know as the legendary 00:15:37.399 --> 00:15:39.919 professional wrestler Andre the Giant. Yes. Because 00:15:39.919 --> 00:15:42.080 Andre was already too massive to comfortably 00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:45.120 fit on the local school bus, Samuel Beckett Nobel 00:15:45.120 --> 00:15:47.659 Laureate would let the teenager ride in the back 00:15:47.659 --> 00:15:50.669 of his truck, and the two of them bonded. This 00:15:50.669 --> 00:15:53.389 raises an important question about how we perceive 00:15:53.389 --> 00:15:56.029 artists versus who they actually are, because 00:15:56.029 --> 00:15:59.169 what did the pioneer of the void and the future 00:15:59.169 --> 00:16:01.710 heavyweight wrestler talk about on those drives? 00:16:02.470 --> 00:16:04.850 Cricket. Andre later recalled that the two of 00:16:04.850 --> 00:16:06.769 them rarely talked about anything else. They 00:16:06.769 --> 00:16:09.590 just endlessly discussed the intricacies of cricket 00:16:09.590 --> 00:16:12.389 matches. It shows that even a man who dedicates 00:16:12.389 --> 00:16:14.350 his life to exploring the meaninglessness of 00:16:14.350 --> 00:16:17.210 the universe still just wants to enjoy a good 00:16:17.210 --> 00:16:20.009 chat about sports. It perfectly captures the 00:16:20.009 --> 00:16:22.289 tragicomedy of his own plays. But, you know, 00:16:22.309 --> 00:16:25.129 as we move into the 1960s and 70s, what scholars 00:16:25.129 --> 00:16:27.870 refer to as his late works period, that sense 00:16:27.870 --> 00:16:30.129 of subtraction we discussed earlier became radically 00:16:30.129 --> 00:16:33.090 extreme. The chisel was cutting dangerously close 00:16:33.090 --> 00:16:35.970 to the bone. Yeah, in 1969, he writes a play 00:16:35.970 --> 00:16:38.870 called Breath. There are no characters, no actors 00:16:38.870 --> 00:16:42.429 on stage. The audience just sees a stage full 00:16:42.429 --> 00:16:44.730 of rubbish. They hear the sound of a brief recorded 00:16:44.730 --> 00:16:47.730 cry, a slow mechanical breath in, a breath out, 00:16:47.809 --> 00:16:50.549 another cry, and the lights go black. The entire 00:16:50.549 --> 00:16:53.440 play lasts exactly 35 seconds. And then you have 00:16:53.440 --> 00:16:56.779 Not I, written in 1972. The mechanics of this 00:16:56.779 --> 00:16:59.539 play are genuinely unsettling. The stage is plunged 00:16:59.539 --> 00:17:01.980 into pitch blackness. Total darkness. Total darkness. 00:17:02.100 --> 00:17:03.740 The audience cannot see the set. They cannot 00:17:03.740 --> 00:17:05.799 see each other. The only thing illuminator is 00:17:05.799 --> 00:17:08.039 a single human mouth floating about eight feet 00:17:08.039 --> 00:17:10.059 in the air, illuminated by a tight spotlight. 00:17:10.339 --> 00:17:14.000 The mouth speaks at a frantic, terrified, almost 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:17.599 incomprehensible speed. He worked on this specific 00:17:17.599 --> 00:17:19.799 play with his muse, the brilliant actress, Billy 00:17:19.799 --> 00:17:22.660 Whitelaw, for a quarter of a century. She gave 00:17:22.660 --> 00:17:24.480 a chilling description of her collaboration with 00:17:24.480 --> 00:17:27.680 him. She said, with all of Sam's work, the scream 00:17:27.680 --> 00:17:30.539 was there. My task was to try to get it out. 00:17:30.839 --> 00:17:33.119 Here's where it gets really interesting, because 00:17:33.119 --> 00:17:36.140 it forces us to question the entire social contract 00:17:36.140 --> 00:17:39.140 of art. I mean, if you got a ticket to a show, 00:17:39.579 --> 00:17:41.720 got dressed up, sat down in the theater, and 00:17:41.720 --> 00:17:43.880 all you saw was a floating mouth talking in the 00:17:43.880 --> 00:17:46.900 dark, or a play that literally ended in 35 seconds, 00:17:47.019 --> 00:17:49.000 would you feel cheated? Right. Would you ask 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:51.549 for your money back? Exactly. Is he just trolling 00:17:51.549 --> 00:17:53.269 his audience at this point, or is there something 00:17:53.269 --> 00:17:55.430 profoundly brave about an artist aggressively 00:17:55.430 --> 00:17:57.549 stripping away the sets, the elaborate costumes, 00:17:57.750 --> 00:18:00.289 the physical movement, and the plot until only 00:18:00.289 --> 00:18:03.369 the raw panic human voices left? Well, he certainly 00:18:03.369 --> 00:18:06.009 wasn't trolling. It was a deliberate psychological 00:18:06.009 --> 00:18:09.390 confrontation. In these late works, Beckett was 00:18:09.390 --> 00:18:11.710 obsessively focused on the entrapment of memory. 00:18:12.309 --> 00:18:14.470 By blacking out the stage and isolating just 00:18:14.470 --> 00:18:17.089 the mouth, he was simulating the experience of 00:18:17.089 --> 00:18:19.710 the self, entirely confined and trapped inside 00:18:19.710 --> 00:18:22.289 the skull. I hear that is intense. Very. He used 00:18:22.289 --> 00:18:24.990 incredibly strict stage directions to control 00:18:24.990 --> 00:18:27.869 every single breath, every blink, and every shadow. 00:18:28.349 --> 00:18:31.750 In fact, his literary estate still fiercely protects 00:18:31.750 --> 00:18:34.269 those directions today, shutting down productions 00:18:34.269 --> 00:18:36.490 that try to alter the lighting or the set. Wow, 00:18:36.490 --> 00:18:39.049 they don't m— No, because he wasn't trying to 00:18:39.049 --> 00:18:41.509 entertain you in the traditional sense. By removing 00:18:41.509 --> 00:18:43.670 all the comforting distractions of a normal play, 00:18:44.049 --> 00:18:47.150 he was forcing you, the audience, to sit in the 00:18:47.150 --> 00:18:50.049 dark and confront the inescapable, looping reality 00:18:50.049 --> 00:18:52.210 of your own mind. You kick away all the noise. 00:18:52.410 --> 00:18:54.990 Which brings a fascinating symmetry to how he 00:18:54.990 --> 00:18:58.289 handled the end of his own life. In October 1969, 00:18:58.450 --> 00:19:01.190 while on holiday in Tunis, Beckett receives the 00:19:01.190 --> 00:19:03.490 news that he has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. 00:19:04.140 --> 00:19:07.140 And his fiercely protective wife, Suzanne, upon 00:19:07.140 --> 00:19:09.339 hearing the news that her intensely private husband 00:19:09.339 --> 00:19:11.920 is now going to be saddled with global fame, 00:19:12.359 --> 00:19:14.980 endless media attention, and public adoration, 00:19:15.299 --> 00:19:18.460 famously calls the award a catastrophe. It is 00:19:18.460 --> 00:19:21.140 the ultimate Beckesian reaction to winning the 00:19:21.140 --> 00:19:24.220 highest possible honor in literature. Total dread. 00:19:24.420 --> 00:19:28.740 Right. Suzanne passed away in July 1989. Beckett, 00:19:28.779 --> 00:19:30.700 who was confined to a nursing home and suffering 00:19:30.700 --> 00:19:32.900 from emphysema, followed her just a few months 00:19:32.900 --> 00:19:36.589 later. dying on December 26, 1989. They were 00:19:36.589 --> 00:19:38.890 buried together in a cemetery in Paris. And even 00:19:38.890 --> 00:19:42.049 in death, he gave a strict minimalist directorial 00:19:42.049 --> 00:19:44.829 note. His gravestone is a simple block of granite 00:19:44.829 --> 00:19:47.490 that follows his exact directive. Any color, 00:19:47.650 --> 00:19:50.769 so long as it's gray. The final permanent subtraction. 00:19:50.990 --> 00:19:52.829 Exactly. It leaves us with the profound final 00:19:52.829 --> 00:19:55.529 thought to chew on today. We talked about Beckett's 00:19:55.529 --> 00:19:58.109 great revelation in 1945 that his own stupidity, 00:19:58.630 --> 00:20:00.329 his ignorance and his lack of knowledge were 00:20:00.329 --> 00:20:03.039 actually his precious ally. We live right now 00:20:03.039 --> 00:20:05.599 in an age of constant overwhelming information 00:20:05.599 --> 00:20:07.940 overload. Oh, without a doubt. We are desperately 00:20:07.940 --> 00:20:11.019 trying to know more, constantly scrolling, researching, 00:20:11.240 --> 00:20:14.079 and adding data to our mental hard drives every 00:20:14.079 --> 00:20:16.240 single second of the day, hoping it will make 00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:19.319 the world make sense. What could you gain in 00:20:19.319 --> 00:20:21.799 your own life if you actively chose to embrace 00:20:21.799 --> 00:20:24.960 not knowing? What would happen if, just for one 00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:27.960 day, you tried Samuel Beckett's method if you 00:20:27.960 --> 00:20:30.160 focused on the art of subtracting the noise? 00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:32.680 It is a terrifying prospect to admit our own 00:20:32.680 --> 00:20:34.680 ignorance, but perhaps it is the only way to 00:20:34.680 --> 00:20:37.099 find any real clarity. Sometimes the most honest 00:20:37.099 --> 00:20:40.339 thing you can do when faced with a chaotic, incomprehensible 00:20:40.339 --> 00:20:43.440 universe is just shrug, admit you don't have 00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:45.779 the answers, and find someone to talk about sports 00:20:45.779 --> 00:20:47.740 with while you wait for whatever comes next. 00:20:48.119 --> 00:20:49.500 Thank you so much for joining us on this deep 00:20:49.500 --> 00:20:50.400 dive. We'll see you next time.