Never see Beckett on here. Post your opinions

I wasn't sure the first time either. Watched it again though and read some essays about it. Best play ever written in my opinion now.

Catastrophe is a hoot

What stuff of his have you read/seen?

Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and his Trilogy.

I appreciate that you had the common sense to compare yourself to Homer Simpson for fearing the absurdity of life.

The Trilogy is quite meaningless i'll grant you but the plays aren't.
Godot- Play about how we wait all our lives for something or someone to give meaning to it without result.
Endgame- 'Can there be suffering loftier than mine?' 'You cry for night. It falls. Now cry in darkness'. Dystopian play about the suffering of modern life.

Love Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, How It Is, and the trilogy. His earlier prose works are underrated.

I was under the impression that his early works were banal imitations of Joyce without the ingenuity. Haven't read them myself of course, though I've never met anyone who has, unless by "early" you are referring to Murphy/Watt.

Actually I just wikipedia'd it and seems that Murphy/Watt were his first published novels. Am I crazy for thinking I read somewhere that his first stuff was bad Joyce??

He is just way too handsome. Also the idea of someone splendidly translating their own works is such a turn on

They were certainly influenced heavily by Joyce, but they're not imitations. They are wonderful and darkly funny. It's a mode of writing that he knew had to change, but they are still great novels. Do check them out.

I would say Dream of Fair to Middling Women is like that, but Murphy is where he starts to become his own writer.

Maybe not the place for it, but his plays were only filmed under strict conditions from those who owned the rights, and each one is filmed by famous, (in my opinion good), directors. The box set is worth purchasing, or jimmying loose from somewhere....

I tried reading the plays first and didn't get into them as much as I eventually did until I saw them preformed. Weirdly enough, the films will actually send you back to the scripts. And then you'll get taught a lesson.

I picked up Watt last summer and read it pretending to understand what it would have been like to write while your country was being invaded by Nazis. It felt quite fitting, and I don't remember if I stopped on purpose or if I forgot until now that I was once reading that book. I don't remember where i put it. It's probably in a pile against one of these walls. But then again, it might be put back on my shelf. Maybe, I suppose, the novelty wore off when no one actually invaded.

Would be nice to read something a bit less humorous, some work that wasn't always so damn quiet.

Tis him, I suppose. Blats of a stone gargoyle or the fucking god damn grumbles of a sculptor not missing family, but only company. Or hell maybe he's still transcribing the lovely scatology of some wicked gibberish left to him in eternal return of the same, same, same, sane, shame, same, shame, same, shame, same.

Dream of Fair to Middling Women is the first Beckett novel I've finished (and so far the only) and it's great imo.