Books: Waiting for Oblivion

WATT (254 pp.)—Samuel Beckett—Grove ($3.50).

Whatever else can be said for or against Dublin-born Samuel (Waiting for Godot) Beckett, he deserves full marks for consistency. Having decided that life is a hapless, hopeless thing, he goes right on repeating his message. His latest novel to be published in the U.S. (it was written in 1953) does not back off an inch from the chasm. Watt is a worthy literary companion to such other Beckett anti-heroes as Murphy, Malone and Mahood. Like them, he does not have a chance, and does not really want one.

He is a servant to an old man named Knott, but his duties are vague, and he and his master have never exchanged a word. That is Author Beckett’s way of showing the measureless distance between man and his fellow. But Watt’s distance from himself is even greater. Not for him the prescription, “Know thyself”; the little he knows about himself he hates. He also hates other things, especially the earth and the sky. The closest he has ever come to companionship is with a man who shares his hatred of birds and love of rats. To the rats they would feed frogs and baby thrushes: “It was on these occasions, we agreed, after an exchange of views, that we came nearest to God.”

Expatriate Beckett (he lives in France) has found a near poetic way of expressing his terrible vision, a style that is by turns irritatingly dense and craftily simple. And he states and restates his nightmare with a relentlessness that makes most writers seem uncertain of their way. Yet the vision is too ghastly to be borne in the long run, and with Watt, Author Beckett has conjured it up about as many times as most readers will be able to stand. If Godot was really Beckett’s way of saying God, perhaps the only solution for him and his work lies not in waiting but in searching for Godot.