Quickly (2 May 1956)
The Village Voice, 2 May 1956; transcription provided by Jerry Lucas; proofread against the source 2026-06-01.
I have not seen “Waiting for Godot” nor read the text, but of course I have come across a good many reviews of it, and heard more than a little in its favor and disfavor. What amuses me is the deference with which everyone is approaching Beckett, and the fault of course, the part which is sad, is that none of the celebrators of Beckett have learned anything from Joyce (for whom Beckett worked as a secretary). By this I do not mean that one has to read all of Joyce to understand the style of Joyce’s mind and the dialectical beauties of his spirit. But so far, it has been mainly the academicians who have attempted to grapple with the Hip intricacies of Joyce’s mysticism of the flesh as it suffered and was mutilated and elaborated against the social anvil of Christianity.
Nor do I mean that I am an expert on Joyce—like many of you who will read this, I have read perhaps half of “Ulysses” and fragments from “Finnegan’s Wake”—but then it is not necessary to read all of Joyce in order to feel or not feel the meaning of his language and the reach of his genius. He is after all the only genius of the twentieth century who has written in the English language.
But at the very least, the critics could have done a little rudimentary investigation into the meaning of the title of “Waiting for Godot,” and the best they have been able to come up with so far is that Godot has something to do with God. My congratulations. But Godot also means ‘ot Dog, or the dog who is hot, and it means God-O, God as the female principle, just as Daddy-O in Hip means the father who has failed, the man who has become an O, a vagina. Two obvious dialectical transpositions on “Waiting for Godot” are To Dog The Coming, and God Hot for Waiting, but anyone who has the Joycean habit of thought could add a hundred subsidiary themes. As for example on Go, Dough! (Go, Life!).
Nonetheless, I like To Dog The Coming as the best, because what I smell in all of this is that “Waiting for Godot” is a poem to impotence, and I suspect (again out of the ignorance of not having seen it) that Beckett sees man as hopelessly impotent, and the human condition as equally impotent. Given the caliber of the people who have applauded “Waiting for Godot,” I further suspect that the complex structures of the play and its view of life are most attractive to those who are most impotent. So I doubt if I will like it, because finally not everyone is impotent, nor is our final fate, our human condition, necessarily doomed to impotence, as old Joyce knew, and Beckett I suspect does not. When it comes to calling a work great one must first live with the incommensurable nuance of the potent major key and the impotent minor key.
Now, to make a most brutal transition, nearly all of the rest of this column is deeply depressing for me to write:
THE NUISANCES OF GROWTH
Errors in type-setting and proof-reading fall into two categories—those which are obvious mis-spellings, and those (more serious and more interesting psychologically) where a word is left out or changed into another, and the meaning of the sentence thereby becomes altered. Yet the reader never knows that an error was made.
Last week a classic of this sort occurred. Writing about Hip, part of my final sentence was supposed to read:
… because Hip is not totally negative, and has a view of life which is predicated on growth and the nuances of growth, I intend to continue writing about it. …
As it appeared in The Voice, it read:
… because Hip is not totally negative, and has a view of life which is predicated on growth and the nuisances of growth, I intend to continue writing about it. …
In the four months I have been writing this column, similar (for me) grievous errors have cropped up in all but two of the pieces I have written, and these errors have made for steadily increasing friction between the Editor, an Associate Editor, and myself. Since no cliché is more true than that there are two sides to every story, the Editor and Associate Editor, who are hard-working gentlemen, claimed that the fault was due to the fact that I am in the habit of turning in my column at the last minute, which undeniably increases their difficulties.
At any rate, we all had some words, some fairly sharp words, certain things were said which can hardly be unsaid, and the result is that this is to be my last column for The Voice at least under its present policy.
Now, the quarrel was actually trivial, and I can take most of the blame for the way it went, but as happens so often, we were all of us at bottom arguing about something else—a much more serious difference of opinion which I have had with the Editor and Publisher.
They wish this newspaper to be more conservative, more Square—I wish it to be more Hip. We have compromised our differences for many weeks as best we could, and The Voice has perhaps suffered from the compromise. But, at present, since I am a minority stockholder and have no real voice in the control of anything except my column, I have decided that this contradictory association can go on no longer. If the paper is to become anything at all, it is necessary that I step out, for too many energies are being wasted in internal disputes. (Let me add that these disputes were not about my column. Although the Editor and Publisher agreed with very little in it, they allowed or submitted to a most rare freedom of the press.)
For those of you who are Hip and wish The Voice to be a Hip newspaper (which would make it the first in New York) I think I ought to add that the Editor and Publisher are very responsive to their readers’ opinions, and if you make yourself heard, this newspaper will reflect your influence. If you do not, then the Editor and Publisher will prove to have been right—to have made a better objective estimate of the situation and of what interests readers and so the fortunes of this newspaper will prosper more without me than with me. Perhaps there is room in Greenwich Village for two community newspapers—which has been their contention all along.
At any rate, this is a farewell column, and I for one am sorry it had to come to an end so abruptly. We may not have had the most pleasant of relationships, but it has been stimulating for me, and perhaps stimulating for some of you. I regret only that it became impossible to go on writing about the nature of The Hip and the Square, for that was fascinating to me, and I had finally found the subject (yes, after all these columns) which I wished to explore. So, regretfully, good-bye for awhile. I wonder in which form some of us will swing into communication again.
ENCORE
As a last fillip, I would like to print here the only poem I have ever written, a poem about potency and impotence (as well as other things), which is called “The Drunk’s Bebop and Chowder,” and appeared in my novel, “The Deer Park.” Let us see how many typos there are in this. If there aren’t too many, try reading it aloud.
Shirred athe inlechercent felloine namelled Shash
Head tea lechnocerous hero calmed Asshy
Befwen hes prunt cuddlenot riles fora lash
Whenfr hir cunck woodled lyars affordelay?
"Yi munt seech tyt und speets tytsh"
"I-uh wost tease toty ant tweeks tlotty"
And/or atuftit n pladease slit,
"N ranty off itty indisplacent,"
"Frince Yrhome washt balostilted ina laydy."
"Sinfor her romesnot was lowbilt inarouter dayly."