In Dialogue with Godot: Waiting and Other Thoughts

In Dialogue with Godot: Waiting and Other Thoughts, Ranjan Ghosh puts together thirteen new essays on Beckett’s most popular and widely read play, Waiting for Godot. Chapters are envisaged as dialogues with Godot, keeping in mind the event of waiting and other issues related to this Godot-Waiting phenomenon. The merit of this book lies in exploring this play from thirteen fresh perspectives introducing some important themes that have not been dealt previously. Contributors explore the play in reference to topics as varied as Hindu philosophy, Agamben, Kristeva, Derrida, the absence of women in the play, Aristotleanism in structural reading, and anti-existentialism. Essays ask, can we make claims to read this play outside the “absurd tradition?” Is it an anti-existential play? Can Beckett possibly be “Indianized?” How can the dialectic between “waiting” and “delay” be problematized? If Beckett was up to de-structure conventional modes of drama-writing, what connection could he possibly have with Aristotle and his normative modes? Can the Vladimir-Estragon relationship be critiqued psychoanalytically? Can questions of political commitment be challenged anew, resisting easy propositions to considering it a Resistance play? Can the Godot / Resistance collocation be examined through torture (the series of beatings that structures the play), through relationship (the pseudo-couple), and finally through language (the insistent coupling of violence and meaning)? In Dialogue with Godot offers a refreshingly new and varied approach to Samuel Beckett’s most popular play.

Graley Herren is Professor and Chair of English at Xavier University, USA. He is the author of Samuel Beckett's Plays on Film and Television (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He serves on the executive board for the Samuel Beckett Society and edits the Society's newsletter, The Beckett Circle.

Maria Margaroni lectures at the University of Cyprus.