Waiting for Tom

Two birthdays today - Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Beckett. I wonder what the conversation would have been like if those two gentlemen sat down for dinner and drinks.

Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He is best known as the author of the plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame. He went to Trinity College in Dublin, but his true literary education came from helping James Joyce with Finnegans Wake.



Thomas Jefferson, born in 1743, was the third President of the United States (1801–1809) and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776). An influential Founding Father, Jefferson envisioned America as a great "Empire of Liberty" that would promote republicanism. He died, ironically, on the 4th of July 1826.

Beckett said:

"I always thought old age would be a writer's best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W.B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now my memory's gone, all the old fluency's disappeared. I don't write a single sentence without saying to myself, 'It's a lie!' So I know I was right. It's the best chance I've ever had."

Beckett on Film DVD Set

Three Beckett Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

Thomas Jefferson - A Film by Ken Burns