Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)

Samuel Beckett was an Irishman who chose to write in French so that he would be forced to write without style. He wanted language reduced to its bones — to what remained when everything decorative had been stripped away — and he found that what remained was enough to hold the whole of human experience, or at least its most honest residue.

Waiting for Godot contains two men, a tree, and the structure of all waiting. Vladimir and Estragon cannot leave, cannot stop talking, cannot make the talking mean anything conclusive, and cannot stop trying. The comedy is not incidental to the weight of what they carry. It is how the weight becomes bearable.

Beckett said: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." This is not optimism. It is something more incorruptible than optimism: a refusal to pretend that success and failure are the only two options.

He received the Nobel Prize in 1969 "for his writing, which — in new forms for the novel and drama — in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation."

He gave no Nobel Lecture and did not go to Stockholm; his publisher collected the prize. When the news came, his wife is said to have called it a catastrophe. Read about it at NobelPrize.org.