Susan Sontag on Samuel Beckett

Beckett is dealing with emotions, however abstractly, and there is a progress from one emotion to the next that feels inevitable. Not only are his plays narrative but, as Joe Chaikin once observed, Beckett has actually discovered a new dramatic subject. Normally people on stage reflect on the macrostructure of action. What am I going to do this year? Tomorrow? Tonight? They ask: Am I going mad? Will I ever get to Moscow? Should I leave my husband? Do I have to murder my Uncle? My Mother? These are the sorts of large projects that have traditionally concerned a play’s leading characters. Beckett is the first writer to dramatize the microstructure of action. What am I going to do one minute from now? In the next second? Weep? Take out my comb? Stand-up? Sigh? Sit? Be silent? Tell a joke? Understand something? His plays are built on reflections leading to decisions, which imparts to his dramas a real narrative push.

"I sometimes think of what future historians
  will say of us. A single sentence will suffice
  for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers."
Albert Camus

"My work is a matter of fundamental sounds made
  as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else.
  If people want to have headaches among the overtones,
  let them."
Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett's HAPPY DAYS, now playing through May 5, 2012