Sir, - Alas for Beckett! I refer to the advertisement for the current production at the Gate of Waiting for Godot, published in your newspaper.
The advertisement cites three foreign and renowned journals, using English in ways hardly flattering to the late Nobel Prize winner. The Wall Street Journal informs us that this Godot is "wonderous", an odious misspelling. Newsday exhorts us to "think serious bliss", a formulation which succeeds in being ungrammatical as well as nonsensical.
The Guardian speaks of an "undoubted highlight", when a highlight implies a context of lesser lights and does not admit of doubt in that connection; and also of a Godot "in its true, magnificent colours", a phrase of glorious inappropriateness on two counts. Beckett recognises no colour stronger than grey, and "true colours" is a phase deriving from knightly allegiance, thus here implying former treason or camouflage on the part - not of Beckett but of Godot.
Could less good sense be impacted in fewer words? Is this a new form of minimalist iron? Or merely a reminder that Go dot is, after all, absurd? - Yours, etc.,
Department of English,
University College, Belfield,
Dublin 4.