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What Do I Read Next?
(Drama for Students)
Waiting for Godot (1953) is Samuel Beckett’s best-known play about two tramps waiting for the elusive Godot.
The Unnamable (1953) is the third novel of Beckett’s trilogy, including Molloy (1951) and Malone Dies (1951). All three novels, which were originally written in French, are interior monologues containing flashes of dark humor.
Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) is another of Beckett’s stage plays. It consists of a monologue in which the aged Krapp attempts to recapture the intensity of days long passed by listening to recordings of his younger self.
Eugène Ionseco’s play The Chairs (1958) is about a man who had opportunities to lead a great life but led a simple life with his wife instead. After many years, he decides to tell society his secret. The only characters in the play are the old man, the woman, and the person the old man hires to tell the world his secret. This play is a staple work of the theater of the absurd.
David Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross (1983) is an excellent example of the influence Beckett has had on the craft of writing plays. Mamet was highly influenced by Harold Pinter, to whom Glengarry Glenn Ross is dedicated, and Pinter was highly influenced by Beckett.
Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1958) follows Stanley, an out-of-work pianist in a seaside boarding house. Stanley is mysteriously threatened and taken over by two intruders, who present him with a bizarre indictment of unexplained crimes.
Anthony Cronin’s Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (1997) is an ambitious and well-written biography of Samuel Beckett the writer, artist, and person.